“Nimage kannada barutha?”

By Lakshmi P. Nair, Vedanth Mohit

By Vedanth Mohit, Lakshmi P. Nair

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For many migrants in Bengaluru, this question arrives early and stays long. It surfaces in buses, at construction sites, in rented rooms, at traffic stops, and sometimes even in casual conversations. On paper, it asks about language. In practice, it moves beyond those confines: How far do you belong here? It operates as a political marker, drawing boundaries around who is seen as local, legitimate, and entitled to the city. It questions one’s act of assimilation into a city they came to, several years back, for work and stayed. 

Bengaluru has grown through migration. Its transformation into a metropolitan city has relied on the steady arrival of people seeking work, such as white-collar professionals, blue-collar labourers, and those in the informal structure of gig economies that keep the city running quietly. 

Yet this shared dependence on migration has not produced shared experiences of the city. Language becomes the point where these differences sharpen. For white-collar migrants, English often absorbs the friction of movement. It offers a buffer, allowing one to live and work in Bengaluru with minimal engagement with the local language; while for blue-collar and informal workers, Kannada is unavoidable. It governs wages, safety, housing, and access to state institutions. Not knowing the language is not a mere communication barrier and it would be infantile to treat it as such; it exposes them to everyday forms of vulnerability.

What complicates this further is the expectation of assimilation. Migrants are often told to “learn Kannada” as a moral responsibility. Many do, through work and survival. Yet learning does not always lead to inclusion. It is important to note that this is not reserved only to Karnataka or the city of Bangalore. Maharashtra and other states have been privy to nurturing similar sentiments of enforcing the native language upon the migrants. But, migrants tend to live in a space of limbo where even learning the language will never guarantee assimilation at the very core. 

Kannada has long been a site of cultural assertion in the face of economic liberalisation and demographic change. As the city underwent globalisation, fears of linguistic erasure intensified. However, these anxieties are often redirected toward migrants, particularly blue-collared, rather than toward corporate and state structures that prioritise English and capital over local culture. The result is a paradox: Kannada is politically asserted in everyday interactions, while institutionally sidelined in elite spaces. For migrants, this creates a difficult terrain as they are expected to adapt to the city linguistically, while the city resists adapting institutionally to its migrant population.