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Journalism of Courage
The Kannada language debate on social media has only escalated over the years. Zoho CEO Sridhar Vembu recently advised people living in Bengaluru to learn Kannada, as not doing so is “disrespectful.” Vembu responded to a comment about a viral post featuring two men wearing T-shirts with “Hindi National Language” printed on them.
The caption on the post said, “Perfect T-shirt for a Bangalore trip.”
Reacting to it, Vembu wrote “I agree with this sentiment. If you make Bengaluru your home, you should learn Kannada and your kids should learn Kannada. Not doing so after living many years in Bengaluru is disrespectful. I often request our employees in Chennai coming from other states to make an effort to learn Tamil after they come here.”
See the post here:
With over a million views, the post divided social media users, birthing a fresh debate. A user wrote, “I have many Kannada friends in Mumbai, living here for decades. No one can speak Marathi. Not one word. Fair?” Another user commented, “Even mere openness and curiosity towards the language and culture is enough, entropy will come down.”
“That’s crazy. Can’t be compare when moving to another country vs within country it is different,” a third user reacted. “You sound immature here. Being Disrespectful for any language, culture is unacceptable but not learning a language is being disrespectful? Logic dies there,” another user commented.
On Kannada Rajyostava celebrations, Chief Minister Siddaramaiah said that the state government would ensure that products manufactured in the state were labelled in the Kannada language. “We will create an atmosphere of Kannada in Karnataka where people learn the language and use it on a daily basis. This will be the honour that we accord to the language,” he said.
