Daijiworld Media Network - Bengaluru

Bengaluru, Sep 19: The protest against the 'imposition' of Hindi in Karnataka has intensified, with language activists and politicians planning to launch an aggressive campaign seeking constitutional amendment to ensure equality among all Indian languages.

At an event entitled 'Towards Linguistic Equality’ organised by Banavasi Balaga, high court lawyer Manu Kulkarni said though the Constitution emphasised equality and protection to oppressed people like the minorities, it had not dwelt on language equality.

The provisions of eight Articles (343 to 351), listed under Part XVII of the Constitution, have been written to promote Hindi as the administrative language and they do not talk about linguistic equality.

Hence, the best way forward for regional languages was to bring amendment in Part XVII of the Constitution. With this, regional languages will be treated on par with Hindi, he said.

“The central government is carrying out ‘linguistic genocide’ of the country’s regional languages,” alleged Senthil Nathan, secretary of Campaign for Language Equality and Rights.

The movement to save regional languages had gathered pace over the past two years. He said many languages, such as Bhojpuri and Maithili, were billed as dialects of Hindi, a fact which the speakers of those languages opposed, he added.

On February 21, 2018, on the occasion of International Mother Language Day, a national level convention will be held. Bengaluru has been chosen as the location of the convention as Karnataka has taken the lead in the fight to protect regional languages, he said.

At the upcoming convention, a draft language policy will be announced. About 44 languages from across the country will be represented in the convention, he added.

Meanwhile, Karnataka Rakshana Vedike (KRV) activists are planning to storm into metro stations to pull down signage in Hindi if CM Siddaramaiah’s directions are not obeyed.

KRV state president T A Narayana Gowda said Hindi had not been removed from Namma Metro stations even after directions from Chief Minister Siddaramaiah.

"We will meet the chief minister next week and urge him to ensure that his directions are obeyed. Otherwise, the Vedike will take matters into its own hands,” he said.

A protest in Delhi is also planned, where leaders from all states will join together to voice out against the imposition of Hindi, he added.