CHENNAI: More than six years after Kannada was declared a classical language, albeit with a condition that it would be subject to the outcome of a petition pending before the Madras high court, the Karnataka government has implead itself as a party to the proceedings to 'protect and retain' the classical status conferred upon the language.

In October 2004, the Centre declared Tamil as one of the classical languages of India, and in November 2004 it formed a committee of linguistic experts to consider the demands for conferring the status on other languages.

In October 2008, the Centre accorded the classical language status to Kannada and Telugu.

However, Chennai-based senior advocate R Gandhi filed a PIL in the high court questioning the very composition of the expert committees, and demanding the cancellation of the status. When the matter reached the Supreme Court, a bench headed by the then Chief Justice of India K G Balakrishnan refused to interfere with the PIL proceedings before the high court, but said the conferment of classical status on Kannada and Telugu is subject to the outcome of the case.

Now, the Karnataka government has impleaded itself as a party, saying it was interested in protecting and retaining the status. Noting that Tamil and Kannada branched off from the Proto-South Dravidian language at the same time, director of department of Kannada and Culture K A Dayananda said the recorded history of Kannada dated back to third century BC.

A classical language committee member, C H Hanumatharaya, also filed an affidavit saying the PIL had no jurisdiction at all, as it had not spelt out as to which particular class of persons was affected by the decision to accord classical status to Kannada. "The petitioner has converted the jurisdiction of PIL into adversarial litigation," he said, adding, "identifying and granting classical status to any language falls purely within the policy domain of cultural and linguistic rights, and cannot be determined in a writ petition."

His counsel Geetha Ramaseshan said experts in language and linguistics are the best persons to decide on issues such as the classical nature of languages, Hanumatharaya said, adding, "If the PIL is accepted, every decision on matters of art, architecture, culture, music, languages, scripts, etc will throw open a floodgate of litigation."

On Wednesday, the first bench comprising Chief Justice Sanjay Kishan Kaul and Justice M Sathyanarayanan impleaded Karnataka as a party, and then issued notices to Andhra Pradesh and Telangana. The judges posted the matter to February 18 for further hearing.

