The unyielding importance of the printed word in the revival of Marathi

The seminar, titled Marathi Publishing: Glorious Tradition and Promising Future, offered a moment of necessary pause. The consensus among the participants—a gathering of publishers, academics, and government officials was clear: the publishing industry is not merely a commercial entity but a frontline defender of the language itself. Against the backdrop of a declining reading culture, the path forward, they argued, requires nothing less than a concerted pact between private publishers and the state.

Kiran Kulkarni, an official in the Marathi Language Department, framed the stakes with an appeal to history. Marathi, he noted, is a language accorded classical status, one that carries a two-and-a-half-thousand-year-old tradition and a rich trove of folk literature. The challenge is not creation but preservation — to find and study the surviving inscriptions, copper plates, and birch bark manuscripts still held in private homes and temples. This is not simply archival work; it is an act of reclaiming the foundational DNA of the language.

For the publishing houses, many of which remain proudly family-oriented, the task is a familial legacy. Two Marathi publishers, representing generations in the business, described the inherent difficulties not as deterrents, but as necessary challenges that lend meaning to the journey. The family structure, ironically, has fostered a culture of collaboration over competition, a unified front dedicated to cultural continuity rather than market dominance.

The discussion also touched on the cultural architecture that print maintains. Readers of PrintWeek will be delighted to know about a massive undertaking underway: the compilation of a comprehensive dictionary covering the state’s 216 dialects, an admission of Marathi’s cosmopolitan history, having adopted words from 35 foreign languages. This project of linguistic mapping is a powerful assertion that a language’s strength lies in its complexity and its capacity to absorb, rather than its purity.

In a separate, yet resonant session, Professor Rita Kothari of Ashoka University underscored the political and emotional sensitivity surrounding language today. Arguing against the use of language as a political weapon, she called for a more sensitive and humane appreciation of our linguistic wealth, particularly in preserving the oral traditions that often fade before the written record.

The historical tension between native tongues and the influence of English, of course, is not new. The shadow of the 19th century still looms, presenting two starkly different reactions to foreign influence. One, exemplified by the prominent national leader Sir Pherozeshah Mehta, involved a startling denigration of Sanskrit — one of the world's richest ancient languages — as "barren" in an 1867 address in London, a painful manifestation of an inferiority complex. The other reaction, championed by figures like Mahadev Moreshwar Kunte and the influential scholar Krishnashastri Chiplunkar, was a deliberate, published assertion of national pride.

Through the publication of Marathi epic poems on Chhatrapati Shivaji Maharaj, they consciously used the printed word to stir a sense of self-respect among the common people, laying the groundwork for a broader cultural and political awakening.

PrintWeek's view: What is emerging is a clear-eyed understanding: the importance of print is not sentimental. It is the vessel that holds a 2,500-year-old tradition, the medium that allows a dialogue across 216 dialects, and the tangible artifact that grounds a culture against the fleeting currents of global change. The printed word is, in this light, an indispensable act of cultural preservation.