I am from Karnataka, and my cousin’s child is currently studying in an ICSE school here. Hindi is compulsory from 1st standard onwards, with no apparent option to choose another language.

In Karnataka, Hindi seems to be imposed in many ICSE schools from a very young age, even though Kannada is the state language. I am curious whether this is an ICSE wide thing or specific to Karnataka.

For those from Tamil Nadu, Kerala, Andhra Pradesh or Telangana, is Hindi compulsory in your ICSE schools too, or can students choose another language?

While I'm not a classic Vadakkan, I could be considered half. My ethnicity is Bengali but I'm the second generation born and raised in the classic cow belt. That's where I have also worked all my life. I have nothing against the language (or any language for that matter) but their default behaviour is another matter.

I used to behave like them as a youngster but experience has taught me some things. First, they still think Hindi is the national language despite the fact that India formally has no national language. Second, unless you count exceptions, their behaviour is the worst of all Indians. Rudeness is the default and they think using crude swear words is very smart. Third, they think their culture is the topmost but whatever there is, isn't any older than just a few centuries and nothing very distinctive (I'm quite familiar with it).

I had done my engineering internship from Trichy. That's a place where no one knew Hindi, and very few knew even English. This was at a time when Chennai was still called Madras. It took me about two weeks to pick up rudimentary Tamil to manage the basics. Now I visit Bengaluru for about a month every year and can manage basic Kannada. No language is really difficult to learn, it's simply a matter of intention. And yet they never try or even bother. It's funny because the same characters will learn Spanish or Russian if they are in such places.

Currently they are quite literally swarming like roaches (their tag, not mine) all over our city sub, which is about the same size as this one. They display all three characteristics to the maximum extent. It's called pre-planned brigading, but they are like real roaches, even more are born (or maybe reborn) than can practically be eliminated.

Living in MH, i remember as a kid reading marathi newspapers that not just vilified Tamilians but tagged them as anti nationalist for pushing back on Hindi.

Even in my own opinion at that time I couldn't grasp how Tamilians could prefer a foreign language like English over Hindi an indian language ; I considered it very anti india.

Today seeing the condition of Marathi in my own state - and how anyone opposing Hindi is freely tagged as pakistani, anti nationalist, all the Hindi brainwash is undone and I can only feel apologetic for what Tamilians had to go through for years for simply choosing to preserve their own language.