November 1 marks Karnataka Rajyotsava,our State’s birthday and every year, our leaders deliver predictable speeches about ‘promoting Kannada.’ Every year, pro-Kannada activists demand that “outsiders must learn Kannada.” So, why is Kannada, in its own land, slowly losing its ground?
Because we don’t teach functional Kannada. We teach grammatical and written Kannada first instead of spoken Kannada.
The truth is that Kannada can’t be promoted by vandalising shops or threatening business owners and ‘outsiders’. It can only be promoted if we, Kannadigas, speak it first, in our homes, offices and everyday life.
Two years ago, Chief Minister Siddaramaiah rightly said, “Everyone living in this State should learn to speak Kannada. We are all Kannadigas.” That raises an important question: Who is a Kannadiga?
Back in 1983, the Sarojini Mahishi Committee defined a Kannadiga as someone who has lived in Karnataka for over 15 years and can “read, write and speak Kannada reasonably well.”
But the truth is, most of us Kannadigas can’t write or even read Kannada fluently, but can only speak it fluently. So, perhaps the definition needs tweaking: If you’ve lived here long enough and can speak Kannada well enough, then you are a Kannadiga.
This brings us to the most urgent need of the hour, which is promoting spoken Kannada because it is the thread that kept Karnataka tied together all these years, from 1956, when it was formed.
Karnataka is one of India’s most diverse States, in cuisine, dialect, tradition and culture. The Bunts of Mangaluru speak Tulu, the Kodavas speak Kodava Thakk, Muslims speak Dakhani, but they all also speak Kannada.
Even Telugus, Tamils, Rajasthanis, Gujaratis and Malayalis, who settled here decades ago, can comfortably converse in Kannada. They may not write it, but they speak it and that’s what makes them part of this soil. That shared spoken tongue has been the glue that held Karnataka’s social fabric together.
But today, with the rapid and massive influx of migrants from North India and the growing dominance of Hindi in our cities, that glue is wearing thin.
If Kannada ceases to be spoken in our urban spaces, we risk not just losing cultural identity but also social harmony. That is why the Karnataka Government must act with urgency to promote spoken Kannada. Not by enforcement, but by encouragement. Not with moral lectures and policing, but with incentives and inclusion.
The government could tie up with construction companies, IT firms and service industries to conduct short spoken-Kannada courses. Offer tax breaks to companies that train their non-Kannadiga employees.
Spoken Kannada has to take priority because when people stop understanding each other, they start misunderstanding each other.
Remember the anti-migrant riots in Maharashtra that gave birth to Shiv Sena? Remember the anti-Hindi agitations in Tamil Nadu that birthed the DMK? Karnataka doesn’t need that kind of politics.
But if our mainstream parties, the Congress, JD(S) and BJP, continue to ignore spoken Kannada, they might one day find themselves outflanked by a political version of Karnataka Rakshana Vedike.
The Karnataka Government spends nearly Rs. 39,000 crore every year on Kannada-medium education, infrastructure and maintenance. A fraction of that money could create a State-wide programme to promote spoken Kannada in Universities, corporates and public services.
Interestingly, our tech-savvy youth have done more to promote Kannada than Government committees or activists. Apps like ‘Kannada Baruthe’, ‘Learn Kannada Quickly’, ‘Day2Day Kannada’ and ‘KannadaGottilla.com’ have done wonders for conversational Kannada.
Even the Central Institute of Indian Languages (CIIL) in Mysuru offers an online course, though, in true bureaucratic fashion, it makes you learn the alphabet to write ‘Namaskara’ before you can say “Namaskara.”
The University of Mysore offers Kannada courses too, but they’re more focused on grammar than conversation. We need the opposite — Kannada for daily life, not Kannada for Ph.Ds.
Now, for non-Kannada speakers, learning Kannada is not about surrendering identity, on the contrary, it’s about belonging. It makes daily life smoother. It’s also a gesture of respect to the land that hosts you.
Refusing to learn the local language after years of living here isn’t just impractical; it can be perceived as arrogance or ingratitude. Language is not merely communication. It is a connection.
As Nelson Mandela said, “If you talk to a man in a language he understands, that goes to his head. But if you talk to him in his language, that goes to his heart.”
If Karnataka wants harmony, if Bengaluru wants peace, the Government must promote spoken Kannada first and not written Kannada… Because in the end, for Kannada to thrive, we need more Kannada speakers, not just Kannada litterateurs.
e-mail: vikram@starofmysore.com
This post was published on November 8, 2025 6:05 pm