Bengaluru: A day after Haj and wakf minister UT Khader said govt plans to hold an Urdu festival on the steps of Vidhana Soudha on Nov 9, BJP legislator and former minister S Suresh Kumar urged chief minister DK Shivakumar to drop the proposal.Reports said the proposed event will showcase Urdu culture, books, cuisine and various art forms. In a social media post Wednesday, Kumar questioned why Kannada literature and culture had not been given a similar platform.“The issue is not about Urdu, but govt’s priorities,” he said. “How many times has Kannada language, literature and culture received such a grand platform under Congress govt?”He also questioned why the steps of Vidhana Soudha, which he described as a “symbol of Kannada identity”, were chosen for the event when Bengaluru has several venues for cultural programmes.Kumar said BJP had no objection to govt promoting Urdu literature and culture, but asked whether similar opportunities would be extended to other linguistic communities.“If such an opportunity is not being extended to other languages, what is the criterion for giving Urdu this platform?” he asked, referring to Tamil, Telugu, Malayalam, Marathi, Hindi, Konkani, Tulu and other languages spoken in the state.He alleged the decision could create an impression of an attempt to appease a particular community and said govt platforms funded by taxpayers should not be used for “vote-bank politics”. Kumar asked the govt to clarify whether the programme was intended solely to promote Urdu language and culture and whether similar events would be organised for other linguistic communities.The controversy comes amid an earlier demand by Social Democratic Party of India for Urdu to be granted official-language status across Karnataka. Citing 2011 Census data and the presence of Urdu-medium govt and aided schools, SDPI had argued that official recognition would help Urdu speakers access govt services and public information in their mother tongue.
