Bangalore is a very old city with being cited in the pages of history thousand years back. Being built by Kempegowda, the city was under his and his son’s control for a while but then they lost the city to the Sultan of Bijapur. He then in turn gave the city to his general Shahji Bhosle, a Maratha. This is where the diversification in our city starts. Going a little further, the prominence of Bangalore rose when it became a cantonment under the British Rule. Being a cantonment along with its sister city Hong Kong, it was pretty clear that development in the city would take to a new height. This is when the city started feeling presence of the Englishmen. These Englishmen, still living in the Indian Subcontinent after independence came to be known as Anglo-Indians.
From the pre-independence period till the beginning of Bangalore’s IT boom in the late 1970s, Bangalore was basically constituted with the 4 major south Indian communities, being the majority and other linguistic communities from other states stayed as the minority. People used to migrate to this city in search of better jobs. And this was an opportunistic reason as with the arrival of Texas Instruments, a multi national company; Bangalore soon became a hot spot for many educated and skillful people around the country. With the arrival of the IT mania, Bangalore became hugely populated with all most all linguistic communities settling here.
Bangalore in turn has been quite helped by this diversification as it has played an integral part in making our city more interesting. We gotta accept that it is the only reason for the availability of variety of foods we see in a restaurant menu. Nowadays we even started embracing other communities’ cultural festivals like celebrating Durga Puja along with a Bengali friend or Pongal along with a Tamil neighbor. In fact, the way people celebrate Ganesh Chaturthi in Bangalore, with that glam and splendor has actually been a common tradition in Maharashtra.
Bangalore in a way has broadened its outlook with its diversification which in turn makes it a cool and free city. Though I am a Bengali in the end I would say “Bangalore is my hometown and I am a proud Bangalorean”.