Saturday, April 4, 2009

ಕನ್ನಡವೇ ಸತ್ಯ, ಕನ್ನಡವೇ ನಿತ್ಯ

For people like me, who are very protective about their own language and believe that no matter what you do, where you do it, you will always remain a true-blue *demonym* , there are few things better than seeing other people respecting your language and culture. I am a hardcore, cut-me-I'll-bleed-Kannada Kannadiga, who read Prajavani for daily news when growing up. My 'language of thought', still remains to this day, Kannada.

One of my newly discovered delights (thanks to Sha-ಸ್ತ್ರೀ for that) is the Kannada Gmail, and the amazingly clean and good language (of course, they still simply use english words transliterated to kannada for a lot of things, but hey, it would be ridiculous to expect e-mail to be called vidyut anche and so on...) which is used for describing things. I have seen many attempts at using kannada for the web, and very often, they take it to extremes, which makes it incomprehensible for most common Kannada users. Let's face it, not even a tiny fraction of people would say 'ugibandi' for 'trains'.

The joy of reading or listening to good, unadulterated and slang-free Kannada is something else. Being born to a Kannada/Sanskrit scholar and having a long history of language teachers in my family, I have been set very high standards in language ever since I was old enough to read. Therefore, it is not right to expect everyone to speak it with the same degree of comfort as I do. I have, over the years, come to terms with the fact that Kan-glish is as far as any informal communication will go, even when two Kannadigas are speaking. Maybe that's how languages evolve, surviving external influences by bending instead of buckling.

Kannadigas, however, are not the most aggressive of people you would meet. They are, to a large extent, very 'accommodating', particularly when it comes to their language and culture. There is no way you can survive in Chennai without learning Tamizh, or in Kolkata without Bengali. Karnataka, on the other hand, is slowly getting frayed at it's edges... by Telugu to the east, by Marathi to the north, by Tamil and Malayalam in the south. People in the so-called 'Hyderabad Karnataka' barely communicate in Kannada. You go to Belgaum, and speaking in Marathi would probably fetch you more brownie points with the natives than speaking Kannada. I will not say much about Bangalore (that would be a blog post by itself) - all I can say is it is suffering the same fate as Mumbai. It is the price it paid for its fame, and some would say it sold its soul to the devil. While I don't support this notion, I have to assert that Bangalore has, indeed, lost its identity (or at least, morphed itself into a completely new being, which has no resemblance to the old-age-retirement haven it once was. Although Bangalore has always had a heady brew of cosmopolitanism, being the focal point of three intersecting cultures, it has now lost the easy going, old-town feel that I associate with my childhood).

Anyway, I digress. Kannadigas, like I said, are quite docile. Over 70 folk arts in Karnataka have reportedly met their demise in recent times, due to lack of nourishment and interest It appears that Kannadigas are simply not interested in their own culture anymore. Maybe we deserve it but the language does not. We have managed to get a Classical Language status, but only time will tell what this really entails. (I just hope being a classical language is not halfway to being a dead language) As long as Kannadigas remain indifferent to their culture, things that they now take for granted will simply vanish. Our kids may not even know what Yakshagaana is.

Like an old proverb goes, ಹಿತ್ತಲ ಗಿಡ ಮದ್ದಲ್ಲ. (translating it is retarded, so let me reword it: When you try to look very far, you tend to miss what's closest to you.) I'm afraid it is only very true in this case. If our politicians tomorrow made language a political plank, it wouldn't be too far-fetched (heck, there already are a few, but not noteworthy). But then again, there are more important issues than language, and as usually happens with politicians, the way they would nurture a language would be by pouring their hatred on other languages, which is worse.

P.S.: Reader: I'm sorry if you're not a Kannadiga. Perhaps you can draw parallels with your own language, perhaps not. In any case, if you found it offensive/boring/irritating (what part, pray!), screw you. If you appreciate my concern for my culture, thank you.

P.P.S.: There are, of course, other languages in Karnataka, like Tulu, Kodava, Konkani etc.- They have their own culture, and I will not speak for them, since I'm ignorant of their problems.

6 comments:

  1. Ill say this....the one language group even more docile than the kannadigas are the maharashtrians....you dont need to know marathi anywhere in maharashtra !

    ReplyDelete
  2. I think cinema plays a very important role in preserving the language of a region. Good regional cinema brings a sense of pride to the people of its state. Kannada cinema and its music are at their nadir now. Words like longu, dove, dagaar and some such are spoken and sung in higher numbers than the proper Kannada words and that is saying nothing about the quality of films. And about 'Hyderabad Karnataka', it is I think a problem with how the state was divided. Telugu has not permeated into the state like Tamil and Malayalam. Telugu has been here even from the days of the Vijayanagar empire.

    ReplyDelete
  3. Yak: Yes, Hyderabad Karnataka has been dominated by Telugu from before. My point is, 50 years of Karnataka's rule has barely changed anything there... They have the right to preserve their culture, but being in Karnataka, they have never felt the need to learn Kannada, and it has not mattered to them at all. I'm sure no one would mind learning another language.

    Bhogale: I can't really speak for Marathi/Maharashtra, but as for Belgaum, I'm only talking about what I see these days there. It was a very Kannadiga district when the states were formed. Today, it's more at home in Maharashtra than in Karnataka, some would say. Which is why they have the fancy 'Maharashtra Ekeekaran Samithi' and other such extremist organisations there which have reasonable public support.

    Bhajay: Thanks!

    ReplyDelete
  4. Super article! Regarding the Kannada-in-Bangalore issue, I am beyond the point where one can channel anger, disgust, and paranoid concern into such a reasonable and cogent essay as you have done here.

    @Cupped Crusader: We shouldn't fall into the trap of generalizing Bangalorean attitudes to Karnataka and Kannadigas. Longu, machchu, etc. exist only in the dictionary of the infinitesimally minuscule subset of Bangaloreans who watch such movies or read those words off posters and the 'hind-sights' on autos. In much of the Kannada heartland, either in Uttara Kannada, parts of Dakshina Kannada, Mysore-region, Bangalore rural, central Karnataka, most of KannadaBangalore etc. etc., the basically non-Darshan-type movie watching which is a rather enormously significant majority of the Kannadiga population, the language does not include longu-machchu.

    Talking about regional cinema, I don't quite buy your argument. It is perhaps reasonable to say that the role of cinema in shaping our cultural identity is very very limited, perhaps to the extent that it is negligible. Simply put, good movies don't mean good culture. Going by that argument, Gujurati, Marathi, Oriyan, Naga, Mizo, should all have been dying cultures, given the absence of a good movie industry.

    Let us take assume that cinemas indeed influence the society. You would probably agree with me that a majority of ALL the Hindi, Tamil, Telugu, Malayalam, Punjabi, etc. etc. are trash. Proportionally, there is no data to support the hypothesis that more Kannada movies are worse than, say, Hindi movies. So can you say that everyone is losing their linguistic identity because producers are investing in the wrong kind of movies? Aren't you overstating the role of cinema in the society?

    Even considering these arguments, you should consider that we do have our share of quality media. Now, let's consider the general media- television serials certainly have a larger audience than movies. Going by your argument, these should influence our identities in a big way. In that case, Kannada should really be flourishing - our television serials, the last I saw, by and large, have excellent conversational Kannada.

    Cinema is, after all, a commodity. You don't come out of a cinema hall feeling good/bad about your language, you come out of it feeling good/bad about the artistic and other attributes of the movie and actors. When you hear a song which has gross lyrics like "haLe patre, haLe kabbaNa, haLe paper". You feel sorry for director/artist/composer/lyricist and NOT the language in which the rest of the movie is made.

    Regarding your second point, you should consider that Hyderabad Karnataka, northern Kerala, southern Karnataka and a few other parts of our 'gadinaadu' are buffer zones, where, historically there has been harmless co-existence and synthesis of languages and linguistic identities. (I am not sure if you have visited predominantly Kannada villages on the Tamil Nadu side of the Kavery delta. I have. Just as I have noticed the predominance of Kannada in Kasargod.)

    @Chikkadi

    Belgaum is more the exception than the rule. We only have to believe in the goodness of Indians and hope the rot doesn't spread elsewhere. The biggest threat is a rot from within our borders, in Bangalore- where you have the new squatters (as I like to call them) from different parts of the country generally, showing vulgar indifference and gross disrespect for the local language. (Note to any potential argumentative Bangaloreans: Don't pain me with stories about your friend who learned Kannada even though he was from Jhumrithalaya, etc. One word: Outliers)

    Language is a serious issue, and it is high-time it became a political issue in Karnataka. Bangladesh-Pakistan-1971, Sinhala-Tamil, and various other conflicts in history have shown us, when building nations, people tend to put their linguistic identities ahead of religion and nationality. This is ever more important today, when India is a young and rapidly changing country.

    ReplyDelete
  5. Shastri: As for language as a political issue, it is a retarded idea as long as the democracy is not mature, simply because it is a threat to the unity of a country. You talked about Pakistan-Bangladesh, Sinhala-Tamil. Isn't the present situation of those countries testimonial enough to substantiate the failure of language politics? Europe is a different issue, Language has divided countries there since ages, and it pretty much coincides with physical borders. (Exception: Switzerland, for one, has 3 languages, and Belgium, which is also breaking apart because of lingual hatred) But in India, where the borders between states is just artificial, it becomes important that lingual hatred is not encouraged. There are much more important issues to politicise than language.

    ReplyDelete