Imphal, Aug 06: Asserting that the present debate over which Meitei Mayek should be followed, the 27 letter script or the 36 letter script, is detrimental to the efforts to revive the indigenous script and amounts to paving the way for the Bengali script to stage a come back, the proscribed KYKL today said that it has banned all debates over this issue till August 31, 2016.In a statement, general secretary of the outfit N Oken today said that the State Government finally buckled to the pressure mounted by MEELAL last year to introduce Meitei Mayek in Class I and II with the understanding that it would be introduced in the upper classes in phases.

However the arguments posed by the proponents of the 36 letter script, Meitei Yelhou Mayek Inat Sandokpa Lup, has threatened to derail the process of introducing the indigenous script of the people, said KYKL and added that such arguments and debates at this juncture will prove counter productive.

Admitting that changes, alterations and improvisation in languages and scripts are needed, KYKL said that there is no language or script which cannot be improved.

There is a move to improvise the spellings in English and French to sync with the pronunciation, said KYKL and added that process is also underway to simplify the Chinese language.

Efforts are also on to drop the unnecessary letters of Sanskrit used in Bengali script, said the statement and added that even in Hindi some alphabets were changed.

However the case with Meitei Mayek is a bit different at this juncture, said KYKL and added that the changes, the debates and improvisations can be discussed when the script is fully in use.

Needless debates and arguments at this moment will only amount to paving the way back for Bengali script, it maintained.

Hence the KYKL has decided to ban all debates on Meitei Mayek till August 31, 2016.By then the students studying in Class II would be in Class XII and it will then be right to initiate any debates or discussions.

No meetings to debate over Meitei Mayek will be allowed henceforth, said KYKL and added that no statements should be given to newspapers over the issue.

No pamphlets will also be allowed to be used.

Anyone found violating this will be awarded the capital punishment, warned the outfit.

No newspapers should entertain any news items on the debates over Meitei Mayek without verifying the identity of the people issuing the statement as well as their designations within the organisation which they represent.

In case any newspaper publishes news items which are issued by people using fictitious names then the "officials" concerned of the newspapers will be awarded the death sentence, on charge of complicity said KYKL.

On using Meitei Mayek on sign boards, the statement decreed that all shops and institutes should adorn their sign boards with Meitei Mayek which should be at least twice the size of the words written in English.

The words in Meitei Mayek should also be placed on top.

The change should be effected by September 15, said the outfit.

All newspapers published in Manipuri should carry the name of the paper in Meitei Mayek and it should be at least twice the size of the words written in English.

The change should be effected by September 15.KYKL said that there are laws in other countries which enforce such strictures.

In Russia it is mandatory for all sign boards to be written prominently in Russian.

Even in Quebec, which is a province of Canada where the official language is English, all sign boards should be written in French and not in any other language.

The decree in Quebec was challenged before the Human Rights Commission of UNO at Geneva, said the statement and added that though the UN ruled that the rule infringes upon the right of the people, Quebec ruled that the rulings of the UNO cannot be applied there.

The people of Manipur may think that awarding the death sentence on anyone found paving the way for Bengali script to return is harsh, said KYKL.

However the outfit recalled how president of the Bodo Sahitya Sabha was killed over the usage of script.

Since the Bodos do not have their own indigenous script they are now using the Hindi script.

However there is a strong movement to replace Hindi with the Roman script, said KYKL.

The president of Bodo Sahitya Parishad was killed because of his stiff resistance to switch to the Roman script.

If the Bodos can kill a learned man over the usage of a script which is not theirs then there should be no hesitation in adopting the same method when it comes to our own indigenous script, reasoned KYKL.

(Tomorrow : A brief history of the debates over Meitei Mayek).

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