Editorial: Kamal Hassan’s trifling act

Despite being a multilingual actor and director, Kamal Hassan appears to be ignorant of the history of languages and their strong link with people’s sentiments

Kamal Haasan is a versatile and method actor known for doing meticulous research before donning any role. However, since entering politics, the veteran actor seems to be losing the plot frequently and showing a proclivity to make thoughtless and irresponsible remarks on social and political issues. The septuagenarian star has now triggered a linguistic row with his puerile statement that ‘Kannada was born out of Tamil’, a factually incorrect position. It is no surprise that his comments, made during a promotional event in Chennai for his forthcoming movie ‘Thug Life’, triggered backlash in Karnataka where political parties of all hues, and social and cultural organisations condemned the statement and demanded an apology from him. The Karnataka Film Chamber of Commerce has threatened to block the release of his film unless he tenders a public apology while many Kannada organisations have called for banning the Mani Ratnam-directed movie. The ruling Congress and the opposition BJP leaders rose in unison accusing the popular actor of hurting the self-respect of Kannadigas in his efforts to please the DMK which has allotted a Rajya Sabha seat to his party — Makkal Needhi Maiam (MNM). Following the widespread public outrage, the actor made a clumsy attempt to wriggle out of trouble by saying that his comments were made “out of love” and that “love will never apologise.” This clarification has done little to calm tensions in Karnataka, where public sentiment continues to run high. Despite being a multilingual actor and director, Kamal appears to be totally ignorant of the history of languages and their strong link with people’s sentiments.

At the heart of the ongoing row is the origin of Tamil and Kannada — both Dravidian languages with a rich history. They developed as separate branches from a common ancestor, known as Proto-Dravidian, the hypothetical common ancestor of all Dravidian languages, around the 3rd century BC. Because of their shared ancestry, both languages have similar grammar structures, word formation and words with common etymology. Kannada is one of the oldest Dravidian languages with a rich and well-documented history that dates back over 2,500 years. It belongs to the Southern branch of the Dravidian language family, which also includes Tamil, Malayalam and Telugu. The consensus among linguists is that Kannada, along with other languages being spoken in the South, evolved from Proto-Dravidian. Today, Kannada is the official language of Karnataka as well as one of the 22 official languages of India. Over 38 million people speak Kannada as their first language. Since 2008, it also earned the status of being a classical language, a recognition that came after years of struggle. Like how a majority of people believe that Sanskrit is the mother of all languages, people from Tamil Nadu believe that Tamil is the origin of all the other Dravidian languages. It’s a myth that needs to be demolished.

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