Mangalore: It is spoken by around six lakh people from a different stream of the Gowda community in Sullia and parts of Kodagu district, the most famous among them being Union Railway Minister, D V Sadananda Gowda, who did his bit to preserve Arebashe by setting up the Arebashe Sahitya Samskritika Academy during his stint as Chief Minister.
But three years down the line, the academy is riddled with infighting and many members of the community are protesting the inclusion of three members whose mother tongue is not Arebashe on its committee and complain it has done nothing worthwhile to document and preserve the language.
“The first committee was more of a political body with no academicians on board and hardly accomplished anything owing to infighting among the members. Of the Rs 45 lakh granted by the government, only Rs 15 lakh was used,” says a senior leader of the community, regretting that the present committee too has a politician as its chairman.
On Wednesday members of the Gowda community held a protest demanding the government remove three members whose mother tongue is not Arebashe, from the academy. “We don’t want these three members in the academy as they are not from the community that speaks Arebashe,” asserts president of the Sullia taluk Yuva Gowda Sangha, Dinesh Madappady.
Arebashe is influenced by Kannada, Tulu and Malayalam, according to scholar, K R Gangadhar, who recently came out with a dictionary of 3000 Arebashe words.
The community that speaks the language is believed to have migrated to Sullia and Kodagu from Aigur Seeme, he reveals. “Though we too are Gowdas, there are distinct differences between us and the Vokkaligas. Arebashe is over 500 years old,” he said.
