THE RATIONALE
About one-fourth of the People of India speak one or another Dravidian
language. It is the major language family in the southern States, viz.
Andhra Pradesh, Karnataka, Kerala and Tamil Nadu, and in the Union
Territories of Pondicherry and Lakshadweep Islands. Brahui, perhaps the
oldest member of the Dravidian Family, is spoken by six lakh people in
Pakistan, Afghanistan, Iran; 10,000 speak Dangar in Nepal. There are old
and new migrants in Sri Lanka, Malaysia, Singapore, Myanmar, Indonesia
and Africa. In fact, about 30 million Dravidian speakers are migrants
and settled all over the world.
HISTORY
A "Call Notice" regarding the formation of an Association for
the study of Dravidian languages, and all aspects of Dravidian
culture and people, was issued jointly by late Prof. V.I.
Subramoniam (Kerala University), R.C. Hiremath (Karnataka
University), and Mahadeva Sastry (SV University) on 15th March
1971. A two-day Conference was held at Thiruvananthapuram,
presided over by Prof. Suniti Kumar Chatterji, the then doyen of
Indian linguistics. The DLA was born, with Prof. Chatterji as
its first President. Even before the registration of the DLA,
the learned bi-annual, International Journal of Dravidian
Linguistics (IJDL), was established with the issue of its first
number in 1972. This first issue carried articles from
world-renowned
scholars like Emeneau and others. Since then, without break, two issues
have appeared every year. Prof. Subramoniam was the Editor for 28 years
until 2000 when Prof. B. Gopinathan Nair took over this task. As the
membership of DLA increased, it became necessary to keep in touch with
them by the issue of a
Monthly Newsletter,
the
DLA News.
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