Let Hindus look after the temples: Akkitham

T’PURAM: Poet Akkitham Achuthan Nampoothiri said here on Tuesday that the administration of Hindu temples should be handed over to Hindus.

Akkitham, the winner of this year’s Pandalam Kerala Varma Award, told a meet-the-writer programme organised by the Press Club that the other religions had their centres of worship under their control.

They are being governed by those belonging to the religion. Let the government hand over the administration to an organisation comprising devotees, he said.

Let the president of such an organisation decide on the demands of those like playback singer Yesudas and poet Yusafali Kechery to worship at Guruvayur, he said in reply to a query on the controversy over the denial of permission to Yesudas to worship at Guruvayur.

“You have to hand over the administration of the temples to Hindus first. Then only will the discussion on allowing those like Yesudas to worship at the temples have a relevance. If I had the power, I would have allowed them into the temple,” he said.

On the remarks of poet Balachandran Chullikkad that P.Kunhiraman Nair was a ‘savarna poet’, he said that there were only 1.5 crore Malayalis when E M S Nampoothiripad wrote a book on Kerala. Now the number has increased to around four crore.

I cannot comment on the statements made by each and every one among these four crore, he said.

Akkitham called for setting up an institute of creative writing in the state. The school should be named after Pandalam Kerala Varma as he was the first to start a training programme in creative writing by publishing a poetry magazine, he said.

He said that the journalists writing in Malayalam should concentrate on grammar also. Otherwise, they will ruin the language. Malayalam is not a global language spoken all over the world. It is spoken in a small area.

It has a history of only 500 years. “We have no idea as to whether it will survive another 500 years,” he said.

The poet said that the State Government should take steps to teach Malayalam right from standard I.

He said that only those lines which have a meaning can be considered poetry. A stream of words can make music, but not poetry. Poetry should not be long-winding, it should be short and subtle, he said.

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