New Delhi: The language row in Karnataka and especially Bengaluru is showing no sign of stopping anytime soon. Now, a tech founder and entrepreneur, Kaushik Mukherjee has decided to move out his Bengaluru-based office to Pune in the next six months. He has cited ‘language nonsense’ as the reason behind the decision.
Mukherjee wrote on X (formerly Twitter), “If this language nonsense is to continue, I do not want my non-Kannada speaking staff to be the next ‘victim’.” He added that the decision is based on the concerns raised by his employees and he agrees to their point of view.
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. https://t.co/M9abD2OYOD— Kaushik Mukherjee 🇮🇳 (@kush07) May 22, 2025
This comes after a recent incident at an SBI branch in the Chandapura area in Bengaluru became the talk of the town. There, a manager, while interacting with a customer refused to speak in Kannada, saying, “This is India, I’ll speak Hindi, not Kannada.” The video of the interaction became viral on social media platforms and Kannada activists and political leaders heavily criticised the manager.
Mukherjee’s post was a reply to Bengaluru South MP Tejasvi Surya, who earlier shared the video and described the manager’s conduct as unacceptable. He wrote on his X handle, “If you are doing customer interface work in Karnataka, especially in a sector like banking , it is important to communicate to customers in the language they know. Being adamant like this is simply not right. I have time and again raised this issue of mandatorily posting local staff or staff who know the local language in banking operations, both inside and outside Parliament. Just a few weeks ago, at a Public Accounts Committee meeting, I had raised this issue to the DFS Secretary who assured me action will be taken to follow a office notification that makes this requirement of local language knowledge compulsory.”
Karnataka Chief Minister Siddaramaiah also slammed the behaviour of the SBI manager and urged the Union Finance Ministry to give bank staff across the nation sensitivity training regarding culture and language. Since then, the manager has been transferred, with both the person and the bank issuing apologies. The manager gave a statement in Kannada, promising increased sensitivity in future while dealing with customers.
The KDA (Kannada Development Authority) has said the trend of employing non-Kannadigas in bank roles which needs public interaction has increased whereas local citizens expect services in their mother tongue. RBI has made it mandatory for every bank to provide services in English, Hindi, and the regional language.
