I am being misrepresented by fellow writers, says Ananthamurthy

Bangalore, Mar 26: Eminent litterateur and a candidate in the fray for the coming biennial elections to the Rajya Sabha, today alleged that he was being misrepresented by some of his fellow writers and reiterated that he was not seeking office, but power to serve the people of the state.

In a statement here, he said ''My brother writers instead of fighting money power seem to have sold themselves to crooked politicians.'' Stating that he was against the practice of using the Rajya Sabha to protect people rejected in election, money makers and speculators, he said ''the Rajya Sabha is a Council of States, and therefore each state should elect people of the same state who can intellecutally voice the aspirations of the people of the state, thus backing the work done in the Lok Sabha. This convention is being eroded,'' he lamented.

He clarified that he was not opposed to granting classical language status to Kannada, but was against any government taking such decisions which should be left to scholars.

''Only dead languages like Latin and Greek are called classical.

In the whole world, all the powerful modern languages have a history of some five centuries or so, whereas only two languages belong to the Dravidian family--Tamil and Kannada--have more than a 1000 years of continuous history. Therefore, the Union Government should use the phrase 'ancient and living' to describe Tamil and Kannada. If they use 'classical,' then we will get lost in determining which is older.

UNI