'Are your kids studying in regional language?': Bengaluru techie denied parking for speaking Hindi, sparks viral debate

Arpit Bhayani, a software engineer, recently shared his experience of being denied parking space over talking in Hindi, amid the language row heating up in Karnataka.

"Today, I was denied parking just because I asked the person to move aside in Hindi. I'm okay with what happened, but hear me out, folks...To everyone talking about preserving language and culture, whether in Maharashtra, Karnataka, or any other state, are you actually enrolling your children in schools that teach in the regional language, or are they studying in English-medium schools?" said Bhayani in a post on X.

The incident comes amid a video circulating on social media showed the branch manager refusing to speak in Kannada despite repeated requests from a customer. The manager insisted she only knew Hindi and said, “Where is it written that I should speak in Kannada? Show me the rules. I will never speak in Kannada. You talk to my SBI chairman.”

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Check full text of the post here:
Today, I was denied parking just because I asked the person to move aside in Hindi. I'm okay with what happened, but hear me out, folks...

To everyone talking about preserving language and culture, whether in Maharashtra, Karnataka, or any other state, are you actually enrolling your children in schools that teach in the regional language, or are they studying in English-medium schools?

Let's be honest. The younger generation today is far more comfortable speaking in English than in their mother tongue. Cities are seeing this more, and rural areas will catch up.

We're just a few generations away from a time when English will become the most commonly used language across the country. We already see this happening:

- we type in English
- we're more comfortable reading in English
- hoardings and ads posters are in English
- chips, biscuits, and other packaging are in English
- movie posters are in English
- instructions and manuals are in English
- even medicine labels are in English
- menus at restaurants are often in English
- legal and financial documents are mostly in English
- even apps and websites default to English

We're surrounded by English everywhere. So, why not just make English a mandatory language? (while you continue to have your regional language as the second one) A good fraction of people are halfway there or have some familiarity with the English language for the above reasons.

By the way, I am not asking everyone to converse in it, but English can be that one language that everyone would know to some extent, and would be okay if someone speaks in it (unlike what we have today). This would make our lives so much simpler, and finally

we can shift our focus to the real problems - infrastructure, employment and job, education, research and innovation, cleanliness, climate change, healthcare, corruption, urban planning, etc., we have plenty.

If you agree with me, awesome. If you think this is a stupid take, then someone not allowing me to park just because I asked in Hindi is just batshit crazy.

How social media reacted?
"We don’t see people demanding the natives of foreign countries like Germany, France, etc to speak English/Hindi/etc. In those places, most of us TRY to speak the native language. Why the hypocrisy?" said one user in response to the post.

"Man that’s just insane. Getting denied parking just for speaking Hindi? That’s next-level," said another user.

"This is weird. I have lived in Bangalore for a decade, and I survived speaking broken Hindi (as I speak Malayalam) as no one could speak English. I never faced issue with this. This doesn’t look like the Bangalore I knew," said another user in reply to the post.