C P Brown Telugu Potee is a prestigious contest on Telugu language and literature conducted online annually for class ten students in Telugu States of AP and Telangana. The contest is conducted by Dasubhashitam, a platform for the promotion of Telugu Fine Arts…
The objective of the contest is to promote love for Telugu language and kindle an interest in Telugu literature among students. The competition is unique because schools, not individuals, compete with one other. This is to encourage participation from all students rather than restricting it to a few bright ones.
Another unique feature is, there is only 1 prize to be won in each Telugu state. The total prize money of the contest is ₹100000, equivalent to the prize money of Kendra Sahitya Akademi Puraskar.
Two schools (one from each state) will be adjudged winners, and participating students from each school will get a cash prize of ₹40,000 (distributed among them equally), and their Telugu teacher gets ₹10,000 and felicitated by stalwarts of Telugu literary field in a grand event to be held in Hyderabad in the second week of December.
Why an English man’s name for a Telugu contest?
Charles Philip Brown was an English civil servant of British India. He was posted as the Collector of a Telugu district of Kadapa. Just as is the case now, civil servants needed to learn the local language. C P Brown got so enamoured by Telugu that he soon achieved mastery in it and wrote several books in Telugu, of which the most prominent is the first English – Telugu dictionary.
His more significant contribution for which he is deified by Telugu people is the preservation and restoration of Telugu literary heritage. Without his efforts, most ancient Telugu literature would have been lost in the folds of time. By the way, he did this all this preservation work with his own money. It wasn’t British India’s project.
Today, when spoken Telugu is filled with English vocabulary, and Telugu people like to talk in English, we thought an Englishman who has devoted his life for Telugu language, is the right icon for our efforts. Hence the name for the contest.
An icon of Telugu origin, S P Balasubramanyam and several other famous personalities from Telugu literary and cinema fields have endorsed the idea and gave their support to the contest. This year’s contest will be held Online on Nov 10, 2019. Students can send the message potee2019 on WhatsApp (not SMS) to 9952029498 to get the registration link. or visit www.dasubhashitam.com
