In Madurai, 70-year-old V K Neelarao is desperately trying to keep his mother tongue Saurashtram alive, spending his money to direct films in it, releasing his movies to "sometimes housefull, sometimes empty" shows at theatres.

Here, the language is the hero

In Madurai, 70-year-old V K Neelarao is desperately trying to keep his mother tongue Saurashtram alive, spending his money to direct films in it, releasing his movies to "sometimes housefull, sometimes empty" shows at theatres.

He has earlier produced a feature film -starring his family and friends -and though he has never managed to break even, he refuses to give up, insisting on giving his language a voice among the 200-odd Tamil films that hit the box office every year.

Though statistics claim on fifth of the population of Madurai speaks Saurashtram, a mix of Gujarati and Tamil, Neelarao says that no one knows the real number. "Speakers of Saurashtram are dwindling as the next generation does not want to learn it. That's why I feel it is time to speak out for the language through movies," adds Neelarao, whose third film will release next month. He usually releases his films in Madurai, Pudukottai and Tirunelveli, the hot-spots of the language.

To linguist Ganesh N Devy, any attempt to keep a language alive is commendable, especially with his linguistic survey of India published in 2013 saying that 220 Indian languages have vanished in the past 50 years. "In India, there are no numbers on how many people speak a language. We found that especially with Sanskrit, people claim to speak it, but they cannot frame a sentence," says Devy, adding that though Sanskrit is a scheduled language in the country , not many refer to it as their 'mother tongue'.

In Chennai Muktha Srinivasan, an industry veteran, is attempting a biopic in the ancient language of Prakrit, which linguists consider the mother of the modern Indo-Aryan language. A few filmmakers are also attempting Sanskrit films to give the classical language a leg up.

Every time he is asked about his crowdfunded, crowdsourced Sanskrit animation film, Ravishankar V wonders why he attempted the mammoth task.

"When I decided to make 'Punyakoti' in 2014, I didn't have the money for it, so I put it up for crowdfunding on Wishberry and raised Rs 41 lakh.

Almost 70% of the contributors were strangers. They wanted to support a Sanskrit film. This has kept me going," he says.

Ravishankar has roped in Ilayaraja for the music, and veteran actor Revathy and popular newbie Roger Narayan (from the film 'Man Who Knew Infinity') for the voice-overs. "Revathy and Ilayaraja are doing the movie for free, that's how much they believe in it," says Ravishankar, who adds that they still need funds.

While Ravishankar has found distributors, G Prabha, a retired Sanskrit professor from Loyola College, Chennai, who scripted, produced and directed 'Ishti', hasn't been so lucky . The film, though passed by the Censor Board, is caught in a legal battle over its theme. "The film is about the third wife of a 70-year-old Namboodiri, who stands up against orthodoxy . Let's just say some people from the community have not taken to it well," says Prabha.

Though there have been Sanskrit films made over the years, they were mostly biopics like GV Iyer's 'Adi Shankaracharya' (1983) and the latest National Award winner 'Priyamanasam' by Vinod Mankara, about ancient poet Unnayi Warrier. Hence venturing into a social theme has proved to be tricky for Prabha. But the 59-year-old says he is determined to release the film. "I consider Sanskrit as a beautiful living language and I want others to see it the way I do," says Prabha.

The 'Muktha' family of father Srinivasan and sons Ravi and Sundar are racing to complete the biopic of the 13th century saint-philosopher Vedanta Desika by end-2016. "We have decided to make 'Vedanta Desika' in Prakrit and Manipravalam (a mixture of Tamil and Sanskrit) because that was the language of the time," says Ravi, adding that they have roped in Prakrit-Sanskrit scholar Dushyant Sridhar to play the saint and give it authenticity.

