Language war breaks again on social media

Bengaluru: The incident at the Chandapura Branch of State Bank of India (SBI), where a staffer refused to speak to the public in Kannada, has yet again triggered the language row on social media.

A row erupted after a X user– @kush07, who claimed to be an entrepreneur, posted that his company has decided to shift to Pune after the incident at SBI.

In the post, he said that the decision was taken to prevent his staff from becoming the “next victim”.

“Today I took a decision to wind up our Bangalore office in the next 6 months and move it to Pune. If this language nonsense is to continue, I do not want my non-Kannada speaking staff to be the next "victim". This idea was mooted by the staff themselves.

I agreed to their POV,” he posted on X.

While the social media was already abuzz with various comments after the SBI office incident, the post added to the discussion.

A war of words broke out after many Kannada activists said that the move was welcome, to which the user said that many more companies would follow.

Many others also opined that there was nothing wrong in learning the local language.

SBI to begin annual language training from May 28

A post informing that the SBI was conducting Kannada classes to it's staff after the incident surfaced on X recently. However, senior SBI officials confirmed to DH that it was an annual training program and had nothing to do with the incident.