'Wherever you are, be a Kannadiga'

Kannada Sahitya Parishat

R H Deshpande

Mysore state became Karnataka in 1973.

Alur Venkatarao

It would be difficult for any Kannadiga today to believe that there was no entity called Karnataka before 1956. It was not the question of a territory waiting to be named as a state or of bringing together a few contiguous areas. The stark fact was that the Kannada speaking people were scattered over 22 fragments belonging to two British presidencies, the Hyderabad Nizam’s kingdom and several principalities.

Except in the Mysore principality, Kannada was neither the language of administration nor the prestige language. In most of these regions the native elite used Persian, Urdu and predominantly Marathi, and the ‘Modi’ script had usurped Kannada orthography.

Ironically, it was a few British administrators and officers like Thomas Munro, Walter Elliot and W A Russell who argued powerfully that Kannada was the vernacular language of the people, which had to be taught in the schools. Kannada was denigrated as the language of peasants and merchants. In most principalities, court proceedings were in Marathi (heavily mixed with Persian) which neither the petitioner nor the accused understood!

Understandably, the dream of the unification of Karnataka was a socio-political necessity for North Karnataka, which had been wrongly named Southern Maratha Country with the capital in far-off Bombay. The political presence of Kannadigas was so negligible in Bombay and Madras presidencies that there was no possibility of a political movement for unification. The one possibility was in Gramscian terms, an attempt to create an alternative cultural hegemony by first creating a Kannada consciousness, a sense of the past, of traditions lost and waiting to be rediscovered and a history of the Kannada Nadu albeit with a mix of nostalgia and revivalist historiography.

Socio-political necessity

The historical, political context demanded an idealistic discourse of Kannada with a strong literary-cultural element in it. This is precisely what happened from 1890, the year Karnataka Vidyavardhaka Sangha was established in Dharwad by a small group of men led by Ra Ha Deshpande. It began with the simple agenda of encouraging Kannada writings through awards and creating a Kannada readership through publication of journals.

The impetus of the unification movement later made it one of the significant epicentres of pro-Kannada activity. The history of the unification movement is strewn with the committed work by institutions and associations such as the Kannada Sahitya Parishat, Karnataka Ekikarana Parishat and many more. These created the Kannada civil society of the times and kept the momentum until the formation of Mysore state in 1956, later named Karnataka in 1973.

Another remarkable epicentre was the Normal School or Teacher’s Training College for men at Dharwad, which was associated with W A Russell, Deputy Channabasappa - the diehard missionary of the Kannada cause, and a host of brilliant writers translators and activists such as Venkat Rango Katti, Dhonda Narasimha Mulbagal, Gangadhar Toormani.

Text books were prepared and printed in Kannada, the Gazetteer was translated, regional geographies were constructed, canonical works of Kannada were explicated, making modern Kannada a vehicle of knowledge.

Meanwhile from the early nineteenth century Christian missionaries and scholars had compiled the dictionary (Rev F W Kittel), edited canonical works (B L Rice), collected folklore (Moegling) and written outline histories of Kannada literature (Rice and Kittel).

To support this sense of the great Kannada tradition, was the theorisation of Karnatakatwa (Karnataka-ness) by Alur Venkatarao known as the arch priest of Karnataka unification. Starting with the nostalgic Karnatakada Gatavaibhava (Karnataka’s past glory) he went on to enunciate the philosophy of Karnataka which till today remains the most rational and liberal perspective on
Karnataka.

The unification movement converged with Navodaya movement, literary-cultural movement and the nationalist movement. The native elite-led unification movement could succeed with the support of Gandhi, Patel and the National Congress for linguistic states, many British administrators and commissions which also favoured a rational reorganisation of provinces.

Writers’ role

But the great glory belongs to the Kannada writers from every corner of the yet to be Kannada state. B M Shri declared, ‘there is only Kannada; there is no other resort’ and tirelessly travelled to preach the gospel of Kannada.

Shantha Kavi, Bendre, Kuvempu, Masti, D V G and hundred other poets and writers created a Kannada consciousness which made unification inevitable. The Kannada Nadu embodied in Kavirajamargam (850 CE) and the imagined community called Karnataka became a reality as a modern linguistic state of the Indian union. The unification movement went on to draw lakhs of nameless men and women, who made Kannada their cause at home and on the streets.

The processes of modernity and globalisation have not dented the sense of belonging to a linguistic community, as evidenced by the vibrancy of Kannada associations in the USA and other countries whose members continue not only to celebrate Kannada culture and literature but have also produced significant Kannada writings. Kuvempu’s counsel “Wherever you are, be a Kannadiga” has shown the way.

No grand narrative is seamless and without fault lines. There were strong regional differences, hard political caste-based calculations of those who opposed the unification, dissenting voices favouring regional autonomy and even refusals to take on board the underdeveloped regions. There was also the reluctance of the Nehru-led government to form linguistic states.

Nor has unification brought political or economic equality to all regions. But the fact that Kannada culture, itself a loose federation of many regional cultures, found its political manifestation as a linguistic state is a great cause for celebration.

(The writer is a literary and cultural critic based in Shivamogga)