A quest for belonging in a time of erasure

Having spent decades abroad, we decided to return home to Bengaluru. The word “home” isn’t geography; this sacred land is a living witness to everything my ancestors endured and built.

To stand on it is to stand with them, not just after them. This is where I feel one with myself and the absence of that quiet fracture I carried during the years I was far from where my roots go deep.

When I returned, I threw myself into every festival. One such occasion was Rajyotsava. What surprised me was the silence within a residential community I resided in — Rajyotsava passed with little more than a performative nod. When I suggested marking it in a meaningful way, the response felt less like curiosity and more dismissive.

Rajyotsava was eventually observed the following year, yet what lingers is not the festivity but the profound indignity of having had to fight for it. Sociologist Orlando Fals Borda called this epistemic violence — when a group’s knowledge and identity are systematically ignored until they cease to exist in institutional spaces.

Karnataka Rajyotsava marks the unification of Kannada-speaking regions in 1956 — a hard-won moment that brought together people divided across princely states. It is a celebration of the very existence of Karnataka as a coherent identity. 

Bengaluru is the most acute example in contemporary India of what happens when a dominant migrant group reshapes the cultural norms of a host community rather than integrating into them. The city’s tech economy drew a massive influx of migrants, primarily from non-Kannada-speaking states.

What followed was not simply demographic change — it was a gradual institutional de-Kannadisation of the city’s social fabric: the absence of Kannada from common spaces, Kannada festivals ignored, and Kannadigas treated as the minority requiring accommodation rather than the host culture deserving respect. Sociologists call this cultural hegemony — when the dominant group’s culture becomes so normalised that any assertion of the host culture is perceived as aggressive, even political, while the dominant group’s imposition goes unquestioned.

Kannadigas have had to fight, repeatedly, for their language to be treated with dignity. This is not paranoia; it is lived history. When a Kannadiga asks for Rajyotsava to be acknowledged and is met with hostility, it lands as a continuation of a historical pattern of suppression.

Dismissing expressions of regional cultural pride can be particularly troubling — it often reframes Kannada pride as extremism, a move used against regional identities across India to silence them. 

I am a Kannadiga in Karnataka. By every historical and geographic logic, I should be centred, not marginalised. The psychological dissonance of being made to feel like an outsider where I most belong is difficult to articulate. The grief has been heavy enough to rewire my idea of home — to feel that this land, sacred to my ancestors, has been reduced to a transactional convenience by those who arrived seeking opportunity but never chose belonging.

Communities that celebrate multiple identities become richer. The refusal to acknowledge Rajyotsava is not just a slight against Kannadigas — it impoverishes every community where it occurs. Migrants who have benefited from Karnataka’s prosperity, infrastructure, and social openness, yet dismiss Kannada identity, take the economic gift of this land while refusing the cultural reciprocity that hospitality deserves. Karnataka’s prosperity has been shaped by the pluralism, tolerance, and accommodating spirit of its people. To live in Karnataka without embracing that ethos of balance and coexistence is to miss the deeper essence of what sustains it. 

Kannada is increasingly absent from public life. RWAs in new residential zones are run by non-Kannadiga migrants with little accountability to local cultural norms. Sociologist Arjun Appadurai’s concept of predatory identities is relevant: when a group feels its identity is existentially threatened, identity politics can shift from pride to aggression. Karnataka’s political class is not unaware of this, yet genuine cultural grievance too often becomes electoral fuel without producing genuine cultural justice. Places like Mumbai and Assam offer cautionary lessons: the cultural grievance was real, but its political channelling produced both protections and violence. 

The city I love — my home — is at a crossroads. What it becomes depends in part on whether voices like mine are heard and given institutional support. That begins not with policy, but with the simple act of a community choosing to celebrate one another.

(The writer is a returning Kannadiga navigating Bengaluru’s changing
landscape while searching for traces of heritage and belonging)

Disclaimer: The views expressed above are the author's own. They do not necessarily reflect the views of DH.