ABSTRACT
The Prologue was written in June 1912 shortly after the meeting of the Conference of the Telugu Pandits held at Madras under the auspices of the Telugu Academy recently formed there. As he states in his Prologue, Gidugu’s objective in writing the Memorandum was to vindicate the dignity of Modern Telugu, the genuine mother tongue of the educated classes and its right to be used as the best medium of instruction and literary expression and to refute the arguments advanced by the Pandits and the Academy against the “Modern Telugu Movement”. Gidugu takes up the cause of language and literature in mobilising people’s movements towards progress. This excerpt echoes his fight against the influence of feudal sections on education and infliction of artificial literary language on students. It articulates his belief that literature in people’s language can awaken the consciousness in them and that the spoken and written languages should have a connection. Gidugu lauds the attempts of Kandukuri Veeresalingam to establish people’s language and lucid language. Stating that true progress is through the conflict between the old and new ideas, Gidugu raises questions of pedagogy related to language in primary and secondary education in India.
