With the Centre celebrating Friday as Hindi Diwas, activists of the Karnataka Rakshana Vedike (KRV) launched a statewide agitation to protest against the Centre’s alleged imposition of Hindi on non-Hindi speaking states and blackened several Hindi signboards along national highways in the state.
It came on a day when the Centre was celebrating Hindi Diwas to mark Hindi becoming an official language of the Union government under Article 343 of the Constitution on September 14, 1949.
“The present regime at the Centre is propagating its hidden agenda of imposing Hindi on the country where a majority of the population is non-Hindi speaking. Today’s protest is to resist the parochial policy of the Centre,” KRV President TA Narayana Gowda told the Times of India.
As part of the protest, the KRV activists blackened milestones written in Hindi on NH48 near Davangere. It also blackened signages on highway stretches at Bengaluru, Mysuru, Kolar, Shivamogga and other districts.
The activists sought equal treatment of all languages spoken in the country and is continuing its efforts to mobilise non-Hindi speaking states to protest against the BJP-ruled Centre’s move to impose Hindi on them.
“India is a multilingual country with people speaking hundreds of languages. Making Hindi as the official language of Union government is unacceptable and is disrespectful to other languages. If the government wants to celebrate only Hindi Diwas, we condemn the move,” Narayana Gowda told the Deccan Chronicle.
It may be recalled that in 2017, KRV activists had blackened Hindi signs in multiple metro stations across Bengaluru.
On July 19 and 20, 2017, several KRV activists barged into multiple metro stations shouting slogans against Hindi imposition, and daubed black paint over Hindi signs. Among the stations where they blackened signs were Deepanjali Nagar, Peenya, Jayanagar, Baiyappanahalli, Indiranagar, Mysuru Road and Yeshwantpur.
The Bengaluru police had registered 36 cases against the Vedike’s Narayana Gowda faction for blackening the signboards.