Bengaluru is home to Sandalwood, the Kannada film Industry. The industry produces 120-130 movies an year and has about 10% success rate like other major film industries of India.
Unfortunately, unlike other film industries, Sandalwood is known for banning dubbing of content to Kannada. This unofficial ban on dubbing content effectively isolates Kannadigas who know only Kannada (approximately there are 2.5 to 3 crore Kannadigas who know only Kannada and no other language) from the sea of knowledge and entertainment that exists in other languages.
A poster of Titanic, dubbed into Telugu. Pic courtesy: harithehero.blogspot.com
We must note that the ban has no legal sanctity and is put in place by private trade bodies like Karnataka Film Chamber of Commerce and other similar organisations. The ban was put in place six decades ago in order to give boost to the then-ailing Kannada film industry under the aegis of Legendary actor Rajkumar. The protectionist measure helped the novice industry to scale from less than 10 films a year to more than 100 films a year.
But like other typical protectionist schemes, the continued “PRIVATE” protection has resulted in isolating Kannadigas from receiving worldly knowledge in visual form and is fast turning counter-productive from the view point of increasing the language’s reach. Several past attempts by concerned individuals to debate the unconstitutional ban on dubbing were shot down in the guise of protecting of language and culture by vested interests.
Protectionism, or fanaticism?
Last year when Hindi cinema actor Aamir Khan set out to do a social awareness program called Satya Meva Jayate, he wanted to make this program available in most Indian languages using the means of dubbing. In Kannada, Suvarna General Entertainment Channel was planning to air this program in Kannada. As soon as the news broke out, the sundry trade organisations affiliated to Kannada film and TV industry made sure that Suvarna channel backed off from that idea.
When Suvarna put the first episode of Kannada version on youtube, it received more than 30,000 views in 24 hours and strangely the very next day the video was pulled out from Internet too.
Amidst all this, Competition Commission of India (CCI) entered the scene after a complaint was lodged with it on the grounds that the ban violates the freedom of choice of a Kannadiga consumer from watching the best of entertainment and knowledge programs from across the world in his mother tongue. The dubbing debate seems to have entered the last leg with recent media reports (Udayavani dated 7th January) indicating that the CCI has come down very heavily on all associations affiliated to Kannada Film and Television Industry for their blatant anti consumer and anti-competition actions. This has triggered raging debates on Kannada TV and social media about pros and cons of dubbing once again.
On a serious note, is there anything to debate at all? It’s an open and shut case. Whoever wants to see original content, they should have their choice, and whoever wants to see dubbed content, they should have their choice too.
In this context, we are running a petition requesting the Chief Minister of Karnataka and his administration to ensure that the citizens of Karnataka are able to exercise their freedom of choice. I request all those individuals who believe in liberty, freedom of choice, democracy and rule of law to sign this petition and show your support for this people’s cause.
To support the petition, click here: http://chn.ge/1izOkfI
This write up has been published by Citizen Matters in the Message Forward section, a space for non-profit organisations and individuals to communicate public service / non-profit messages.
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yavattu ilde irodu..ivathu yaake bekagide…ivathu bekagirodu kannada ulisodu…
kannada gotildiro jana modlu kannada dubbing nodi kalili..kannadavaru beredu nodi karnatakadalli kaliyo avasyakathe illa..bekidre kannadavari original nodli
yes, dubbing will increase the kannada films market and it will create good amount of jobs. it will also create a healthy comparative environment, which is necessary for kannda industry right now. it will stop the remake films and it will force kannda industries to come up with creative and good quality scripts. and same time new world of entailment will open up for kannadigas. it will help to bring audience who are staying away kannda movies because of bad and remake scripts.
I Support Dubbing in Kannada as a Kannadiga.
if it Happens then there is a Automatic Competetion Between Films will start & Quality of our Kannada films will Increse.also there is a good relation Between Side Markets(Tolly-Kolly-Mollywood) will also increase.we will defn reach peak in a single decade & will emerge as a 2nd biggest indian film industry for sure.