‘Bengaluru Would be Empty If North Indians Leave’: Insta Influencer’s Remarks Trigger Row, Locals Ask Her To Leave

Amid the ongoing Kannada vs North Indians in Bengaluru debate, an Instagram influencer triggered a controversy by claiming that if all North Indians would leave Bengaluru, the metropolitan city would be empty.

In an Instagram reel filmed in Bengaluru’s Koramangala area, influencer Sugandh Sharma said that if North Indians leave Bengaluru, even paying guest accommodations (PGs) will be empty.

The video quickly went viral, sparking outrage, with many calling her remarks disrespectful to the city’s culture and heritage.

Outrage

As the post went viral among the netizens, many people, from celebrities to common citizens, condemned the remarks as divisive and disrespectful.

Public figures including actor and rapper Chandan Shetty, actresses Chaithra Achar and Anupama Gowda, and Bigg Boss fame Rupesh Rajanna and Dhanraj also voiced their discontent, criticising Sharma for her remarks.

Shetty criticized the video as a publicity stunt, while Gowda stressed the importance of maintaining harmony in Bengaluru’s multicultural landscape.

“If you can actually leave, just as an experiment, and see how Bangalore becomes empty, we are ready to live with that emptiness and dancers less pubs. We can live with it. Really♥️. Forget all other North Indians. You leave ma’am, enough for now!” Achar commented.

“If you think this is cool, nope it isn’t. You need Bengaluru more than anything else and you leaving Bengaluru doesn’t make any difference to our OORU and for a fact that we all you can’t leave bengaluru – If you know you know ,” commented Gowda.

Earlier incidents

Earlier in July, a woman shared her challenging experience while working in Bengaluru. “What a harassment it was to commute in auto from flat to office and back. The audacity of local auto drivers to strike a conversation on why I was in Bangalore when I belonged to North, if I was learning Kannada, asking if I like anything apart from weather, asking for more money as I was newly married and pretending not to understand a word when I would talk in Hin/Eng,” she had shared, calling her interactions with the locals “very bad.”

In another incident, a Reddit user shared his horrific experience during his cab journey in the city. “After getting into car I asked driver to switch on the AC primarily to avoid dust. The driver started saying in Kannada that why AC, you cancel the ride,” began the Redditor. Politely, he told the driver, “Please drop me right away and I don’t want to go in your car. But, this was the tipping point.

According to the Redditor, the driver became furious. “He switched on the AC immediately and started driving car completely like insane. Sudden brake, sudden acceleration and kept doing rash driving. I have vertigo problem so I though sudden jerk like this might trigger the dizziness” he had said.