Now at the end of Bigg Boss Kannada Season 12 and the culmination of its most intense season, the focus has finally turned from on-court gameplay to a devastating spelling error. Ashwini Gowda – a finalist and member of the Karnataka Rakshana Vedike (KRV) women’s wing – found herself in the firing line of online hell-bent trolling after she kept spelling Kannada wrong during a final challenge with the ultimate prize in hand. The episode has ignited a heated online debate, and a fair number of viewers have asked how an advocate of such a language could have a lack of the words he or she needs to succeed on an open platform.
The Task: Forming One’s Identity
Bigg Boss recently commissioned the remaining seven contestants to pick "hashtags" that most accurately describe their journey and character through the season over the week of the finale. These were all to be used by fans in social media as a way of promoting themselves in that last vote. When it was Ashwini Gowda's turn, Ashwini Gowda wanted to present herself as a "stubborn" and "very determined" player. After that, however, there was a series of mistakes that caught the viewership's eye like a waterfall of mistakes.
Spelling Mistakes: It was, ‘Chalagarthi’ to ‘Hathavadi’
Ashwini initially tried to write “Chalagarthi” (a determined woman) on the whiteboard. Instead she wrote “Chalagarthi” with the wrong consonant (a ‘tha’ instead of a ‘ta’). She wiped it out and attempted again, but the blunder was already spotted by the cameras. So, when she tried writing "Hathavadi" (stubborn/persistent), instead of proper spelling, she wrote "Hathavadhi" (dha instead of 'da').
The Backlash: "Practise what you preach"
The irony of the situation was not lost on the audience. Ashwini Gowda, in Karnataka, is famous in Karnataka for being the Honorary President of the Women’s Wing of the major Kannada Rakshana Vedike. As a Kannada woman, she was always at issue whenever it was sidelined and discussed in the house and she always took the stand for Kannada language.
The disparity was quickly picked up by netizens and trolls. “It’s sad to see a Kannada activist who’s on the front line of protests without the ability to write ‘Hathavadi’ properly,” one X (previously Twitter) user wrote. Another wrote, “She talks so much about Kannada pride, but she doesn’t know basic grammar. At its extreme, it’s ‘say one thing, do another.’”
Mid-Week Tensions: The Finale Race
This controversy is coming at a crucial time for Ashwini. The house has since been stormed with these seven contestants: Ashwini, Gilli Nata, Dhruvanth, Raghu, Kavya, Rakshitha Shetty, & Dhanush following the unexpected eviction last week of Rashika Shetty. With a mid-week elimination at stake, such negative social media trends can affect the “perception” vote. Although Ashwini has received plaudits for her coolness and maturity through the season's latter half, now that her “spelling-gate” is complete, her critics are being primed again for the grander showdown on January 18, 2026.
