This is not really a blog on river cauvery. River Cauvery is an euphemism for Kannada in this case. Recently a good old friend of mine blogged on Mr. Narayan Murthy's (of Infosys fame) take in the World Kannada conference. A link to his blog is below. For the benefit of people who cannot read Kannada, Ananda's point is "Mr. Narayan Murthy implies that Kannada is just an emotive language of his and not a practical language for professionals. By saying so, he is pre-empting and cutting away much needed Oxygen/encouragement for the development of Kannada as a language, medium of instruction for all kannadigas need to be in kannada, even professional training has to be in kannada". I'm just para-phrasing Ananda's essay. and from the "I like it" comments on FB and per my gut feel, many like minded "kannadigas" endorse Ananda's stand. Mr. Narayan Murthy it appears you have annoyed a lots of kannadigas. Also, some of the comments are centered around if Tamilians can (Tamil medium professional courses), why cannot kannadigas also do it.
I, am currently on a short US business trip, pretty much jobless during the evenings, I did stir up a hornet's nest by making some comments on Anand's post on Facebook - "Multi-linguism is good, good to mitigate dementia/Alzehimers, so why not teach our children Kannada + one more language to make them globally more marketable". I do concede that my remark was quite tangential - his post is about medium of instruction in kannada, my 'diversionary' comment is about making children multi-lingual.
Many a subtle points have been given and taken (including a few threats) on my provacative posturing. This blog is to provocate even a few more and pick up the cudgels....
I'd like to start with a few people I know about. Not your typical Ivy school types but more like
- Shanti's son Bhoopala. Shanti is the maid who works in my house. More than a maid, I should say she is our domestic home manager. She manages all vegetable purchases, maintenance, laundry, cooking the whole works. Bhoopala's mother tongue is Tamil/Telgu mix. He went to School in Kannada medium. Struggled to pass SSLC. He passed finally - after some petty jobs, he got hired by Domino's. He does Pizza deliveries and he can cook a great pizza and has accounting, customer interfacing skills in multiple languages including Kannada, Telgu, Tamil and English (Job acquired skills not schooled).
- Murali, a car driver, his children. Murali owns a car - he has rented it out in Hyderabad but stays in Bangalore and works as a driver. He is in Bangalore for only one reason, to get his children educated. They go to CBSE school. Guess the medium of instruction ..
- My Father-in-law has a good farmer friend by name Krishnappa in Chikka Tirupathi. He has a daughter who did Engineering. She is now hired in one of the prominent software firms as associate software engineer.
These are our typical grass root citizens of our country. Parents spend their hard earned money on their Children's education. The last one is a stunning success story. Guess what, she graduated from her Kannada medium village school - PUC and later, she went to an English medium Engg college. If a Kannada medium Engineering college existed, and she got admission to both Kannada/English colleges, where do you think would she have gone ? If she had gone to the imaginary Kannada engineering college, would IBM/Cognizant hire her? What were job/earning opportunities? Now she is a role model for the girls of her entire village and I'm quite sure she will inspire quite a few around her.
In the second case, Murali is making a big adjustment leaving his native of Andhra and coming to work in Bangalore for one reason only. Good education ! I hope his children succeed and become yet another set of role models and inspiration for the working class.
In the first case, I think Bhoopala had a tough time with Kannada medium. My wife tried to teach him a few things - but the poor chap had very strong comprehension issues. Trying to stuff kannada grammar, science and social studies was like ನೀರೇ ಇಳಿಯದ ಗ೦ಟಲೊಳ್....
One of the common problems we have in our education system is theoritical training by rote. Bhoopala is not a dumb guy. He is smart in his own way and ambitious as well. He is handy with tools, but the education system with a medium of instruction he had was really tough on him.
In Bhoopala's case, Kannada being a medium of instruction is not applicable (as it is not his mother tongue). In the later two cases, even though Kannada was their mother tongue, they did not want it. So, medium-of-instruction-kannada-only supporters, what is your take on indivdual/personal choices. Should we eliminate personal choice and force all people have to go back where there mother tongue schooling is available and make them stay there until education is complete?
My point is what Mr. Narayan Murthy meant - more bluntly though- there is diminished demand on Kannada medium education due to sheer economics in a global-flat world. The chances of a English medium educated child succeeding in life is much higher - because the zone of opportunity simply expands exponentially. In my earlier opinion, I was not suggesting learning different language as 2nd language, 3rd language or just another topic. I was suggesting learning English/Spanish/Chinese as the main operating language. I was suggesting learning German so that a person can go after the best Automobile engineering opportunity in Munich. I was suggesting learning Japanese (graduate/post-graduate/research), if the best innovation in electronics is happening in Japan and that is your thing.
Let us go back to our own past - my Marimallappa friends... Why did our own parents admit us to Section B of the school and not the Kannada medium A section? Because they wished well for their children (us). They had come up with so much hardship in the just "British Raj" liberated but "license Raj" dominated India. They saw IAS officers, doctors & Engineers succeeding and having a comfortable life. They aspired us to have a much better life than theirs and pulled influence, savings, sacrificing on their life styles to get us admitted in the No. 1 Ranking school in Mysore, English Medium !
In our batch, because of "Gokak varadi" implementation, we had no choice but go for 1st language kannada, 3rd language Sanskrit. Our previous batch, next batches all had Sanskrit as 1st language. Sanskrit was preferred and offered because it was a "scoring" language.
But the funny thing is, though I came from Avila Convent in my Primary school, all in English medium, my friends were always "kannada" guys.. The games I relished to play were lagori, goli, chinni dandu and Cricket. If I recall my Primary school, there were severe fines for talking in Kannada except in Kannada class. If I remember correctly, I used to think Kannada and talk English.. When I went to MMHS, it was really a big relief.. Some Marimallappans are going to get a big kick on the anecdotal quotes below:
"Geo means Earth-u. Graphy andare picture-u. Geography andare Earth picture-u"
"Amoeba yenu madutappa andare pseudo-podia antha dehada bagana hAge chaChuthe..."
"Nodri Atom is the smallest particle kanri. adu kange kanodilla ashtu sannadu kanri"
Well, I was in English medium, MMHS and I loved the medium of instruction. There were some excellent teachers. Some of them are retired now, some have passed away - bless their souls. I'm not being satirical here. This is how they had to teach us, for most of us to get the concepts !! Forget the Rotarians, forget the Avilans - there were other smart kids from Marimallappa Primary (Kannada medium) too. To make them understand, this is what they had to do. Victorian English wouldn't cut the cake. The English medium taught kids (yours truly) got it /understood it anyways.... This was again demand based market. In Mysore, if you wanted good education, you went to MMHS. My father put me in MMHS, despite he himself being a teacher in St. Philomena's. So, though on paper, we were all English medium, our medium of instruction was truly Kanglish.
So what has this got to do with the river ? There is a simple law of physics which determines the flow of a river. It always takes the least path of resistance, basic gravitational law determines that it flows from a high point to a low point eventually joining the sea - not necessarily a straight line. Same way, irrespective of which language you speak in your home, your parents did it, if you don't do, your wife will do it or your extended family will influence you - to get the best possible education possible for your children (best scoring, best professionally viable, currently proven success) -Irrespective of the instruction of medium.
So there, I do concede a point: It does not mean Kannada medium education is impossible professionally. Unless the goal is to become the best of the breed, a global-brand, for example, Tech Univ in Munich, Germany or Tokyo Institute of Technology, Japan; the intellectual ROI (return on Investment) is going to be less. If only we had a mechanism to start (with enough sustained public/private participation) a kannada based institute which eventually gets recognized as a institute of excellence - Mr. Narayan Murthy could have been proven wrong. Since one does not exist, and there have been no attempts by the "education lobby" to do so (honey, there is no money), Mr. Narayan Murthy's stand is vindicated. About Tamil medium engineering courses in TN, it is quite an interesting experiment (we can conduct the same experiment in Kannada as well if there is money to burn) - only time will tell if it is truly "Tamil medium", and if so, what degree of success.
Digression ! digression!! what is the definition of kannadiga ? I'll mention a few known/un-known personalities. Please evaluate if they are kannadigas or not. What is their mother tongue, your thought of medium of instruction for their children/wards.. (prospective progeny, if they do not have already), in primary, high school and degree. Just a mental exercise.
- Aishwarya Rai, Deepika Padukone, John Abraham types.
- Narayan Murthy, Nandan Nilekeni, Indra Nooyi, Azim Premji types.
- Yeddy, Reddy, Gowda types.
- Sardarji in Hanumanthnagar 50 ft road who sells fabric and can talk with you fluently in Kannada.
- Girish Karnad, U.R. Ananthmurthy and their progeny.
- Shanti the House Manager, Murali the Driver, Krishnappa the farmer from earlier and many such.
- Iyengar kannadiga, shetru, Sankethi-smartha.
- kannadigas settled in Tamilnadu, Andhra and all over India due to work, old roots.
- Pardesi guys who have come back to Bangalore and try to give you pseudo-intellectual gyan (guess who falls in this category).
I have a few more topics itching to talk about but this blog is getting a bit too long... Some undiscussed random topics for me to ponder (some serious, some silly):
- Are we getting more and more narcissistic by the day, declaring ಕರ್ನಾಟಕದಲ್ಲಿ ಕನ್ನಡಿಗನೇ ಸಾರ್ವಭೌಮ (Kannadiga is the king/emperor/superior in Karnataka). I had seen an even more disturbing plaque in Gandhi Bazar near Dr. Rajkumar statue, etched in stone. I'll confirm it when I'm in Bangalore before quoting it. I believe we should be humans first, Indians next, Kannadiga after that. Plaque suggests something else.
- When we say "Save Kannada", what are we talking about ? Is it Kannada art (music/movie/drama)? literature (language/script/books)? kannadiga culture? economic clout of kannadiga population ? Agreed - they are all related, guess they are different tributaries of the same river but running their own course, own speed.
- Should Sonu Nigam and Shreya Goshal sing kannada songs in movies at all? Mano-murthy and Sonu in Mungaru Male, man that is magic !
- Generally Tamil invokes a general negative response - There are some historical reasons. But shouldn't we move on?. Why especially compete with Tamilians?
- ನಮಸ್ಕಾರ ಸ್ವಾಮಿ. ಹೇಗಿದ್ದೀರ ?, ಏನಮ್ಮ ಹೇಗಿದ್ದೀಯ, ಏನ್ ಮಗ ಹೇಗಿದಿ ? Is that all kannada and we accept it with the flow as a natural progress/adaptation/colloquialism or should somebody control it?
- Am I a kannidiga, do I need certification from someone?
- In which direction should Cauvery flow and where should it stop ?
P.S: I tried typing in Kannada the whole article - it is too tough with so many accidental deletes/re-types. Anand - good job on your blog, don't know how you do it - but excellent literary library of kannada short works. Also, my grammar, punctuation in kannada has all gone for a toss - years of disuse of written skills. Please keep the posts coming and I enjoy reading them even if I do not necessarily agree with all. Rest of you friends - Debate - but Peace !!
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