KOCHI: When campaigning for the local body polls gained steam, walls in Mattancherry were plastered with slogans in different languages to connect with voters from the different communities that call this Kochi town home. The trend was evident in the Cherlai division of Kochi corporation. Near Mattancherry Palace, a message on the wall reads, “Vote for BJP candidate Pravitha Vijayakumar”, in Gujarati, Tamil, English, Hindi and Malayalam. It’s not to just help them understand the message. It’s the parties’ tactics to woo linguistic minorities in the division by speaking their language.
“A majority of Tamil, Gujarati, Konkani and other language-speaking people here know how to read and write Malayalam. However, there are still a few that don’t know it. Parties write campaign messages in different languages to connect with voters,” said Sandeep, a Gujarat native who settled in Mattancherry several decades ago.
It’s not just Mattancherry. In Munnar and northern parts of Kasaragod and Palakkad, parties distributed pamphlets and notices in Tamil, Kannada and other local languages and dialects to attract the minority population.“We have a sizeable population of Tamil speakers. In election notices, the content is printed in Tamil on one side and Malayalam on the other,” said Munnar panchayat president Mani Mozhi, who is contesting in the elections. “Many old-generation estate workers speak and read Malayalam well but cannot write it.
So, bilingual campaign material is not just a strategy here, it is necessary. The younger generation knows Malayalam well,” she told TNIE. She said candidates of all major fronts distributed multilingual notices and installed Malayalam and Tamil posters across the panchayat.
Election announcements in Konkani, Gujarati and other languages were once common in Mattancherry. Though these communities speak Malayalam, they switch to their mother tongue at home and within neighbourhood groups.
“Before the pandemic, parties and candidates used to distribute leaflets and notices in other languages. Also, on the final day of the campaign and just before the election, we listen to announcements in other languages. We feel closer to candidates when we hear announcements made in our mother tongue. Earlier, this was necessary to help voters understand the candidate and the party. Now, it has become an election strategy,” said Krishna Rao, a Konkani-speaking vendor in Mattancherry.