The Karnataka Chief Minister Basavaraj Bommai on Wednesday informed the state cabinet that the government would ‘present a law to make Kannada legally mandatory’ in the House. Bommai informed that the move to make Kannada mandatory in the House comes as a part of the government’s effort to ‘increase the use of Kannada’.
Bommai informed the parliament that the BJP government in the state is committed to develop Kannada. “Our party and government will never worry about land, water and language apart from politics,” Bommai added.
Notably, 14 September also marks Hindi Diwas in India. BJP has often been accused of ‘Hindification’ or the attempt to impose the Hindi language on the citizen on India.
The imposition of Hindi has taken up news headlines in Karnataka on Hindi Diwas as JDS leader and former chief minsiter HD Kumaraswamy wrote a letter to Karnataka Chief Minister Basavaraj Bommai on Monday and urging his government not to celebrate ‘Hindi Diwas’ by utilising the taxpayers’ money.
On Wednesday, Bommai proposed a law that would make Kannada mandatory in the House. Pro-Karnataka organisations last year had protested vigorously on social media to Hindi Diwas calling it “imposition of Hindi”.
The controversy comes amid renewed debate over Hindi ‘imposition’ and whether it should be accepted as a common unifying language in the country. Earlier, Kumaraswamy had opposed the Hindi Diwas celebrations, stating that it holds no meaning for those whose mother tongue is not Hindi, and demanded it be scrapped.
Earlier this year, there were two major controversies over Hindi language, the first being Twitter spat between Ajay Devgn and Kiccha Sudeep and secondly, Amit Shah’s statement that Hindi should be accepted as an alternative to English.
According to the latest census conducted in 2011, there are over 43 million native Kannada speakers of the classical Dravidian language. Based on the recommendations of the Committee of Linguistic Experts, appointed by the ministry of culture, the government of India designated Kannada a classical language of India.
Meanwhile, Hindi remains the third most spoken language in the world with around 61.5 crore speakers. Whether Hindi is India’s national language is a debate that has come up over and over again. It is to be noted that when the Constituent Assembly met for the first time in December 1946, it was decided after much debate and discussion that the proceedings of the House would be conducted in Hindustani and English.
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