Minister for Forest, Kannada and Culture Arvind Limbavali has said that the department has asked the Karnataka Tulu Sahitya Academy to initiate steps to include Tulu script developed by it in the Unicode mapping list.
Limbavali said that several rounds of discussions were held in the last 10 years on framing a Tulu script. The academy has now accepted the script prepared in consultation with experts in Tulu language and script. The government has approved the proposal to include the script in the Unicode map, he said.
After the department requested the Central Institute of Indian Languages in Mysuru to examine the script and give its opinion, the institute had constituted a committee of language experts which discussed the proposal in detail and had recommended submitting the script to the Unicode Consortium. Following this, the department has asked the academy to go ahead with it, Limbavali said.
Efforts to framing Tulu script will get a boost if the script comes to be used on digital platforms, literature and publicity material.
Limbavali said that he will be happy when the Tulu language which has history of several centuries, gets included in the Unicode map.
Karnataka Tulu Sahithya Academy president Dayanand Kathalsar said the direction of the government to the academy to initiate steps to include Tulu script in Unicode is a historic decision.
Tulu has a history of over 2,000 years. Tulu should be taught from class one in the district, he said and urged the state government to declare Tulu as an official language.