Responses

1. Bijesh says:
   

   November 24th, 2004 at 4:28 pm (#)

   100% agree with you.

2. Narayan says:
   

   November 24th, 2004 at 4:56 pm (#)

   “Putting blame on some­one else to hide your inher­ent faults” has always been the name of the game for the kan­nada film indus­try. The eas­i­est way to catch atten­tion is to bring “lan­guage” into the equa­tion. The sit­u­a­tion will never improve as long as Dr.Raj’s fam­ily and his cronies are around.

3. chava says:
   

   November 24th, 2004 at 5:58 pm (#)

   Only one way. 

   fast untill death, until ban is lifted :-)

   who will tie the bell?

4. Ravi says:
   

   November 24th, 2004 at 9:58 pm (#)

   100% agree, Anita! I can barely con­ceal my dis­gust. And I’m not even in Ban­ga­lore! I think these peo­ple can’t think beyond their runny noses…the fall­out of this on the Kan­nada film indus­try will be even worse! :)

5. Mahesh says:
   

   November 24th, 2004 at 10:30 pm (#)

   Well This has been peren­nial issue with almost all regional lan­guages (except Telugu/Tamil/Malayalam/Bengali) ..the direc­tors in Marathi were more con­cerned about get­ting Monies from State Govt then giv­ing a really good movie with strong sto­ry­line and bril­liant per­for­mances. result Marathi Movies lost audi­ence in last decade. There has been good exper­i­ments lately and peo­ple have started to sup­port good movies. the only solu­tion is mak­ing com­peta­tive prod­uct rather than whin­ing about competition .

   Pass­ing Shot: the for­mulized rou­tine Hindi Movies def­i­nitely need to be shown no mercy .But its upto peo­ple to pick the grain and throw the chaff…

6. lavannya says:
   

   November 25th, 2004 at 8:47 am (#)

   yes we are in a demo­c­ra­tic coun­try, where any­one can choose to live the way the want to live. Only in South India have i been made to real­ize that Hindi is a for­eign language…yes it would never hap­pen in Mum­bai or Any­where else in the North part of the coun­try. I cant ever imag­ine some­one attempt­ing this in Gujarat coz the Gujarati cin­ema is not doing well. Its silly. Lan­guage and cul­ture also form a part of the Darwin’s the­ory, noth­ing can be pre­served forcibly. It loses its charm. Kan­nada has. And in a place like ban­ga­lore where hardly a 40% of the pop­u­la­tion can read and under­stand kan­nada, how fair is it to Force­Feed the lan­guage? It wont work.

7. Narayan says:
   

   November 25th, 2004 at 2:21 pm (#)

   Lavan­nya,

   You are also con­fus­ing the mat­ter. This is not a lan­guage issue. Nobody is force­feed­ing kan­nada, the morons want you to see their awful movies.

   By the way alan­guage never loses its charm. Regard­ing “Only in South India have i been made to real­ize that Hindi is a for­eign language…” 

   Well the prob­lem may be on your side… “be a roman in rome”

8. :::LL::: says:
   

   November 25th, 2004 at 2:44 pm (#)

   This is down­right obnox­ious… How can some­body else choose what you have to see… I can only see the piracy busi­ness boom­ing if this pre­pos­ter­ous step is not revoked… Totally agree with you Anita!

9. Arun says:
   

   November 25th, 2004 at 3:30 pm (#)

   “the last oppor­tu­nity to save the language”

   Inter­est­ing. I havent read the arti­cle on ToI but I guess that is as shal­low as any other ToI stuff.

   To get a lit­tle deeper into the drama, the real issue here has noth­ing to do with the lan­guage, sav­ing it or glo­ri­fy­ing it or whatsoever. 

   Just a bunch of stu­pid peo­ple who, unfor­tu­nately have gath­ered some muscle(like polit­i­cal par­ties) are work­ing just to keep their self-interests. Lan­guage is just a mis­used tool(like it hap­pens with reli­gion). I can tell with­out doubts that for many(not all) of the peo­ple involved, lan­guage is the last thing that matters. 

   Kan­nada film and tv indus­try has a long his­tory of polit­i­cal con­trol and mus­cle flex­ing of this kind which we would rather not get into here. Sadly the same prob­lem is known to have killed quite a few real enter­pris­ing tal­ents in the industry…

10. heylady says:
    

    November 25th, 2004 at 5:15 pm (#)

    hi my first time on your blog and totally agree with you,one should have the free­dom to decide for one­self and not hav­ing some­one else’s deci­sions being forced down ur throat:)) check out my blog

11. aqua says:
    

    November 26th, 2004 at 12:27 pm (#)

    There a quote by Kan­nada actor Ambar­ish in TOI today where he says that “out­side peo­ple who have moved to Ban­ga­lore for a liveli­hood should encour­age kan­nada and watch kan­nada movies” or some­thing sim­i­lar. this is a silly state­ment. I doubt if ppl will watch kan­nada movies if hindi movies are not released. these days i watch vcds of the lat­est hindi movies at home,…and i’m sure the rest of ban­ga­lore does the same. is this pro­mot­ing kan­nada or the pirated vcd industry???

12. Sudarshan says:
    

    November 26th, 2004 at 1:50 pm (#)

    There’s more to this issue than what you hear or read about it. The rea­son for this ban has many com­mer­cial fac­tors which nobody wants to dis­cus openly.

    1.Many Kan­nada movies which are run­ning suc­cess­fully in prime the­atres are often booted out to make way for a new Sharukh or a Cheer­an­jevi star­rer. This is prov­ing to be too costly for the local pro­duc­ers. The con­tention of the Kan­nada pro­duc­ers is that they can­not match the mus­cle or the money power of a Yash Chopra or a Rama Naidu to make the the­atre own­ers stick on to Kan­nada one. 

    2. There are some com­mer­cial zones in the city like Majes­tic, Shiv­a­ji­na­gar, Market,where the mobil­ity of peo­ple is more and hence the view­er­ship is more. Here the exhibitors are ask­ing for more the­atres for non kan­nada movies which is not agree­able for the local film industry.

    3.In all other non kan­nada states only 2 prints of a kan­nada movie is allowed whereas in Kar­nataka 16 prints were allowed and now brought down to 6 prints…arent the peo­ple of Kar­nataka con­sid­er­ate enough? 

    4. If you can­not encour­age Kan­nada in Kar­nataka will you encour­age this lan­guage in Maha­rash­tra or in Bihar? 

    5. Yeah, as most of you say you can­not force­feed a lan­guage and make it lose its charm, agreed…but the exhibitors were always boot­ing out good kan­nada movies after one week of show and thus pre­vented poten­tial view­er­ship. The first week (most of the times) is for front benches and by the time the fam­ily crowd stepped into the the­atre the movies were changed.…what do you expect the pro­ducer to do? Retire and take up a new profession? 

    6. Piracy will eat off the charm of a new movie..true but you think it will harm the movie com­mer­cially?? I dont think any of the Eng­lish movies would have made busi­ness if this were to be true…

    7. The rule of nature: Sur­vive first and excel later…this needs to be imple­mented on all the dying film indus­try be it Marathi or Odiya or Bihari or any other lan­guage for that matter. 

    8. If you think its unde­mo­c­ra­tic to have such rules..why do we need reser­va­tion?? To make all sec­tions of the soci­ety equal in socio — eco­nomic con­di­tions?? You might accept the same for this debate as well..

    I know most of you will brand me as a fanatic but I per­son­ally know many in the indus­try who are strug­gling because of the pol­i­tics played here. And all these lead­ers or heroes who have taken up the mat­ter, they are no saints and are only doing it for their own mileage. By look­ing at these front run­ners dont con­clude that this agi­ta­tion is polit­i­cally motivated..there are hun­dreds of them stand­ing in the shad­ows, suf­fer­ing. This agi­ta­tion is for their survival.…

13. lavannya says:
    

    November 26th, 2004 at 2:34 pm (#)

    you surely are a south indian narayanan who doenst like hindi langauge!!

    if its not about pro­pogat­ing kan­nada as a lan­guage dearie..then why are all the bul­letin and adver­tis­ing boards in eng­lish on the main roads defa ced?????

14. lavannya says:
    

    November 26th, 2004 at 2:39 pm (#)

    i appre­ci­ate your objec­tive out­look sudar­shan… i actu­ally spent all this time read­ing your argue­ment. But i tell you… reser­va­tion, though i com­pletely dont agree with it, has a lot to do with pol­i­tics and equal­ity in the social con­text. Movies are pri­mar­ily about enter­tain­ment. You cant bann that!! Neways i hope you are right and things hap­pen only for the good. :)

15. doesnt matter says:
    

    November 26th, 2004 at 3:20 pm (#)

    I dont understand.…if a Kan­nada movie is ‘good’ (or should I say doing good..in the box office), which the­ater will want to chuck it for a Hindi movie? Do Hindi movie tick­ets cost more? 

    It’s not about reser­va­tion or lan­guage. It is lack of qual­ity in a prod­uct (Kan­nada movies) and the cus­tomer not want­ing to buy the prod­uct anymore. 

    But in true pseudo-patriotic style, every­one seems to be sud­denly inter­ested in forc­ing Kan­nada movies down someone’s throat rather than analysing how to make bet­ter movies. 

    There may be peo­ple suf­fer­ing in the shad­ows (I can give u lot of peo­ple who fall under that category)…but the fail­ure on the part of the film indus­try to act and think real­is­ti­cally is an insult to any think­ing man’s intel­li­gence. Dhar­nas and protests can never be a solu­tion and that is what WE (mean­ing, anti-protesters, not anti-kannada) peo­ple are try­ing to say…

16. Narayan says:
    

    November 26th, 2004 at 3:34 pm (#)

    Lavan­nya

    Again i repeat this has noth­ing to do with lan­guage. Well if your brain is as smart as your spelling i cant help it.

    “you surely are a south indian narayanan who doenst like hindi langauge”

    who said any­thing about not lik­ing hindi

    and i am a south indian narayanan and am proud of it.

    “if its not about pro­pogat­ing kan­nada as a lan­guage dearie..then why are all the bul­letin and adver­tis­ing boards in eng­lish on the main roads defa ced?????”

    hmm.. that was done by the kan­nada chalu­vali peo­ple and nobody approves of it and them anyway.

17. Sudarshan says:
    

    November 26th, 2004 at 6:01 pm (#)

    Lavan­nya, thanks.. 

    Reser­va­tion is more of a sys­tem than caste, be it social or eco­nom­i­cal, it still is a sys­tem and is imple­mented to bring parity.

    This agi­ta­tion is not for a ban. This is for a bar­gain and both par­ties know that a com­pro­mise will be reached. The exhibitors are say­ing 16 prints and imme­di­ate release whereas the Kan­nada pro­duc­ers are say­ing 6 prints and 6 weeks mora­to­rium. These are the two extreme ends of the deal and def­i­nitely a com­pro­mise will soon be reached which is good for the cos­mopoli­tan out­look of Ban­ga­lore as well as the dying Kan­nada film industry. 

    Doesn’t mat­ter, I hope this does matter:

    1. Hindi movie tick­ets does cost more.

    2. How many Kan­nada movies have you seen to vehe­mently say that they are not good? 

    3. Do you think that the agi­ta­tors are not aware that they cant force you into Kan­nada film play­ing the­atres? Not all are stu­pid as you think. You don’t seem to under­stand the grav­ity of the prob­lem. Here, nobody’s under a false impres­sion of mak­ing money by defer­ment. They are pre­vent­ing a prob­lem that’s all.

    4. Any agi­ta­tion needs a face or a leader….and unless you do it in pub­lic will it have any impact? Don’t tell me you want the pro­duc­ers to observe satya­graha at their res­i­dence! The prob­lem is nobody’s think­ing real­is­ti­cally how to pre­vent the indus­try from dying. Its very easy to make all sorts of remarks from afar. If it hap­pens in your work­ing envi­ron­ment you would know. The right to live is everybody’s birth right and every­body will fight for their sur­vival, and what­ever these peo­ple are doing is no better. 

    5. I am nei­ther com­pli­ment­ing these guys for turn­ing vio­lent nor these jok­ers for mak­ing stu­pid com­ments on media. This debate was nec­es­sary but the way they are con­duct­ing it wasn’t….

    And finally, Anita, I know its not the best way to make an entry into your blog by stir­ring up all sorts of debates

18. Sudarshan says:
    

    November 26th, 2004 at 6:02 pm (#)

    Any­ways nice blog!

19. Muthiah says:
    

    November 26th, 2004 at 6:23 pm (#)

    Hi Anita,

    I agree that ppl have to be more sen­si­ble and think ratio­nally.. There are nearly 100 the­aters in blore. 

    Do they pro­duce 100 movies or atleast 25 movies for the­aters to show ?

    If today it is cin­ema tomor­row it can be ur cable guy say­ing that I have Kanada chan­nel and u must watch that only in prime time…

    Oh God this not the way u want human to live..

    Solu­tion to save the film indus­try can be 

    1)To pro­duce qual­ity movies

    2)Take a res­o­lu­tion that two shows in day will be for kanada movies and other two shows will be for the non kanada movies.

    3)Make sure that Kanada movies are not sold hot cakes in VCD. 

    I hope ppl come with some sen­si­ble solu­tion than protest­ing and mak­ing huge noise…

    Every­one have a say bcos we live in demo­c­ra­tic coun­try but that free­dom can’t affect other’s freedom…

    Keep post­ing articles…

    muthiah

20. jp says:
    

    November 26th, 2004 at 11:48 pm (#)

    I am really not sure where I stand here, but I just want to jump in quick and say that the issue is really not about Hindi being branded for­eign. These guys have got prob­lems with Tamil and tel­ugu movies too! The prob­lem is an unfor­tu­nate off­shoot of the cos­mopoli­tan nature of Bangalore. 

    There are just not enough Kan­nada speak­ing peo­ple out there in Ban­ga­lore to sus­tain a film indus­try. I know from my stint at REC Nag­pur that of the eight seats for Kar­nataka only two were Kan­nadi­gas, the rest were tami­lains, tel­ugu speak­ing or malay­alis but we were all Bangaloreans! 

    I guess this is the fact that made the Kan­nada Chalu­vali activists pick up their cud­gels and ask for equal rep­re­sen­ta­tion on sign boards, pretty sim­i­lar to what the Shiv Sena started in Mum­bai in the 70s and 80s only not so rabid. So there, Mum­bai is not such a holy cow either.

    Almost half the peo­ple in Ban­ga­lore would opt to go watch a Tamil, Tel­ugu, Hindi or Eng­lish movie any day. I think the pro­duc­ers are fight­ing a los­ing bat­tle here. 

    Per­haps they would be bet­ter off con­cen­trat­ing on ter­ri­to­ries like the North Kar­nataka region than try­ing to cor­ner a mar­ket that is only shrinking.

    btw, Anita, do you need help upgrad­ing your blog? I can’t help imag­ine the amount of com­ment spam you must be hav­ing to tackle ;-)

21. prabz says:
    

    November 27th, 2004 at 12:11 pm (#)

    Huh.. Lots of debate :).. I dont know the kan­nada lan­guage.. Though, I feel they have the right to pro­tect their lan­guage.. But this is not the way they have to choose! Every­one will love their mother tongue.. so there is not point in brand­ing! Why dont all indi­ans come together with­out more divi­sions.. it all ends up with who is bet­ter!! This will never end!!

22. Sudarshan says:
    

    November 27th, 2004 at 1:29 pm (#)

    To emu­late tele­vi­sion might be the best way to solve the prob­lem here, the rea­son for the suc­cess of cable tv:

    “Every lan­guage has a ded­i­cated chan­nel” — Sim­i­larly if you have ded­i­cated the­atres for each lan­guage in each com­mer­cial area, the prob­lem can be solved.….but the exhibitors are against such rules!

23. Kishore says:
    

    November 27th, 2004 at 1:31 pm (#)

    What is hap­pen­ing is crap !!!

    I have only one thing to say to the kan­nada film indus­try — Make good movies and peo­ple will watch and yeah stop all this nonsense …

24. vasu says:
    

    December 1st, 2004 at 8:17 pm (#)

    Hi,

    glad to see your blog being updated. Thought I was late for this debate. Any­ways, I couldnt resist myself. Took me 20 mins to write this.. :).

    »The cur­rent sta­tus quo over the screen­ing of Hindi films is not only affect­ing the dis­trib­u­tors, it is also affect­ing »reg­u­lar cine-goers who I am sure are miss­ing out on their daily dose of entertainment. 

    Yes.. Rich Dis­trib­uters who rotate black money and the upper class cinie goers who are most affected. But if it is a free movie zone, the poor in the indus­try are most affected. I am tempted to ask, whats wrong ???

    »One of the spokesper­son said that this is “the last oppor­tu­nity to save the lan­guage (Kan­nada)” (TOI, Nov 24). Last »oppor­tu­nity? That sounds a lit­tle too much, really. I under­stand people’s con­cern regard­ing their lan­guage, but surely »there is a bet­ter way to ensure this than to tar­get another lan­guage? That too, an Indian one, the last time I checked.

    I think his (spokesman’s) obser­va­tion is correct.…But no one lan­guage is tar­geted. It is to pro­tect the indus­try from clos­ing down. I think their strug­gle is legit­i­mate and wait­ing for a few weeks isnt going to cause great grievance.

    »I thought enter­tain­ment is enter­tain­ment, notwith­stand­ing the lan­guage. Shouldn’t I as a viewer have the right to decide »what movie I want to watch and in what lan­guage? Why should a group of activists decide for me? This takes away my free­dom »to watch what I want, when I want. 

    You have the right to decide what you want, when you want. but so does the other movie goers who want to watch a kan­nada movie but are blocked by the­aters tak­ing it off pre­ma­turely. I guess it is a fight between the the­ater own­ers and kan­nada movie business.

    »If I want to enjoy a Hindi movie, I shouldn’t have to wait for 7 weeks just because some­one else thinks that Kan­nada is »suf­fer­ing. I am all for preser­va­tion of cul­ture and lan­guage, but this is surely not the way to prop­a­gat­ing a culture!

    It is one of the ways and in my opin­ion this is not enough. Kan­nada must be vigourously pro­moted and used in daily life, lest kan­nada becomes like manipuri or mizo ??? (using eng­lish as its script).

    »And isn’t Hindi is an Indian lan­guage? Why is it being made out to be some for­eign language!

    It is. As much (and not more) like kan­nada, tamil, tel­ugu, marathi. There is noth­ing wrong in giv­ing extra patron­age to kanadda, espe­cially when it requires it. We (as a nation) can­not afford kanadda to be lost for­ever and thus eras­ing its lin­guis­tic and his­toric tra­di­tions to naught. This is a small price to pay. that is all.

    »From a 3 week mora­to­rium, the group is now demand­ing a 7-week mora­to­rium. Unfor­tu­nately, not only will audi­ences miss out »on the lat­est movies, they will most prob­a­bly watch them on pirated CDs. 

    You are right. But if some­one choses to watch pirated cds. it is his/her deci­sion. so who is los­ing ? Dawood and barath shah are los­ing a few crores. Thats ok.

    »I can’t imag­ine some­thing like this hap­pen­ing in Mum­bai. It’s like peo­ple say­ing only Marathi movies can be released in »Mum­bai. All oth­ers can fol­low. Weeks later!

    Unfor­tu­nately north Indi­ans have flooded mum­bai to such an extent that they are polit­i­cal force by them­selves. Marathi lan­guage has lost over its ground to hindi movies.

    »I really think that seri­ous mea­sures should be taken to pro­mote Kan­nada in what­ever way pos­si­ble – have more cul­ture »events, hold plays, street fes­ti­vals. But tar­get­ing Hindi is only going to make mat­ters worse. And I can’t see it solv­ing »the pur­pose either. 

    plays are very much part of the scene. but major­ity are movie goers in india. you cant neglect that and say, have street plays.

    »Are peo­ple, who don’t go for Kan­nada movies, going to rush to watch them because there is noth­ing else avail­able? I »seri­ously doubt it.

    I doubt it too. But one thing is clear. If this sit­u­a­tion hap­pens, a whole new gen­er­a­tion would grow up in ban­ga­lore, with­out know­ing any kanadda. Thats sad isnt it ?

    I com­pletely endorse Sudarshan’s view and go one step fur­ther. There needs a seri­ous re-vitalisation of kanadda lan­guage. We can­not have more instances of “lan­guages lost”. 

    »>Just a bunch of stu­pid peo­ple who, unfor­tu­nately have gath­ered some muscle(like polit­i­cal par­ties) are work­ing just to »keep their self-interests. Lan­guage is just a mis­used tool(like it hap­pens with reli­gion). I can tell with­out doubts that »for many(not all) of the peo­ple involved, lan­guage is the last thing that matters. 

    Lan­guage is iden­tity, lan­guage is live­ly­hood, lan­guage is pros­per­ity and lan­guage is hon­our. If you donot under­stand this wel­come to real­ity. Years back it was proven con­vinc­ingly in the tamil resur­gance move­ment against impo­si­tion of hindi. Today you have thou­sands of poets, lyri­cists, writ­ers, pub­li­ca­tions, thinkers, com­mon­ers who feel proud of their cul­ture and her­itage and they claim their right­ful place in tamil soci­ety. Hindi would have made life bol­ly­wood cen­tric and dis­nfran­chised a huge sec­tion of population. 

    Infact I am thrilled that kan­nada movie indus­try is wak­ing up to the per­ils of unbrid­dled acco­mo­da­tion. Oth­ers need to acco­mo­date, learn kan­nda and not the other way around. Infact there should be stricter rule of 2 prints and par­ity restored among movies of other languages.

    »I dont understand.…if a Kan­nada movie is ‘good’ (or should I say doing good..in the box office), which the­ater will want »to chuck it for a Hindi movie? Do Hindi movie tick­ets cost more? 

    def­i­nitely. Hindi tick­ets go upwards of 100 rs. and 200 rs. Even if peo­ple want to watch a malashree movie, you cant do that in sym­phony or rex. This sort of non-sense is not tol­er­ated in chen­nai, because the the­atre own­ers believe in pro­mot­ing tamil movies. There are lot of junk that gets pro­duced in tamil too. But the audi­ence decides when given an oppor­tu­nity. Sudar­shan was bang on tar­get when he said it is a lobby. The only way to break that lobby is to break the back­bone — the theatres.

    »>But in true pseudo-patriotic style, every­one seems to be sud­denly inter­ested in forc­ing Kan­nada movies down someone’s »throat rather than analysing how to make bet­ter movies. 

    A the­atre is a pub­lic sphere, not your pri­vate space. If you donot like to watch kan­nda movies.. dont watch. If you want to watch other movies, either wait patiently or go to the vcd route as many have already done so. Noth­ing wrong. no one I know of has died of not hav­ing watched a hindi movie, first day-first show.

    »»>I am really not sure where I stand here, but I just want to jump in quick and say that the issue is really not about »»>Hindi being branded for­eign. These guys have got prob­lems with Tamil and tel­ugu movies too!

    You are right. The issue isnt. Donot mis­take me, when i say for many of us. Hindi was alien, chapathi/puri was a sun­day evening treat (and not sta­ple food. Idli is). and unless ben­e­fi­cial to me, I would not learn. Lan­gauage is iden­tity and who­ever tries to erase the iden­tity of other has had to bite the dust.

    Now what is wrong with that ? So many north indi­ans have lived in bangalore/mumbai for years togather. how many of them would 

    know how to speak in kannda/marathi ? or even under­stand. This includes me too ? I am made too com­fort­able in my own lan­guage (though I con­ciously try to stick to kan­nda). Slowly the camel claims the whole tent. These folks demand other to adjust to them. This sort of non-sense does not hap­pen in tamil­nadu. Maybe the north Indi­ans out there (sikhs, guj­jarathis, mar­waris) were from com­mon stock. work­ing peo­ple who trade, inter­ract and live with the peo­ple of the land unlike the jet­set­ting IT crowd. For them learn­ing a new lan­guage (tamil) means greater oppor­tu­in­ity to do busi­ness and they gladly did. They are proud Sikhs, gujarathis and mar­waris. That is what is India. Pun­jab, Sindh, Gujarata, Maratha… and not just hindi, hindi and hindi. 

    None of the tamil crowd is protest­ing. It is only the hindi speak­ing peo­ple who have a prob­lem. One must ask why none of the tamil indus­try peo­ple are protest­ing ? Maybe they are in prin­ci­ple agree­ing with the “Protect-your-language” theory.

    If hindi is the national lan­guage in India mainly because Delhi is the cap­i­tal and most of north India speaks hindi. They have erased other dialects like hin­dusthani, urdu, bho­jpuri totally mak­ing them branches of hindi. The same has hap­pend to gujarati, mar­wari and marathi. Should it hap­pen to kan­nada also ? Is it good for our coun­try that every­one speaks one lan­guage and that lan­guage is hindi ? The answer is an emphatic no. 

    India is multi-lingual and we should do more to pro­tect pre­serve this cul­ture. Part of it is encour­ag­ing cin­ema in all languages.

    Refugees from iran per­se­cuted by turks came to India dur­ing medieval times. The local king sent an emis­sary to inquire about these peo­ple and find out what they wanted. The emis­sary came back with a bowl of milk, some sugar and a mes­sage. The mes­sage was sim­ple. We will live in your land like sugar in milk. Hav­ing my own iden­tity, sweat­en­ing the milk. These refugees were par­sis and today no one calls them ira­ni­ans. They are well accepted in India because, they decided to inte­grate. If I live in naga­land, the onus is on me to learn the local lan­guage and not the other way around. I cant say, I wont take any effort and the world has to adjust with me. That smacks of arrogance.

    We need to pro­tect our lin­guis­tic her­itage and not per­mit plain unbridilled com­pe­ti­tion. Free com­pe­ti­tion destroys a lot of lives. Dar­win or not, I donot want this in my part of the world. I dont want hun­dreds of poor folks thrust into poverty because a few IT czars want to watch “Humara dil aapke papa ke paas hai”.

    Nobody I know of, has died of hav­ing to wait 3 weeks for this high qual­ity movie.

    vasu

25. jaggi says:
    

    December 2nd, 2004 at 2:03 pm (#)

    hai anitha

    what u peo­ple r say­ing ir wrong

    u should make sure to respect the place where ur and being in kar­nataka u need to sup­port kannada

    firstly u need to learn kannada(if u dont know) then sup­port kannada

    and u need to even edu­cate peo­ple about kan­nada and karnataka

    THIS SHOULD B THE RULE

    “BE A KANNADIGA IN KARNATAKA”

    jaggi

26. Paddy says:
    

    December 4th, 2004 at 11:52 pm (#)

    One pos­i­tive fall­out of all this is that “out­siders” now know the exis­tence of a lan­guage called Kan­nada. They spell it “Kan­nada” and not “Kan­nad”. Hurray! 

    Another pos­i­tive point is that the tar­get of the whole agi­ta­tion are not out­siders, but their atti­tudes towards Kan­nada. How­ever, the sit­u­a­tion could degen­er­ate with inno­cent peo­ple end­ing up as tar­gets. We all have a task at hand to pre­vent that from hap­pen­ing: live and let live. Don’t try to kill a culture/langauge by play­ing the number’s game.

27. Sudhakar Prabhu says:
    

    December 29th, 2004 at 2:26 am (#)

    Only in South India have i been made to real­ize that Hindi is a for­eign language…

    » I am puz­zled at this com­ment. A very nar­row think­ing indeed. I am basi­cally from north and amazed that peo­ple here atleast try to speak in Hindi. Most of us from north can­not even speak a few words in kan­nada even after leav­ing here for years.

    Please do not divide and instead look from the pos­i­tive angle. Apart from local lan­guages, most of them do speak Eng­lish and hence you shouldn’t have any com­mu­ni­ca­tion issues.

    Just my 2 cents…

28. kiran kumar chava says:
    

    April 14th, 2005 at 6:01 pm (#)

    every­thing is cool na now.

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    May 4th, 2005 at 12:28 pm (#)

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30. Prashant JS says:
    

    June 5th, 2005 at 2:15 pm (#)

    Mr.All Non Kan­nada peo­ple who posted their coments on this issue (spe­cially Lavnya and her freinds)

    The bigest mis­takes we kan­nada peo­ple are doing that we only ban­ning your HINDI and other movies ( Hindi is not my lan­guage since you dont have any respect about our lan­guage) but should ban peo­ples like you in enter­ing Kan­nada land,

    How much dare you have in giv­ing such com­ments about Kan­nada film ( although it is about films but since ‘Kan­nada’ word is their it’s about kan­nada lan­guage it’s self)

    We are not forc­ing you to see Kan­nada movies, Aree who likes to see onle slamakhan’s body and cabre dance of hiroens we will cer­tainly not expect to see kan­nada movies of comapri­tively well made,

    My com­ments regard­ing this came late because I have seen it late

    expect­ing your comments

    Prashant JS

31. RAJESH K V says:
    

    August 11th, 2005 at 11:30 am (#)

    You all non-kannadigas,
    Please don’t watch Kan­nada movies,don’t speak Kan­nada
    and don’t to any­thing related to Kannada.We will never force you to do that.
    But, before that leave Kar­nataka. Please first leave Kar­nataka. We want to see at least 90% Kan­nadi­gas employed in IT-NON IT indus­tries. We want to see Kan­nadi­gas everywhere.We want Kan­nada everywhere.Please don’t take pains to speak Kan­nada. Please, you are not doing any favours for Kan­nadi­gas by stay­ing here. First leave Ban­ga­lore at the ear­li­est. You are all buy­ing prop­er­ties, lands of Kan­nadi­gas. There­fore I appeal you to first leave Ban­ga­lore. Don’t think that by learn­ing Kan­nada you are free to stay in Kar­nataka. You speak kan­nada or not, that makes no dif­fer­ence for us. We want 90% Kan­nadi­gas in Bangalore.Our youths employed in good IT-NON IT jobs.
    In oth­er­words, in first place we do not want any out­siders in such large num­bers in Ban­ga­lore.
    PLEASE LEAVE KARNATAKA,PLEASE LEAVE FOR ONCE WITH YOUR BAGGAGE,WE DO NOT NEED ANY OUTSIDERS.This is opin­ion of all the Kan­nadi­gas. Go to your respec­tive states.Build your towns cities.Create employ­ment. But please do not inter­fere in Karnataka’s affairs. We can do any­thing in our state. We can have 1000 weeks mora­to­rium for non-kannada movies. We will do what­ever we want. It is our prerogative.isn’t it? Nobody has any busi­ness to talk about that. We do not inter­fere with affairs of other states and we are not inter­ested either. But for god’s sake please leave Kar­nataka at once. PLEASE.

    RAJESH K V

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34. indian says:
    

    December 6th, 2005 at 5:44 pm (#)

    Rajesh ,
    Are you part of India or Kan­nadas­tan?
    But you still shame­lessly want all the good things out of India right?
    When we all go out of kar­nataka dont be fool­ish to day dream that 90% of jobs will go to kan­nadi­gas! There wont be any IT/BT left here BOSS… why dont you see that point?
    For Cap­i­tal mar­kets human tal­ent is of utmost impor­tance.… If not namma ben­galuru it might be namma hyder­abad or namma pune or namma chen­nai or namma noida.
    Nobody is gonna stick out here for the cli­mate or the kan­nadi­gas. What the employ­ers need is talent.