TRIVANDRUM, 12 May — After two decades of protests, the Kerala government has finally decided to say goodbye to English and make Malayalam the language of administration in the southern state.
Minister for Public Relations M.M. Hassan said that as a first step, six departments — revenue, panchayat, cooperation, police, rural development and social welfare — would start using Malayalam from Nov. 1, the Kerala Day.
“The entire process of making Malayalam the administrative language in all departments would take place four years,” he said. “We decided to go ahead with the decision because we felt Malayalam is the language of the masses,” said Hassan. Hassan clarified that the decision would in no way affect Kerala’s plans to go ahead with e-governance.
“Work is going ahead for developing a software in Malayalam.” One of the foremost ardent supporters of Malayalam, former minister Lonappan Nambadan was overjoyed at the government decision. “Only Kerala does not use the mother tongue as the official language,” he said.
Nambadan became the attention of all Keralites when in 1982 he burned a copy of a bill inside the Kerala Assembly demanding that all bills should be published in Malayalam also. “Even though there was widespread condemnation of my action, the net result was that since then all bills were published in Malayalam too.”
Nambadan recalled that activists blackened nearly 1,000 name boards in English in front of government and autonomous institutions in 1982. The same year, 10 people were sentenced to 10 days imprisonment for shouting slogans at the visitors’ gallery of the state assembly demanding that Malayalam be made the official language. Following persistent requests, in 1982 the Trivandrum airport started making announcements in Malayalam also, apart from English and Hindi.
