Good news from Karnataka - part 2 (language)

MYSORE: Activists of the Karnataka Rakshana Vedike (KRV) threw stones on vehicles with Tamil Nadu registration plates in Maddur town on Thursday. Four vehicles were damaged.

The activists led by Kodihalli Srinivas waylaid a Mysore-bound film unit vehicle with Tamil Nadu registration plates near Sandhya Theatre and deflated its tyres. They also damaged two trucks and a car. They raised slogans against Tamil Nadu Chief Minister, M. Karunanidhi for his reported remarks about Kannadigas. The activists also condemned the action of some advocates who ransacked a fast food restaurant owned by a Kannadiga in Chennai.

The attack is being seen as an apparent retaliation to the ransacking.

KRV activists also claimed that a driver from Karnataka was attacked in Puducherry. After his return on Wednesday, he reportedly narrated his experience to KRV activists.

http://www.thehindu.com/todays-paper/tp-national/tp-karnataka/vedike-activists-damage-vehicles-from-tamil-nadu/article1232491.ece

From Tehelka Magazine, Vol 6, Issue 6, Dated Feb 14, 2009
CURRENT AFFAIRS
rabble-rousers
‘It Is only In Our Own State That We Can Demand What Is Due To Us’

Narayan Gowda,
50 PRESIDENT, KARNATAKA RAKSHANA VEDIKE

NUMBER OF CASES: NOT KNOWN
NOT KNOWN


Photo: S RADHA KRISHNA
A“PROTECTOR OF culture”, the parochial outfit, Karnataka Rakshana Vedike, claims to defend the interests of five crore Kannadigas it says are the true residents of Karnataka. Sporting red and yellow scarves, Vedike activists have been in the news at regular intervals, smashing an MNC office, vandalising theatres showing Tamil movies, which it rejects as alien, attacking a bank that sent musclemen to a loan defaulter, and blackening the face of a city mayor.

At the centre of it is Narayana Gowda, the Vedike’s state president. Born in 1967 in a village in Hassan district, Gowda names two people who inspired him during his school days — Sundaresh, a leader in a massive farmers’ movement, and Durgappa Shetty, of the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS). “I spent quite some time in their company. But neither of them really supported me when I got into trouble with the police,” Gowda recounts. The trouble he refers to is a fierce argument he had at the age of 15 with a policeman over a Tamil orchestra performance in a Karnataka town.

Gowda left home as a result of the argument and landed in Mumbai. “I was treated as a second-class citizen in Mumbai,” he recalls. “All this talk about citizens’ right to live anywhere is rubbish. It is only in our own state that we can demand what is due to us.” His years in Mumbai are not the only experience Gowda draws on. He also speaks of a desperate hunt for employment on his return to Bangalore, and a series of doors closing and opportunities denied because he didn’t speak English well. This is the genesis of his demand that Kannadigas should get priority over others in jobs.

Mumbai may have embittered him but he has great admiration for Raj Thackeray. Vedike’s latest clash was an attack on the offices of the Bank of Maharashtra and on Maharashtra state buses. The provocation was a government decision to hold a legislature session in Belgaum, a district on the border between Maharashtra and Karnataka, dominated by a Marathispeaking population. Violence erupted when a local outfit, the Maharashtra Ekikarna Samiti, which demands that Belgaum, which is in Karnataka, be merged with Maharashtra, opposed the session being held there. Buses on both sides of the border were burnt, shops stoned, windows smashed, cases filed.

Vedike organising secretary CV Devaraj is stoic. “Cases will be filed and we will be arrested. We have a dedicated lawyers’ forum to take care of legal issues.”

In the face of such a nonchalant attitude to the law, what does it take to stem the tide of violence?

http://archive.tehelka.com/story_main41.asp?filename=Ne1402009it_is.asp

http://www.timescontent.com/tss/showcase/preview-buy/89406/News/Karnataka-Rakshana-Vedike-KRV-activ.html

http://www.pics4news.com/daily_news_photo/4737/Karnataka_Rakshana_Vedike_Protest.html

Now that good news started coming from Karnataka, it is time that other states speak up. With the bitter divide in Telangana and Seemandhra, I doubt whether they are going to unite on this issue, but Kerala, Orissa, Bengal must speak up and be heard. 

I wish even the speakers of Northern languages that are bamboozled under the single bracket like Punjabi, Kashmiri unite and voice this demand..

Please sign this petition addressed to the Prime Minister of India to declare all scheduled languages as official languages of the Indian Union:

https://www.change.org/en-IN/petitions/prime-minister-of-india-declare-all-languages-present-in-8th-schedule-of-the-indian-constitution-as-official-languages-of-the-indian-union

Activists of Karnataka Rakshana Vedike burn a poster of Rajanikanth:

Ponniyin Selvan wrote:Please sign this petition addressed to the Prime Minister of India to declare all scheduled languages as official languages of the Indian Union:

https://www.change.org/en-IN/petitions/prime-minister-of-india-declare-all-languages-present-in-8th-schedule-of-the-indian-constitution-as-official-languages-of-the-indian-union

I think all non-hindi states should pass legislation IMMEDIATELY that all signboards should be local language and English ONLY - blacken Hindi letters in all central Govt organizations - including railway and income tax and postal departments - and their offices in respective states.

Treat Hindi the way Hindians treat non-hindi.

Marathadi-Saamiyaar wrote:

Ponniyin Selvan wrote:Please sign this petition addressed to the Prime Minister of India to declare all scheduled languages as official languages of the Indian Union:

https://www.change.org/en-IN/petitions/prime-minister-of-india-declare-all-languages-present-in-8th-schedule-of-the-indian-constitution-as-official-languages-of-the-indian-union

I think all non-hindi states should pass legislation IMMEDIATELY that all signboards should be local language and English ONLY - blacken Hindi letters in all central Govt organizations  - including railway and income tax and postal departments - and their offices in respective states.

Treat Hindi the way Hindians treat non-hindi.

That will be a good start..