not only in bangalore.
even even chennai is musch cosmopoliton.

chennai has 35 % telugu speaking people. telugus and tamil always co existed.
from the borders of A.P to chennai you can find lots of telugus.
most of the I.T companies in chenani have a sizable telugus.
dozens of engineering colleges in chennai have majority telugus like R.M.K college,S.R.M,satyabama colleges.

this all didnt create tensions among tamils and telugus.they are always friendsly.

if u go to T. nagar chennai it has 50 % telugus.

most of the shopping malls in T.nagar are occupied by telugus.
most of the sign boards in T.nagar are tri lingual written in tamil,telugu and english.

this didnt lead to tensions.they dont rub the sign boards.
tamils and telugus are freindly.
you know vijaya hospitals in chenani at vadapalani ‚all the doctors there are telugu ‚most of the patients who come there are telugus.once when you enter the hospital u feel u are in hyderabad .

such is the bong between telugus and tamils.
telugu films do release in chennai .
even more number of tamil films are dubbed to telugu .

appolo hospitals, saytam cinemas etc etc are owned by telugus in chennai.
where ever telguus go they repect the locals and their language.
even in bangalore telugus presence in bangalore didnot lead to tensions.

there may be tensions between kannadigas and tamils,mallus,northies.
but no chance of tensions between telugus and kannadigas.
that is the bond between kannada and telugus.
they are just twins.

kannada kasturi == telugu theyta.

It is time we wake up and do our beauty for keeping our cities and country clean and green and ever beautiful. that means stop digging roads, follow traffic rules, stop peeing/ spitting and stop keeping manholes open for the world to be swallowed.

with such a ancient history and such a vibrant future, we should kiss up and make up . Else we will fold up like our carket/hockey team does in pedda championships.

All you buddies , stop being like chuddies and be like fuddies and make our beautiful nation strong and porwerful equal to Bangaldesh / Zimbabwe …or is it USA ? what di ya say?

First i would request you to stop giving such a remark or comments only on TAMIL
am not supporting them, but why do you need to pin-point only them?
To the fact chennai is also cosmopolitan city.. you know the same as tamilians
are there in bangalore.. there are twice or more percentage of teluguians are
there in chennai.. there are many sign boards-hotel boards-shop boards are written in telugu
are these chennaites oppossing this ????? no teluguians and chennaites
are more friendlier.. has ever chennaites complained that they are being
dominated by telugu people? no…never.…
we are indians.. pls dont make such comments and make kannadigas and tamilians
as india and pakistan..
If u still need to make an issue :
1.Just ask all tamilians in bangalore to vacate bangalore
2.vacate all kannadigas from chennai and make a BIG fence and have
a border securtiy… for both the states will that be a solution ???
3.Stop all the trade between karnataka and TN
4.Fine or prison anyone who talks or writes tamil in bangalore or kannada in
chennai

This can be a GREAT solution to the above issue, so everyone can live in
their own culture and close the doors!

My simple request would be pls stop this kind of division between kannadigas
marathis..teluguians..particularly tamilians

We are all humans!

Sharath, you dare say Chennai is a stupid place? The most stupidest place could not have produced India’s greatest mathematicians, scientists and nobel prize winners like CV Raman, Srivivasa Ramanujan, Chadrashekar or the current chess master Vishwanthan Anand. The list is endless. The success and the capability of the Tamilians speaks for itself

Anyways I will stop here, in the meantime I suggest you checkout the Education standards of karnataka compared to TN or other South Indian states and do something in that area if you can That is probably the THE ONLY way to get kannadigas in good numbers into IT field. And stop bitching and complaining abt ppl who deserve it

If you are moderating, just do it properly. Do not promote racism in your site!!

I have either been / have friends in Big IT companies like Wipro, TCS, CTS and Infosys. The top people(especially HRs who recruit) are all either Mallus (mostly)/ Telugus / Tamilians. They make every effort to recruit people speaking their langauge.

I am surprised and ashamed to see very few kannadigas as colleagues in my work place at bangalore. Reservation for localites at least is a must in IT ind. not based on caste / community.

Also Good work Avinash !But I am very disappointed and fuming at this Perry Naik. The talk was all about Bangalore and may be mr Deve Gowda. Where does an artist like Raj Kumar whoe never bothers anybody come into the picture ? People like Perry should leave alone great people Like Raj who are an asset to the entire state on their own . If he/she does not like him, leave him alone. Long live Bangalore ! Kudos Sharath & Avinash. Keep fighting for our land and our pride. We are all with you.

By M V Kamath

We might fret and fume at what the British had done for India and we might quote everyone from Dadabhai Naoroji to Jawaharlal Nehru to show how what they did to impoverish our country, but for one thing we might as well be grateful to our erstwhile rulers: they taught us English and probably that has done more to unify the country than many are willing to admit, let alone admire. At this point in time more Indians speak English than the citizens of the British Isles.

Article 345 of our Constitution says that “until the Legislature of the state otherwise provides by law, the English language shall continue to be used for those official purposes within the State for which it was being used immediately before the commencement of this Constitution”. And Article 348 says that all proceedings in the Supreme Court and in every High Court the authoritative tests shall be in the English language. Hindi, of course, is India’s official language.

Article 351 says that it shall be the duty of the Union to promote the spread of the Hindi language, to develop it so that it may serve as a medium of expression for all the elements of the composite culture of India. What steps the Union has taken in this regard is a matter of opinions, but probably Bollywood has done more to spread Hindi or, perhaps, Hindustani throughout the country than any government agency. Which is just as well.

There is no question but that Hindi is a beautiful language, but then so are Tamil, Telugu, Kannada, Malayalam among the so-called ‘Dravidian’ languages and Marathi, Gujarati or Bengali among the so-called “Atyan” languages derived largely from Sanskrit. Large numbers of South Indians those especially living the down side of the Vindhya Mountains are conversant with Hindi, in part because the language is taught in many schools but in part also because South Indians want to be part of the larger Indian economy and realise only too well that without an adequate knowledge of Hindi they cannot make it elsewhere in India.

It is not patriotism alone that makes them learn Hindi; it is sound economic sense. But the reverse is just not true. Hardly any North Indian bothers to learn any of the South Indian languages. Hardly any school makes the study of a South Indian language compulsory. Patriotism, it would seem, is a one-way street. Heads I win, tails you lose. This is not only not fair, but it is unjust.

The South Indian, if only as a matter of survival, will learn Hindi, but the Hindi belt does not in any way feel obligated to learn a South Indian language any of the five. It was at one time presumed that students will be taught three languages: One’s mother-tongue, English and Hindi and it was presumed that where one’s mother tongue was Hindi, the student would be taught one of the Dravidian languages. This has never happened.

The third language taught has invariably been Sanskrit. Insistence on learning Hindi has led to disturbances in past years especially in Tamil Nadu. That has been taken as an ‘imposition’ which has been silently endured.

But isn’t it time for the northern states to change their approach to the study of languages? They have five languages to choose from and it will be a unique contribution to the genuine enhancement of integration if the millions of school children doing their high school graduation in North India are familiarised with a South Indian language. And may it be remembered that South Indian states are rapidly making their mark in the field of industrialisation and technology.

It is not Allahabad or Lucknow or for that matter even Kolkata that is making ways in Information Technology. The two cities that are increasingly getting into the news are Bangalore and Hyderabad. Andhra Pradesh’s Chandrababu Naidu says: “if I get re-elected, I will turn my state into another Singapore” and for all one knows, he will do so and what is more, he’ll beat Singapore, considering that there is more technical talent available in Andhra Pradesh than in little Singapore. Singapore’s prosperity has its limits because of its size. For Andhra Pradesh as for Karnataka it is the sky that is the limit. And the more firms in the United States, Britain and elsewhere decide to outsource their accounting and allied work, the more Bangalore will burst in prosperity, leaving the citizens of the Hindi belt to bite their nails. This is not to say that north Indian citizens will not catch up.

Intelligence is not the monopoly of South Indians but the fact is that they have made a good start and are at an advantage. The Hindi belt is still wallowing in casteism and has such mindless leaders as Laloo Prasad Yadav and Mayavati. What kind of progress can we expect under the leadership of such casteist nonentities? They are a standing menace to the future of the country. National unity comes through frequent inter-mixing of people, differing to language, ethnicity and religion. Today practically the only thing that binds India is Hinduism. From Kashmir to Kanyakumari there is not one who does not know Siva, Vishnu and Brahma, Laxmi or Saraswati, Hanuman or Ganesh. But that is not enough. There is need for linguistic assimilation.

An average Maharashtrian with a high school leaving certificate would know Marathi, some English and surely some Hindi. In many ways Andhra Pradesh has been lucky. During the reign of the Nizams, study of Urdu had been compulsory in schools with the result that most educated Andhra-ites of an earlier generation were familiar with English, Telugu and Urdu. A typical example is P. V. Narasimha Rao who is credited with being a multi-linguist. But can one name one North Indian leader familiar with a South Indian language?

The first Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru was blissfully ignorant of a South Indian language. And not one of India’s north Indian Prime Ministers had a better record. Neither Indira Gandhi nor Rajiv Gandhi, neither Lal Bahadur Shastri nor I. K. Gujaral, neither Chandrashekhar nor Charan Singh knew a word of any South Indian language. What does that convey? Atal Behari Vajpayee is a great orator in Hindi; he is a poet, besides. But if only he could speak a smattering of Tamil or Telugu, Malayalam or Kannada, how much would that not be appreciated? Poor Deve Gowda didn’t know a word of Hindi but at least he had the good sense to say that he was going to learn Hindi and before long would dare to address an audience assembly at the Red Fort in Hindi. He may not have got the opportunity, but there is a different story. But one frequently hears the question being asked in the Hindi belt: how many languages can a child possibly learn? Truth to say a child can learn many languages.

A Dutch student will get to learn not only his own language but German, French and English as well. There are people in the Kanara district of Karnataka who speak Konkani, Tulu, Kannada and English with equal felicity. There are students in cosmopolitan Mumbai who can speak Malayalam (or Tamil or Kannada) at home but outside their homes speak just as fluently in Marathi, Hindi and English. What is needed is the will. In the Hindi belt that will is totally lacking. In part, one suspects, the season why is that the Hindiwallah seldom seeks a job outside his territory. Therefore he sees no need to learn a south Indian language. He is culturally isolated. It is easier to find a Tamilian or a Kannadiga in Varanasi or Patna than a Bihari or an Uttar Pradeshi in Mysore or Tinnevelli. The South Indian is enterprising, generally speaking. The Hindiwallah is more often not. And there’s the rub.

There are of course, always exceptions to the rule. Marwadis, for instance, are to be seen practically anywhere in the country where business opportunities present themselves for exploitation. There are large and influential numbers of them in Kolkata, Mumbai, Chennai or Bangalore and they quickly make themselves at home wherever they settle down. But, as has been said, one swallow does not make the summer. And, at any rate, it does not question the importance of an insistence of teaching a south Indian language at the high school level in north Indian schools.

Gandhi was frequently aware of the need to know more than just Hindi. At least he is known to have taken the trouble to learn the Tamil and Kannada scripts and sign his name in them. India is multi-lingual and it is humanly impossible for Indians to speak in more than two or three languages though some one like George Fernandes or P. V. Narasimha Rao are exceptions. George, for instance can speak in Konkani, Kannada, Tulu, Hindi, Marathi and English and possibly in Tamil and Gujarati as well.

It is important to know Hindi. That is readily conceded, just as it is even more important to know English which is rapidly becoming an international language and the language of commerce. If so much work is being outsourced to India by American firms, it is because Indians know English and are better placed, for instance, than the Chinese or the Japanese. Indians, it may even be said, have a natural talent to learn languages. And the more India’s literati are literate in interregional languages the greater the prospects of national integration.

South India is making giant strides. As a matter of fact in many ways it outperforms the so-called South East Asian tigers and can take on any country. Somewhere down the line the Hindi belt must learn to give up its linguistic chauvinism, for its own good as for the good of the entire country.