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It is Namma Metro (Our Metro), not Hamara Metro, the protesters seemed to make clear. But the music to Bengalureans’ ears was marred by a discordant note that made waves nation-wide -- some organisations and individuals came up with a problem that soon started to look bigger than this solution to the city’s traffic woes: Hindi, they decried, was being imposed on Kannadigas and Karnataka on the sly through Metro signboards!

That was a shock for many people, both in Bengaluru and Karnataka as well as nation-wide, because the country’s cosmopolitan IT capital has never had much of a problem with Hindi as such, although movements to strengthen Kannada and Kannadiga pride have been around and gather steam periodically.Recently, Bengaluru was witness to what could be a game-changer for the city - the completion and opening of the first phase of its much-awaited Metro Rail project. Only safety and security announcements, such as "Take care of your belongings" or "stay away from doors" are in all three languages. But when a new wave of anti-Hindi protests rises from an unexpected place, it’s time to sit up and re-look at the issue. Why has it suddenly risen among Kannadigas? Was it triggered by the present dispensation in Delhi, which has made it clear it regards Hindi as the ‘national language’ and wants to push it as such? After all, in March, there was some evidence of this approach in Tamil Nadu, where highway signs suddenly started to appear in Hindi? Or, is Chief Minister Siddaramaiah’s Cong-ress government encouraging pro-Kannada groups to beat the BJP at its own game by raising emotional issues ahead of next year’s elections in the state? The chief minister himself followed up by inventing yet another issue: a separate flag for Karnataka. Out of the numerous display boards, only a countable few were in all three languages -- Kannada, English and Hindi; most were only in Kannada and English. There have also been several instances of auto drivers, many of them affiliated to these pro-Kannada organisations, misbehaving with non-Kannadiga passengers, enraged that these ‘aliens’ come and live in Karnataka, but refuse to learn the local language and adopt the local culture. During one of those ‘Save Kannada’ agitations, auto driver Shamsuddin had rudely told a passenger to either learn to speak the language or not board his autorickshaw.There’s, of course, a more civilised way of sending out the "When in Karnataka, be a Kannadiga" message, as it were. One can love and promote one’s own language without hating another. Even then, pro-Kannada was not anti-Hindi. Let me tell you an anecdote.By the late 1990s, however, Bengaluru saw, with its rise as the country’s IT capital, the influx of large numbers of people from North India and other Hindi-speaking populations.

Since before Independence, votaries of a unitary idea of India have tried to impose Hindi as the ‘national language’ on all Indians, and votaries of a federalist structure have opposed it, with consequences mostly tilted in favour of the latter. Which was why the sudden rise of demands for the state government and the Bengaluru Metro Rail Corporation to stop this "Hindi oppression", to ensure that Metro signboards are only in Kannada and English, and several instances of actual defacing of Hindi on the boards made national news. A large-hearted writer and teacher espouses a typically Kannadiga view: The anti-Hindi protest in China light box signs factory Bengaluru is a storm in a tea cup, don’t over-react. Shamsuddin told me that the passenger turned back and asked very earnestly, "What should I do to learn Kannada? I don’t see any initiative in Bengaluru to teach non-Kannadigas the language. I have travelled by Namma Metro a number of times, and I have never felt Hindi overbearing on us Kannadigas.

As the migrant population has grown, importing attitudes and behaviours, fear and resentment have taken hold among locals and an ‘Us and them’ narrative can be heard intermittently. All announcements on the trains and at the stations are also only in Kannada and English. And for good measure, he dared the state BJP to oppose the idea! Be the politics of it as it may. It has never been Kannada at the cost of Hindi.When such is the reality, why are we seeing the rise of anti-Hindi protests? Why are those ostensibly fighting to save Kannada so angry over Hindi?Unlike in Tamil Nadu, where the anti-Hindi agitations have occurred since at least the 1930s, peaking in the 1960s with, and propelling, the rise of the Dravidian parties, a strong movement to save and promote Kannada took root only in the 1980s with the ‘Gokak Chaluvali’.The street-level response to this has been the rise of self-styled "protectors of Kannada" language and culture who, at various times, have gone about forcing shopping malls to play only Kannada songs, threatened cab drivers into speaking only Kannada with their passengers, tearing up posters of Hindi movies, agitating against the absence of Kannada on bus tickets and gas cylinders, and the like..The anti-Hindi sentiment has for decades been strong among Karnataka’s neighbours, most notably Tamil Nadu