Shops and establishments in several parts of Bengaluru city were vandalised. Sign Boards with any language other than Kannada were pulled down. Property was damaged. A familiar motto of ‘Kannada is caste, Kannada is religion and Kannada is god’ echoed from parts of the city – a sentiment that was at the crux of the fight for preserving Kannada language in the 1980s.
The battle to make Kannada the primary language in the state is a long, ongoing one. The latest protests erupted after the civic body in Bengaluru, Bruhat Bengaluru Mahanagara Palike (BBMP), issued a directive requiring all stores to display sign boards with at least 60 per cent of the content in Kannada. Members of a Kannada organisation, a faction of the Karnataka Rakshana Vedike (KRV), had set Wednesday (Dec 26) as a “deadline” for all establishments to implement the guideline, even though BBMP has allowed time till February 2024.
This is not the first time that such a demand has been raised by pro-Kannada groups. Back in 2017, Chief Minister Siddaramaiah had asked the Centre to redesign Bangalore Metro signboards, eliminating Hindi and offering only Kannada and English. In August 2018, Bengaluru’s civic body raided commercial establishments in a bid to enforce the 60 per cent rule. Eventually, the BJP led state government in 2023 enacted the Kannada Language Comprehensive Development Act, 2022 as per which the upper half portion of sign boards are required to be in Kannada and the lower half can be in any other language.
Language is among the most powerful and emotive mediums of forging both individual and national consciousness. In India, the debate around Hindi being the national language of India has existed for decades, gaining steam at a faster pace since the BJP came to power at the centre in 2014.
Even in 2023, cabinet ministers, different state high courts and even the Supreme Court has made several statements claiming that Hindi is the national language of India. Prime Minister Narendra Modi as well as senior leaders like Amit Shah have repeatedly pushed for use of Hindi.
Just over a week ago, Bihar Chief Minister Nitish Kumar fumed at Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam (DMK) leader T.R. Baalu’s request for a translation of his speech which was delivered in Hindi at the three-hour-long meeting of INDIA bloc leaders. Hindi, he asserted, is the national language of the country and everyone should be able to understand it.
Such frequent official endorsement of Hindi and calls for ‘one language’ one nation have led to fears of linguistic imposition on a nation as immensely diverse as India and home to hundreds of languages, dialects and scripts.
Outlook’s ‘Hindistan’ issue on 9 May 2022 looked at how both the UPA and NDA governments have strived to have the Hindi language adopted officially by the United Nations. However, the attempt has been lacklustre and unimaginative.
Meena Kandasamy, a poet and feminist activist contested the idea that Hindi is spoken by a majority of Indians. Looking at the 2011 language census, 23 states and Union Territories out of 35 did not choose Hindi as their first choice of language. Of these 23, in 16 states, only a very low percentage had chosen Hindi as a second or third choice.
Maharashtra too has been at the centre of language politics with Shiv Sena’s “only Marathi language in Mumbai” agenda now witnessing a downward spiral.
It was in 1965 when several persons immolated themselves in Tamil Nadu as a means of protest against Hindi imposition. Now in 2023, Parliament just passed three new criminal law bills, all of which have Hindi names. In a multilingual country like India, can there truly be a national language?
