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Maybe Hyderabad and Ahmedabad are better and will overtake Bengaluru if things continue like this? At least anti-Hindi sentiment shouldn’t be there in these cities, given the large number of Urdu speakers in Hyderabad and the fact that Gujaratis are comfortable in Hindi?
I am a native Bangalorean, but almost every one of my friends has moved here from another city. All of them love Bangalore, and are proud to call it their home.
Firstly, there are no mobs going around, and looking for Hindi speakers/ "North Indians" to attack. Any "anti-Hindi sentiment" you hear about is almost always limited to a situation where someone rudely demands that locals speak Hindi, and are told "It's not our national language". This is almost always triggered by some larger fight, and language is just an incidental strawman that is brought up.
As long as you pick up some 6-8 words of basic Kannada, start with them, and politely ask if people can speak English or Hindi (or Tamil, which also works well in Bangalore), you'll be fine. Almost everyone in Bangalore can speak both Hindi and English at a conversational level (including vendors and cab drivers), but let them lead with the language of choice, and you'll be OK.
Coming to "identity politics"- the government is basically promoting more Kannada. This means that they are pushing for more jobs for Kannada speakers, more visible use of Kannada, and quotas at a lower level (think security guard, sweeper, etc) for Kannada speakers in private firms. There are also local quotas in education (including in CLAT) for people with "Kannada domicile"- but if you look at the names at the top, there are a lot of Agarwals and Mukherjees and Kurians and other non-Kannadiga names. As long as they've been in Karnataka for the qualifying period, they are counted as "locals" and can avail the quotas.
There is also a backlash against the government's push of Hindi over Kannada- and this is a real problem for many people, especially in rural areas. For many years, bank forms were only available in English and Hindi. There was an incident last week where a public sector bank manager refused to help customers who only spoke Kannada, insisting that they speak Hindi. There were instances of some signboards being only available in Hindi and English. A lot of the "language and identity politics" that you speak of comes from trying to correct these Central Government missteps. It's sad that a State government has to step in and do all this, but think about it from the perspective of those who are not getting basic services in their own state and in their own language.
Bangalore is still a vibrant and thriving city, with all the things that makes a city amazing- food, culture, art, sports, and a strong economy. Don't let Twitter and Reddit hot takes scare you away.
This is all false. If you go a vegetable vendor, s/he quote you a different rate depending on whether you speak English or Kannada (I don't even trying Hindi). Most vendors and cab drivers look at non-Kannada speakers as walking moneybags waiting to be milked.
Just because you havent travelled to other cities and realised that this is just a fact of human nature and happens everywhere doesnt mean its something unique to bangalore or even that its something thats fundamentally unjust.
Now when your North India landlady called you madrasan and charged higher rent, how did that make you feel? Did that endear you to North India? Two wrongs don't make one right.
I guess that's the problem with BLR: rather than trying to build a higher trust society, you're busy justifying micro agressions against fellow citizens.
I honestly didnt actually care that she called me a madrasan or charged me a higher rent. I just thought- oh shes stupid, and moved on with my life. Higher rent was justified because I was a practical stranger to her with no one in the city that could vouch for me. I shrugged it off as cost of doing business. Maybe because I'm an actual adult who doesnt whinge about microaggressions. I dont need to be endeared to north india. I have my home town to be endeared to. You cannot have a high trust society with increased migration. Those two things are opposite to each other. You can have a baseline level of trust. I've left phones, laptops, wallets in autos a number of times in bangalore and theyve always been returned to me or left at the police station. I have had parents and relatives collapse with a stroke on the street and strangers have put them in the hospital and left them with their belongings and stayed till I got there. Theres no cameras or at least no one monitoring cameras in most supermarkets. Thats a high trust society. It just is one in which you will still feel like an outsider because you are. Why do you never think about what you're doing to endear yourself to those who are already in the city? apart from complaining and calling us bigots?
Bro, are you 14 years old? I've traveled to every state in India, and a lot of countries outside India. Someone who does not speak the local language is a walking moneybag waiting to be milked, in most of the world.
Within offices/colleges as well, Kannadigas do not welcome outsiders within their friends circle and will always try to dominate the spaces. I have worked in Delhi NCR as well, and the situation is much better. For context, my mother tongue is neither Hindi nor Kannada. I can speak broken Hindi and can mostly understand it while I can't speak or understand Kannada.
2. "Are Hyderabad and Ahmedabad better?": Also no.
Hyderabad is getting there. It lacks the kind of high-paying job market prevalent in Bangalore (Amazon and Google will only hire so many people every year) where there's a startup that's willing to burn VC money on personnel expenses.
Ahmedabad is dead. GIFT didn't take off the way they wanted it to and is now a BPO ghost town. There's no QOL, the summers are horrid, the food is bad and there's nothing to do but leave.
Maybe Hyderabad will be up there with Bangalore in 10 years.
No chance for Ahmedabad. There is nothing going for that city that cream of the cream legal professionals pan-India want to settle there. Even diamond merchants prefer living in Mumbai over Surat despite running their factories out of Surat.
Nothing going for it that makes a 20 something non-Gujarat native professional want to move there over a Delhi Mumbai Bangalore Hyderabad.
in India, rather than those playing identity politics on the basis of region, language and caste.
I'm also a native Bangalorean who can fluently speak Hindi (almost as if I'm from UP) and have worked in Mumbai for some time earlier in my career as well.
First, fully agree with the other Bangalorean fellow - be chill, don't fall for media + social media.
Second, as a legal market Hyderabad is not there yet. Ahmedabad could be of some opportunity especially if you are willing to engage with GIFT City and the regulations there, as more and more financial services firm look to setup a base of operations there. You will also benefit from better infrastructure, lesser people. On the flipside, weather, lack of cosmopolitan culture (at this point in time) and (to the people for whom this is important) it's a dry state.
Last, If you are a lawyer posting on legallyindia looking to (I presume) get high-end jobs, if you think speaking in Hindi is going to make a difference, then that maybe the wrong way of going about it. English is where our agreements get written in, unless you are a litigating lawyers - then local language is important.
PS: Shift where you think is best. Don't crowd source your opinion or troll on platforms like these.
PPS: The weather is peak Bangalore right now. If you were here for more than 3 days, I'm fairly confident this post would be irrelevant.
Do list out some of the instances of "toxic identity politics" that are being done by the Congress in Karnataka, as you claim.
Once you do that, please also confirm that no BJP state government has ever done any of those identity politics things.
If you can show that you're not a gullible BJP supporter, but have actual data, I'm happy to engage on this in depth.