Bengaluru: In the wake of protests against Hindi imposition in government offices in the state, Kannada scholars and academics are pushing for larger, collective action to protect non-Hindi languages.
On Saturday, members of Karnataka Rakshana Vedike (KRV) staged a statewide protest demanding the notification of all 22 languages in Eighth Schedule as languages of administration.
The protest came after days of intense social media debates amid the commemoration of Hindi Diwas. Employees of central government departments have been conducting week-long cultural activities as part of a Hindi Saptah.
The KRV is pushing for a bilingual formula in primary and secondary education. Its state president T A Narayana Gowda told DH that Hindi should not be used in sectors like banking and asserted that recruitment tests for central government jobs in Karnataka should be conducted in Kannada and English, rather than Hindi and English.
However, Kannada scholars and academics chose to see the issue beyond the Kannada-Hindi binary.
S R Vijayashankar, critic and writer, termed Hindi imposition a “cultural burden” on non-Hindi languages, which he called national languages or desha bhashas. “But Kannada’s fight against Hindi imposition must not dilute the fight of desha bhashas against the influence of English,” he said.
Vijayashankar pointed to Karnataka’s history of treating all languages harmoniously. “Several women in the post-independence era were employed due to opportunities in teaching Hindi. However, the central government imposing Hindi on us is unacceptable,” he said.
Hindi imposition not only weakens Kannada’s existence, but also directly or indirectly endorses English as the language of opportunities, he said. Prof Purushottama Bilimale, Chairman, Kannada Development Authority, called for a collective struggle involving all languages which are under the threat of Hindi imposition.
Published 14 September 2024, 23:11 IST