IPL 2020: Hindi-dominant anthem upsets RCB fans

The Royal Challengers Bangalore’s official anthem for the season was met with widespread criticism on social media on Friday. Minutes after the franchise released the video on its social media platforms, fans were upset with the dominance of Hindi in the anthem.

“The official RCB Anthem is here! And it’s dedicated to the best fans in the world. Time to crack up the volume to the maximum. 12th Man Army,” RCB said on Twitter.

Local fans were upset that the Bengaluru-based franchise had used more Hindi words in the 1:46 minutes video. Recently, an 'anti-Hindi imposition’ movement has gained momentum in Karnataka after several social media campaigns by pro-Kannada activists. A section of fans felt RCB was ignorant of people’s recent fight against the Central government’s sidelining of regional languages to thrust Hindi upon them.

“The outrage is a genuine one. Just like how @Chennai IPL adds local flavour with Tamil, @RCBTweets’ fans asking for a Kannada song is justified. After all, Kannada is the official language of Bengaluru,” posted former India and Karnataka pacer Dodda Ganesh on his Twitter handle.

Ardent fans of RCB have always demanded the presence of local players in the side and it didn’t go down well with them that the local language wasn’t given prominence in the anthem.

In the anthem, only four Kannada words are used on loop while the rest of the content is in Hindi and English. Reactions from upset fans meant that hashtag #RCB Anthem began trending on Twitter. Four hours after they released the first video, RCB released another anthem calling it ‘Kannada rap’ with a small segment of Kannada in it.

The anthem received some positive response too with people defending RCB saying the team has fans across the world and the anthem catered to all of them.