Bangalore Blog 6 - Why are Kannadigas and other localites across the world getting angrier?
I’ll start this piece with the most boring but necessary to understand part and I promise you that you will understand why, once you read the rest of the piece. So please bear with me and pretend as if you’re listening to Richard Feynman. The Bangalore part will come in good time, I promise.
Jonathan Haidt is in the news this year with his stellar work in the book “The Anxious Generation” which is in most of the “best books of 2004” lists you’ll come across. It highlights how the mobile phone and social media has made Gen Z and Gen Alpha probably the most anxious generation in modern human history by its non-stop anxiety inducting mechanisms.
Haidt, had also written another stellar book a few years ago called “The Righteous Mind” which revolves around his “Six Moral Foundations Theory” where he tries to explain why people are conservative or liberale special importantly based on how they can be rated across these 6 foundations. For example, he tries to understand how people react to their freedom being restricted or how they would react to immigrants from war stricken nations getting shelterespecially and food support for free.
The 6 of them are listed below. If you really want to read more about this in great detail, please look up his book.
Conservatives/right wingers usually rank higher when it comes to 2, 3, 4, 5 and 6, especiallly for 3, 4 and 5. They feel that traditions must be respected, they should band together for people of their kind so that “outsiders” who are here to destroy your way of life be kept at bay and finally be defining what acts can are acceptable are what are not.
Now that I have given you a crash course on the 6 moral foundations, let’s jump into the main topic.
“Localites” are getting angrier than even the world over
Donald Trump has just appointed an Indian origin guy called Sriram Krishnan to be an advisor in the field of Artificial Intelligence when his term commences. This comes on the back of Trump appointing Kash Patel, another person of Indian origin, as the next director of the FBI. The next Second Lady of America, Usha Vance also happens to be of Indian origin. Most importantly, the second most important man in the House, Elon Musk is also of South African origin.
This has blown up in a rather ugly manner by some right-wing trolls and opportunists who now have a new punching bag to vent out their frustration on.
It’s a fact that people on social media can tend to be viler than they are in real life and topics like immigration tends to blow up easily with some nasty takes.
Conservatives and the far right tap into principles 3, 4 and 5 seen above. They feel a threat to their existing way of living and fear heterogeneity from these immigrants and then tend to band together in racist and neo-Nazi groups (loyalty/betrayal). They then tap into foundation 5 (sanctity/degradation) to categorize immigrants as lower creatures who smell, don’t have hygiene, have a terrible accent and cluster-fuck together. They tap into principle 4 (authority/subversion) and talk about how illegal immigrants are criminals and rapist and eat your dogs and do not follow the law and order like a decent citizen should be. They also tap into principle 3 (fairness/cheating) and feel that these immigrants unfairly game the system and get social security (asylum seekers) or “game the H1B Visa” and take away the jobs of “hard working Americans”.
It’s funny how most Americans forget that most of them are also products of mass migration to America in the last 120 years. Maybe they didn’t get the memo on time or maybe they can’t read memos. I’m not sure.
Beyond migrants alone, Europeans are also really angry with tourists - A friend of mine who was working in Europe did a solo trip to Croatia recently. When I asked him how Dubrovnik was (the place made famous due to Game of Thrones), he said he found the locals to be rude. This is not an isolated incident; you will read about dozens of stories of how people were treated rudely on their dream vacations to various European countries. I’ve felt the same, to some extent as well.
I assume that you, the reader, have either visited some European country or at least seen photos of a truckload of tourists in popular spots. So many big ticket places have huge crowds - the Louvre, the ColSlovaikaoseum, the Vatican, the Amsterdam City Centre, Santorini, Sagrada Familia and so on. If a part of the charm of visiting a place goes down because of the hype and fake colours on Instagram, a little more of this charm goes down after you experience the massive crowds and your trysts with certain rude localites.
But that is so unfair right? How can these uncouth locals be so angry with the very people who are getting them so much of revenue and so many jobs? Don’t they have any decency?
If you try to put yourself in the shoes of the locals, you may understand the reason behind their resentment. Imagine that you’ve lived near Las Ramblas in Barcelona or Amsterdam City Centre or the Halstatt Village in Austria for decades. Tourists always came and went and you largely coped with it. But in the last 10 years, tourism has exploded due to social media (specifically Instagram) and easier connectivity. Many of the flats and houses in your neighbourhoods are now rented out via Airbnb by large investors who have taken over the houses. Your landlord asks you to move out of your house and now you absolutely struggle to get any other house within your modest budget. Your erstwhile peaceful street is now full of loud tourists who create a ruckus even late at night and your street sees waves of tourists who come to take a photo in your street for that dream Insta worthy pic. There is garbage in the streets always and the smell of piss in the dank corners.
You are so tired of complaining to the authorities or asking people to not disturb politely. It’s only natural that you would begin to feel some resentment towards tourists whose money ends up going in the pockets of a select few only but leaves you worse off in so many ways.
Europeans are also increasingly anti-immigrants and this is clearly visible in the outcome of major European elections where the right wing is now in power or is much more powerful than before in countries like Italy, the Netherlands, France, Sweden, Slovakia, Czech Republic, Germany and so on. In fact, I had I read a full book about a tirade against immigration to Europe called The Strange Death of Europe: Immigration, Identity, Islam by Douglas Murray where the author basically says that Islam is not suitable to modern European ethos and is responsible for the cultural degradation and lower safety levels being witnessed in Europe. He also states that just because his colonial ancestors had captured these lands (source of the migrant immigrants), it does’t mean he needs to be made to feel guilty all the time for it.
Canada has passed new laws recently that aim to curb immigration because of the massive shortage of housing and spike in inflation that was a result of the 0.5 million immigrants (1% of population) that were making Canada their new home every year.
The feelings of Europeans/Canadians can also be describes by Haidt's 6 moral foundations, just like how I used the same to describe what American’s think about immigrants.
The pro-Kannada and anti-Hindi brigade in Bangalore/Bengaluru:
Now, this blog is called Bangalore blog 5, so there must be something about Bangalore right? Yes, we’re finally there!
The theme of this blog came to my mind in the last few years when the pro-Kannada and anti-Hindi movement has picked up pace in Bangalore.
Regular readers may know my blog will know that this is a city I’ve grown up and have a lot of affinity towards. Bangalore has grown up from a sleepy but rich city to a blown up metropolis that is barely struggling to keep up. So much has changed, more for the worse than good. I’ve written about the same in the following blogs.
As I’ve written in these pieces, Bangalore has been extremely tolerant towards all kinds of migrants over the last few decades- the business people from Rajasthan, the engineers from Kerala and Andhra to the labour from Tamil Nadu. My father was a migrant himself, way back more than 4 decades ago. I call Bangalore my home and I consider myself a localite as much as any native Kannadiga, despite my Kannada not being fluent by any means. I take pride in knowing the city almost inside out and giving obscure recommendations of things to eat and places to visit to people who seek it.
Kannadigas, especially those in Bangalore, are a welcoming lot and that is why Bangalore has grown bigger, largely peacefully, over the decades. But just like how the US/Europe has seen a huge influx of skilled/unskilled migrants and how Europe is struggling to accommodate the mass arrivals of tourists, Bangalore is also truly struggling to grow sustainably amidst these waves of expansion.
In the midst of this unending expansion where they feel that their city is being snatched away from them, they also feel that their identity is being taken away from them. 2 primary pillars (amongst others) of identity is religion/caste and language and it makes sense why most of the riots in India have taken place because of these 2 factors. Once you threaten these 2 core items, your bring out the worst in those who feel threatened and they then band together to fight back.
Just like the Tamilians reacted to Hindi imposition across the 20th century, Kannadigas also feel threatened that their language is being taken away from them in bits and pieces and Hindi is being dumped onto them in the garb of a “national language” (India has 22 scheduled languages and no single national language).
I seen this daily first hand and as someone who is not a Kannadiga but considers himself a localite, I get why Kannadigas feel threatened. At first, they coped with mass migrations from neighbouring states like TN, Andhra, Kerala and Rajasthan and got just a mildly irritated but coped up with it. But at least these migrants largely learnt to speak in Kannada because both business and labour required some basic knowledge of Kannada. Now, a larger wave of (largely) Hindi speaking people have come to Bangalore, largely working in the knowledge sector and expect all the Kannadigas to speak and understand Hindi, with a sense of entitlement. I stress on the word “entitlement” here. I’ve got this feedback from a lot of my well-meaning and “chill” Kannadiga friends.
“I’m okay with people speaking in Hindi with me and I try to answer back in English or the bit of Hindi I know. But when someone expects me to know Hindi and question me on how I don’t even know Hindi, it pissed me off”
Moreover, what pisses me off is when people say “Bangalore is what it is because of migrants like us” which is such a shallow and uneducated thing to say. I strongly suggest thaty they read up more in books like this Discovering Bengaluru by Meera Iyer.
To my friends from the North - please identify this blind spot of yours when you speak to non-Hindi speakers in general. Be respectful if someone doesn’t know Hindi. I always suggest most people to speak in very basic English whenever possible instead of speaking in Hindi. If you can manage to learn some very basic Kannada beyond “Kannada goteeela”, that’s even better. Secondly and more importantly, this is my personal request, please show that you care for the city as well.
I also blame Kannadigas to some extent as well. A chunk of the jobs and businesses were taken over by migrants because of their resourcefulness and hard work rather than some kind of cheat code. Also, India happens to be a free country where one can migrate as per their wishes. This is not too dissimilar to how the business community in Kolkata is dominated by Marwaris because the Bengalis were too busy being lazy or feigning intellectual superiority. Kannadigas have been far to kind to the dynastic/casteist/crony political leaders in Karnataka for far too long and have continued to patronize them and these netas have only milked Kannadigas for their votes and continue to do so.
I strongly believe that most of the social media handles that are at the root cause of this issue have political backing - it's not hard to understand why.
How can Haidt’s 6 moral foundations explain what’s going on here?
It’s a complicated answer but I’ll try to put it forth in a succinct manner. In the 2 images I’ve shown here, you can see how -
Karnataka gets back a lot less tax as compares to the revenue it generates. It essentially subsidizes the northern belt. Locals use the “fairness/cheating” 2nd foundation though which they say that they have been cheated out of their jobs and hard earned money through subsidies given to undeserving and poor states
Similarly, in this screenshot below, foundations 3 and 5 are used to indicate how disgusted this person is to see how an old Kannadiga bastion like Basavanagudi has become (thanks to these migrants?) They feel that the pathetic condition of their once sleepy town is largely attributable to migrants and how they need to band together to put up a fight against these migrants before its too late
The world is changing faster than ever before and things are changing far too rapidly which has not been taken well by a large portion of the population that seeks to maintain some status quo. Capitalism, especially the crony version, is equally at fault here where interests of a large proportion of a country/city’s citizens are given second priority to the money maximizing motives of a select few.
I don’t think any of us can do much about these forces at play, but hey at least you can be a little bit more sensitive to the sentiments of people and their culture, environment or language, be it a good-natured OG Kannadiga from Basavanagudi or on a train in Finland.
