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Journalism of Courage
Mohammed Husain Karim is 71, but his life8217;s mission is not complete. He continues to work towards a dream that has taken up pretty much of his time in the past 40 years. Karim is trying to bring his ancestral dialect, Kutchi, to life by creating a script for the language. By using Farsi as a base, this retired garment merchant from Dhrol in Jamnagar, has produced alphabets and numbers for the script.
Miles away, at Faradi village in Mandvi taluka of Kutch district, Prataprai Trivedi shares a similar passion. Apart from poems and essays in Kutchi, Trivedi has created a vocabulary for the language.
Meanwhile, at Bhuj, the main city of Kutch, members of the recently formed Kutch Sahitya Academy KSA are poring over the research of the two men. All these men are working towards a common goal: giving Kutchi the status of a language and producing its own script.
Without its own script, Kutchi has been widely written in the Gujarati script. No wonder then that despite the rich cultural heritage and past, Kutchi literature is very small in comparison The problem with Kutchi, spoken by various communities, including the Darbar, Rajput, Rabari, Oswal and Memon, is that there are many sounds that don8217;t find expression in languages like Sindhi and Gujarati. 8220;Sounds like ahm, bhm and mu don8217;t exist in Gujarati or Sindhi. There are several hundred sounds that don8217;t have a corresponding alphabet or word in the Gujarati script, restricting the expression and meaning of the word or phrase,8221; says Kirti Khatri, president of KSA and editor of the vernacular Kutchmitra. 8220;Though research has been done to develop a script, these are scattered. The KSA wants to bring all the research and scholars under a single umbrella.8221;
Khatri also says that the KSA would consider Karim8217;s script when it decides on the final script. 8220;I was very fond of shayari. My struggle to find the right word inspired me do research for the script,8221; says Karim, who has never lost an opportunity to promote the language. So at marriage ceremonies, he has prepared welcome banners in Kutchi, has designed clocks with numbers in the new script, and has even designed a software to convert Gujarati into Kutchi. He refers to the 44 alphabets he has created as Kutch-M-Lipi.
The reason for the language8217;s obscurity is that the rulers of Kutch came from the Sindh province and Kutchi emerged as a regional dialect influenced by local languages like Sindhi, Memani and Gujarati. Those coming from Maharastra and Gujarat too adopted Kutchi as their language by the 17th century. In the 19th century, when Kutch was reorganised by the British, Gujarati was accepted as the mother tongue and Kutchi got recognition as babani father tongue. No wonder then that Gujarati was adopted for administrative work, while Kutchi was used in local parlance. With schools too adopting Gujarati, Kutchi was ignored.
It was only in 2005, after a decades8217; long struggle, that Kutch got its own sahitya academy, distinct from the Gujarat Sahitya Academy. Now, the KSA has an urgent to-do list: promoting Kutchi by honouring past writers and encouraging youth to write in Kutchi, republishing works of renowned Kutchi poets and writers like Shah Adul Latif Bhetai, Jayanti Joshi, Vrujgaj Kanta and Dr Vishan Nagad.
8220;Though Kutchi has been widely spoken by more than 10 lakh people in Saurashtra and Kutch region, it has a very limited literature. The KSA wants people to write more books, poems and prose in Kutchi,8221; says Gautam Joshi, an IB official who, in the past 20 years, has penned 16 books, including 12 in Kutchi, with Gujarati script. Last year, the KSA gave 45 awards in 15 categories for the publications of the past 10 years.
Though the earliest reference to Kutchi literature can be found 1,600 years ago, it was in 1992 that the Gujarati Sahitya Parishad announced special awards for Kutchi literature for the first time. It was also the last time till the KSA was founded in 2005. Dhanji Bhanushali, who won the GSP award for his short story book in 1992, says, 8220;Another difficulty with Kutchi is its diversity. From Maliya in Kutch to Dwarka in Jamnagar, it has been spoken in different forms. A new script is welcome, but it needs to be developed with a scientific approach.8221;
8220;The KSA is ready with a proposal in Kutchi written in Roman script to be presented in the Parliament. The KSA aims to get the proposal to give Kutchi the status of a language cleared,8221; says Jivanlal Soneji, coordinator with KSA. Karim can barely wait for that to happen.
