With the renewing of demand to include Tulu in the Eighth Schedule of the Constitution and to declare Tulu as administrative language, some organisations had begun online teaching of Tulu scripts for those keen to learn Tulu.
Already, Tulu is taught in schools as a third optional language from class 6. To ensure that Tulu gets recognition, an online campaign was launched to teach Tulu scripts.
To promote Tulu, Jai Tulunad organisation has begun teaching Tulu online, free of cost. It has trained many interested people during the three months of lockdown.
Jai Tulunad President Sudarshan said, “For the past three years, the organisation has been teaching Tulu script free of cost in schools. During the Covid-19 lockdown, we started online classes for those interested. Several people have shown interest to learn. For those who could not take part in the online class, we started teaching Tulu language via WhatsApp groups.”
The WhatsApp groups have been categorised into Mumbai Tuluvaru and Kasargod Tuluvaru.
As Tuluvas settled in Mumbai have no knowledge of Kannada alphabets, they are familiarised with Tulu script through the help of Hindi alphabets, while Kasargod Tuluvas are taught with the help of Malayalam alphabets. He said more than 50 people were learning Tulu online.
A girl from Nagaland studying in Manipal had also shown interest in learning Tulu.
Signboards in Tulu
On the other hand, Tulu Sahithya Academy President Dayanand Kathalsar has already held discussion with Bajpe Gram Panchayat on Tulu campaign by taking up signboards in Tulu and the names of bus stands and market in Tulu.
He said, “Tulu has its own script. Mutt heads in Tulunadu have been signing in Tulu script. Along with Kannada and English, the signboards should be written in Tulu in MCC limits. We want the Tulu campaign to start from Bajpe Gram Panchayat jurisdiction. Yuva Tulunad and Jai Tulunad members are ready to write the signboards in Tulu script. We will flag off the campaign to write signboards in Tulu in Bajpe shortly.”