Karnataka may toe Tamil Nadu line, adopt two-language policy

Chief Minister Siddaramaiah has hinted that Karnataka may adopt a two-language policy in school education, a decision the neighbouring Tamil Nadu took in 1968. Schools in Tamil Nadu teach Tamil and English, but those following the central syllabus also teach Hindi.

“I am in favour of a two-language policy. The Cabinet will discuss the subject, and the government will take a decision on this,” Siddaramaiah said, speaking at a Kannada Rajyotsava celebration in Bengaluru on Sunday evening.

“The state government would not oppose Hindi, but Hindi is not our national language. Kannada is our sovereign language,” the CM said.


Siddaramaiah, who spearheaded a pro-Kannada campaign way back in 1983 as chairman of the State’s Kannada Watchdog Authority, regretted that the air in Karnataka does not create the compulsion on outsiders to learn Kannada.

The chief minister, who makes it a point to write his comments on official files in Kannada as well as sign in Kannada, urged his fellow Kannadigas to engage outsiders in the local language.

MoS (Education) Jayant Chaudhary informed the Rajya Sabha, early this month, that ‘education’ falls in the concurrent list of the Constitution, and hence, most of the schools in the country come under the administrative control of the states/union territories. The National Education Policy 2020 too respected diversity and local context in all curricula, pedagogy and policy, the MoS said.