Konkani writers in Goa have launched a campaign to revive the use of the centuries-old Roman script that is being increasingly swamped by Devnagri.

With more and more Konkani speakers preferring the Devnagri script, they say the language's history and heritage are under threat. Konkani is one of India's nationally recognised languages spoken mainly along the country's west coast.

Konkani, the official language of Goa, is written in five scripts - Roman, Devnagri, Kannada, Malayalam and Perso-Arabic.

Devnagri was rarely used in the language until the mid-1980s. But a feud between the supporters of Konkani and of Marathi led to the acceptance of Devnagri as the compromise script.

Since then, the writers allege, the Roman script has been totally neglected.

"After the passing of the Goa Official Language Act in 1987, the government and institutions working for the cause of Konkani here have supported the Devnagri script only," said Dalgado Konkani Akademi (DKA) president Tomazinho Cardozo, a well-known playwright and a former speaker of the Goa assembly.

"Publication of books in the Roman script has suffered and institutions like Sahitya Akademi have stopped giving awards to Konkani books in the Roman script."

The language, spoken by 1.7 million to five million people - the estimates widely vary - began losing out on followers.

According to Cardazo, even Christians in Goa, who had been particularly close to Konkani, were moving away from it. "It is a fact that many Christians in Goa do not send their children to Konkani schools. They hesitate to talk in Konkani. In other words, they are losing their Goan identity," Cardazo said.

DKA has now launched a campaign to promote Roman-scripted Konkani. It will publish 10 books in Roman-Konkani before the end of the year, bring out an annual magazine and enrol around 2,000 members.

Cardazo also intends to start a fund-raiser to finance Roman-Konkani writers, collaborate with other institutions, launch a website and run a village-to-village 'Speak Konkani, Save Konkani' drive.

--Indo-Asian News Service