Bangalore, July 20: Activists from a prominent pro-Kannada organisation have intensified their ongoing agitation against the alleged imposition of Hindi by blackening Hindi signboards outside Metro stations in the city.
With the passing of a July 6 deadline for the Metro authorities to remove the signboards, the activists of the Kannada Rakshana Vedike (KRV) swooped down on the stations late last night and in the wee hours today to blacken the boards. However, they couldn't access the boards inside the stations as these were yet to open for services.
The KRV had deferred its agitation for some time hoping for a "positive response" to their demand from the Bangalore Metro Rail Corporation Ltd, partly owned by the state government.
At one station, Chikpete in central Bangalore, 10 KRV activists were arrested and booked for vandalism today. At some other stations, such as M.G. Road in the heart of the city, large police contingents kept the activists at bay.
An official said the state government was in touch with the KRV leader T.A. Narayana Gowda and would not let things go out of control.
Veteran pro-Kannada leader Vatal Nagaraj urged the Centre and the state government to understand the aspirations of local people. "I fully endorse the protesters whose only goal is to ensure equal status for Kannada."
Senior KRV leader Dinesh Kumar clarified his group was not against Hindi as such. "We have no issues with Hindi or Hindi-speaking people. The only issue is the manner in which the Centre, especially the NDA government, has been pushing Hindi down our throats."
"The central government has been imposing its one-nation, one-language, one-flag, one-dress code, one-food ideology. We will not tolerate this as their idea is against the very ethos of our great nation and its celebrated diversity," Kumar added.
According to Kumar, "if there has to be a third language on these signboards, it must be Urdu, which is spoken by 14 per cent of people in this state, or Tamil, Marathi, Telugu or Malayalam".
The ongoing agitation got a fillip from a Twitter campaign, #NammaMetroHindiBeda (No Hindi in our metro), that was quickly replicated in Mumbai where a similar drive was launched for removal of Hindi signboards.
In a letter to various groups across the country, KRV president Gowda alleged that the language policy of the Centre was detrimental to the growth of regional tongues. "The support that Hindi gets from the Centre looks like a conspiracy to make non-Hindi languages obsolete," Gowda wrote.
But the protests have unnerved non-Kannadigas in cosmopolitan Bangalore, which is home to a large number of tech companies and MNCs that attract skilled professionals from across the country.
"These language battles have been unnerving me a bit as I keep getting calls from home to check whether I am safe," said a young woman from Delhiwho stays alone in Bangalore and works for a marketing firm.
Ashwin, a techie from Patna, echoed the worry. "My parents... were not worried about me even during the Cauvery agitations (over the river water dispute with Tamil Nadu). But this is against Hindi. I am basically a Hindi speaker, although my mother tongue is Bhojpuri," he said.
