KASARGOD: For the past four days, the buzz in Karnataka has been that the Kerala government is planning to change the names of border villages in Kasaragod district from Kannada to Malayalam. However, after talking to various officials in the local bodies in the areas, TNIE has found that it is a fake narrative first started by the Karnataka Border Area Development Authority, a government agency.“It is fake news,” said a top officer of the Kasaragod district administration. “There is not even a file or a petition on changing names of villages in Kasaragod with us,” he said.
On June 25, the authority’s secretary Prakash Mattihalli released a press note with the subject line that the Kerala government has changed the names of border villages in Kasaragod district from Kannada to Malayalam. The second paragraph of the three-paragraph note said the Kerala government “has started the process” to change the names of the village.
The press note was released in Bengaluru and widely reported by the media in Karnataka. Mattihalli said the Kerala government has decided to rename Madhur as Madhuram, Malla as Mallam, Karadka as Kadagam, Bedadka as Bedagam, Pilikunje as Pilikunnu, Anebagilu as Anevagil, Manjeshwar as Manjeshwaram, Hosadurga as Pudiyakota, Kumble as Kumbla, Sasihitlu as Shivalap and Nellikunja as Nellikunni.”
The authority’s chairman C Somashekhara said “some local bodies” are attempting to change the names of Kannada-speaking villages in Kasaragod without any consultation with the people. “This would destroy Kannada and Tulu culture existing here for long,” he said.Media reported the press note verbatim, without cross-checking with the Kasaragod district administration or local bodies.
To keep the “issue” alive, Somashekhara met Karnataka CM B S Yediyurappa and urged him to intervene in the matter. Later he said in Bengaluru that the CM assured him that he would take up the matter with his counterpart in Kerala.
Ksgd village names: Kumaraswamy writes to Pinarayi
Janata Dal (S) leader H D Kumaraswamy wrote to Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan that he came to know through media that there was “a move” by the Kerala government to rename some village in Manjeshwar with “Kannada flavour” into Malayalam.“If this is indeed correct, may I sincerely request you to halt the process in the name of linguistic harmony and cultural co-existence,” he wrote. TNIE spoke with the district administration and the people’s representatives of the local bodies in Kasaragod and they sounded baffled. Madhur panchayat president Gopalkrishna K of the BJP said there was no such proposal to rename Madhur as Madhuram. “The government has made no such proposal nor have we asked for a change of name,” said Gopalkrishna. The panchayat is ruled by the BJP for the past four decades.
Anebagilu is a place near Madhur and there is no proposal to change that name either. Karadka panchayat vice-president M Janani said there was no demand from the people to change the name to Kadagam and for reason, there was no such proposal. The panchayat is also ruled by the BJP.
Janani, a BJP leader, said Kadagam was a place 6km from the panchayat headquarters Mulleria. “Kadagam did not take its name from Karadka. Both the names have been around always. The panchayat has two villages, one is Karadka and the other is Adhur,” she said. K Vijayan, head of the Department of History in Kasaragod Government College, said the people of Kasaragod speak several languages and they have their own names for their places. “Malayalis may say Manjeshwaram and Nileshwaram. But officially, the place is Manjeshwar and Nileshwar. There is no proposal to change the names. I come from Kodakad. Some people write the name as Kodakkatt with stress on tt,” he said.
District information officer M Madhusoodan said Kasaragod itself is written Kasargod and Kasarkode and Kasaragode. “Officially, it is Kasaragod. But people have their own way of writing and pronouncing it,” he said. He also said changing the names of places involved a lot of paperwork and process. “None of us heard anything,” he said.An exception was changing the name of a Tulu village called Maire to Sheni in Enmakaje panchayat. The name was changed because the word is profanity in Malayalam. But in Tulu, Maire is a shortened form of Mayoorapara, which means a place where peacocks flock. But even then, Enmakaje panchayat kick-started the process to rename the place by passing a resolution to change the name.
language barrier
Karnataka media and politicians in a tizzy because of a baseless press note from that state’s border area development authority
Not even a file or a petition on changing names of villages, says Kasaragod district administration