I'm sad to see how a lot of you all are pissed about this. I'm a native of this city. A Kannadiga. This propaganda of having such strong measures and sometimes some hardcore Kannada lovers causing havoc and chaos is all because of one important fact. The population of people who are native Bengalurians and speak Kannada as their native language is decreasing by the day with increasing number of people who don't speak Kannada but enforce to speak either in Hindi or English and not have to basic curiosity to learn atleast the basics of a language spoken by the locals.
Now you might find this weird and funny. But imagine your kids in your hometown having to learn other languages over your own native language just because the others living around them do not speak the language of the locals. This leads to not being proficient in any of the languages they learn, not even in their own native language.
I've been to Singapore and the people there suffer by this issue because of having too many dialects and native languages that differ from area to area and town to town which has forced them to learn what we know as the Singaporean English for standard communication.
THIS IS THE MAIN ISSUE. WE DON'T WANT OUR KIDS TO BE MULTILINGUAL AND FAIL TO BE PROFICIENT IN ANY LANGUAGE for best communication.
Don't get me wrong. I'm not supporting whatever the CM or his gang says. I'm supporting the root cause.
Now, if this gets enforced and you'll move to other cities like Chennai or HYD or anywhere where the locals language isn't Hindi, this issue will continue to exist.
Forget about my kids or future generation, even I face this communication issues at Office. I can understand Hindi good enough thanks to exposure to Bollywood and basics hindi from class 8 to 10. But at work, most people in my team speak fast in Hindi and I have to ask them to repeat. And they fail to communicate well in english because of their lack of proficiency. But I'm learning Hindi from them as well as they are learning some basic Kannada from me. Helps us get around the local vendors and people who speak either of the languages.