A language should have at least 10,000 speakers to be listed in the census, with anything less getting clustered under the head of “Others”. Spread across south India, as many as 67 districts have Kannada listed as a category, which includes 30 districts in Karnataka, 16 in Tamil Nadu, nine in Maharashtra, five in Telangana, three in Andhra Pradesh, two each in Kerala and Goa, when the 2011 census is taken into account.
Basavaraj Kodagunti, linguist and researcher at the Central University of Karnataka, Kalaburagi, has analysed the language-related data to shed light on the distribution of Kannada speakers on the south Indian landscape.
Only 17 districts in Karnataka have more than 10 lakh Kannada speakers each. Bidar, Yadgir, Gadag, Uttara Kannada, Udupi, Dakshina Kannada, Chikkamagalur, Kodagu, Chamarajanagar, Chickballapur, Ramanagara, Bengaluru Rural, and Kolar districts have less than 10 lakh Kannada speakers.
Dakshina Kannada and Kodagu
If you consider the districts that have more than five lakh and less than 10 lakh Kannada speakers, all the districts in the State expect Dakshina Kannada and Kodagu fall in the category. If you take districts that have more than four lakh and less than five lakh Kannada speakers, Dakshina Kannada and Kodagu still remain outside, but interestingly Solapur in Maharashtra enters this category.
When districts which have more than two lakh and less than four lakh Kannada speakers are considered, Solapur of Maharashtra and Coimbatore and Krishnagiri of Tamil Nadu come in and Dakshina Kannada and Kodagu still remain outside the category.
In all, 40 districts in the country have more than one lakh Kannada speakers, which include all the districts in Karnataka, four districts in Maharashtra (Solapur, Sangli, Pune, and Thane), four districts from Tamil Nadu (Coimbatore, Krishnagiri, Erode, and Nilgiris) and two districts from Andhra Pradesh (Anantapur and Kurnool).
No shared borders
Interestingly, of the 10 districts outside the State having more than one lakh Kannada speakers, three districts – Pune and Thane in Maharashtra and Coimbatore in Tamil Nadu – don’t share borders with the Karnataka
There are 46 districts in the country that have more than 50,000 Kannada speakers, including 30 districts in Karnataka, seven districts in Tamil Nadu, five districts in Maharashtra, three districts in Andhra Pradesh, and one district in Kerala.
Mr. Kodagunti says that his study gives a view of the distribution of Kannada speakers outside the State and can help the government design policies and programmes focusing on the Kannada speakers outside the State.
“Since there was no decadal census in 2021, I had to rely on the 2011 census data to analyse the distribution of Kannada speakers. The analysis showed interesting facts about the significant distribution of Kannada speakers around Karnataka,” Mr. Kodagunti told The Hindu. He plans to compile his analytical essays based on linguistic data into a book soon.
Published - February 03, 2024 07:26 pm IST
