Canadian parliamentarian Chandrakanth Arya, hailing from Sira in Tumakuru district, spoke in the country’s parliament in Kannada and posted a video on Twitter on Friday, earning praise in his home State.
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Mr. Arya was elected as an MP for Nepean, Ontario, in 2015 and was re-elected in 2019. He made a brief statement in Kannada saying him speaking in Kannada would make the people of Karnataka happy and proud. He said Canadian Kannadigas had celebrated Kannada Rajyotsava in Parliament in 2018 and now he was speaking in Kannada.
He signed off with the lines of a Kuvempu poem: “Elladaru Iru, Enthadaru Iru…Endendigu Nee Kannadavagiru’‘ (Wherever you are, However you are…always be Kannadiga).
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Posting the video of his speech on Twitter, Mr. Arya said, “...This beautiful language has a long history and is spoken by about 50 million people. This is the first time Kannada is spoken in any parliament in the world outside of India”.
Chief Minister Basavaraj Bommai and KPCC president D.K. Shivakumar tweeted their appreciation for the parliamentarian’s speech. “However tall you grow, you should remember your roots. Chandra Arya has followed this in the true spirit,” Mr. Bommai tweeted. “It makes me happy to see our great Kannada language spoken in the Canadian parliament…Kannadigas across the world must fly high the flag of our mother tongue,” Mr. Shivakumar tweeted.
Mr. Arya, son of a commercial tax officer from Dwaralu village in Sira taluk, has an engineering degree from Bangalore University and a master’s in business administration from Dharwad University. He worked in Qatar and later shifted to Canada, where he was elected to the Canadian Parliament in 2015 from the Liberal Party.