Language and Right to the City - Janaki Nair

7/28/2019 Language and Right to the City - Janaki Nair

1/10

Language and Right to the City

Janaki Nair

Has the early nationalist vision of Karnataka come to grief, close to turning into a nightmare in the hands of

some groups? This was D R Nagarajs chief concern in an article that discussed the emergence of a morestrident Kannada nationalism (particularly over the last two decades). He distinguished between a fear-

centred nationalism as represented by the writings of M Chidanandamurthy (and the activity of the Kannada

Shakti Kendra) and the spiritual nationalism of earlier writers such as Alur Venkatarao. Consider Alur

Venkataraos message on the occasion of Karnataka unification in 1956:

In short, we should not forget that Karnataka is a much broader entity than Kannada. Not only

the speakers of dialects, we should also not forget the minorities who speak other

(neighbouring) languages in the construction of united Karnataka this is a principle to be kept

in mind. In other words, Kannada has the dominant status. But knowledge is welcome from all

sides. As someone who keenly conducted the Karnataka movement, I never forget this. Thus,

once when the Marathi library in Dharwar was facing closure, I took it over, added the collection

to my own Bharata Pustakalaya, ran it for some years and when the Marathis here came

forward to manage it, I handed it over to them [Venkatarao 1980].

Chidanandamurthys prose, and the copious outpourings of the Kannada Shakti Kendra, on the other hand

are marked, not just by fear, but by envy of the more muscular Tamil nationalism.1

And indeed the self-

confidence of Alur yields way to the aggressively defensive stand of Chidanandamurthy, and the transition

from this to a secular socio-politics occurred only in the work and vision of P Lankesh. D R Nagarajs own

humanism led him, and several others such as Lankesh, to consistently oppose the language of violence

and militancy as a solution to the predicament of Kannada, and indeed Karnataka itself.2

This secular socio-

political space, which values the multiple strands that make up contemporary Karnataka (not the least ofwhich are linguistic minorities) has been sorely tested on more than one occasion over the last two decades,

and in particular in 1991 and 1994 when two different minorities, Tamils and Muslims, were singled out for

attack, and the current impasse once more strains the relationship between Kannada and Tamil. But one

might go further to suggest that the identity of Karnataka itself is endangered when its constituent elements

are threatened, for who will hesitate to acknowledge Karnatakas debt to the literature and labour of the

Marathi, Urdu, Telugu and Tamil speakers?

Clearly, the triumphant march of computer languages such as Java and C++ through every neighbourhood

of Bangalore, and some other parts of Karnataka, has done nothing to resolve or render irrelevant the crisis

within which the Kannada language and the state finds itself, and may only have accentuated it. Indeed,

When the capitalists give Kannada a sidelong glance [kadeganninda noduthiruvaga], Kannada itself

becomes capital to some says the Kannada Development Authority Chairman Bargur Ramachandrappa, in

his recent plea for recasting Kannada pride (Kannadaabhimanada Katuvaasthava in Prajavani, October 31,

2000). The current impasse, in which a cultural icon of Karnataka, Rajkumar, has been held hostage for over

three months by Veerappan and his allies, closely identified with Tamil Nadu, is a sign of the uneasy fit

between economic development and cultural politics. I have elsewhere argued that the predicament stems

from Kannadas dominated status within Karnataka, not in demographic terms, as the votaries of the Shakthi

Kendra would like to insist, but within economic and cultural spaces. (In demographic terms, after all, the

estimated 40 per cent of Bihari Hindi speakers in Calcutta or the substantial number of Telugu speakers in

Chennai has done nothing to challenge the hegemony of Bengal or Tamil respectively in Bengal and Tamil

Nadu). Rather, if, following Pierre Bourdieu in Language and Symbolic Power3

we adopt the notion of a

linguistic market, an economy within which particular language competences take on value, we may discern

the deeply segmented and far from unified linguistic market which has developed in Karnataka. It is a


2/10

linguistic market that sustains a division of labour between different languages and language competence,

resulting in the very restricted sphere within which Kannada may circulate. The restrictions imposed by such

objective factors as geography and demography, appear then as far less crucial in defining the predicament

of Kannada than those imposed by the economy or the organisation of the political sphere. The

overwhelming dominance of English as an internationally hegemonic language, in the commercial, financial,

scientific or IT fields, or the dominance of Hindi and Tamil in the cultural spheres (e g, TV and cinema)

leaves Kannada to its lonely reign over the literary sphere, and within the space of domesticity. Strenuous

attempts to make Kannada the administrative language of the region have done little to recast the

segmented linguistic market or compensate for the division of labour between languages that has emerged.

Although Kannada has been the official language of the state since 1963, and is by and large the language

of governance, it does not sufficiently undo its dominated status.

Sites of Domination

The name is Karnataka, now let the breath be Kannada (hesaraayithu Karnataka, usiraagali Kannada)

was the rallying call of poet Chennavira Kanavi, which suggests that the linguistic reorganisation of states in

1956, an administrative act, did not automatically bring linguistic dominance in its wake. Clearly, the state

machinery has a large role to play in making this a reality, and as Sumathi Ramaswamys recent work has

shown, even such a robust nationalism as that of Tamil could not do without the states support in making

Tamil the de facto language of the state [Ramaswamy 1998:161-98]. The Karnataka state has repeatedly

been viewed as failing in it duties towards the language,4

calling for the work of associations such as Vatal

Nagarajs Kannada Chaluvaligaru, the Kannada Shakti Kendra, or the Rajkumar Abhimanigala Sangha to

name a few.

It need come as no surprise that the city of Bangalore has become emblematic of the dominated status of

Kannada: by the last census (1991) only 35 per cent of the people declared Kannada as their mother tongue.

This demographic deficit is produced as humiliation in ultra-nationalist discourse. Thus Chidanandamurthy

recalls asking for a ticket in Kannada in the (English speaking/Tamil dominated) cantonment and being

threatened by the manager: more humiliating than the threat was the fact that Kannadigas were mute

witnesses.5

The Kannadiga is here a local refugee said Ra Nam Chandrasekhar, an HAL employee who

has produced some of the most detailed analyses of the demographic data to prove that Kannada has a

fugitive presence in the state capital.6

This is both a result of, and a cause for, the Kannadigas lack of self

respect and the limitless tolerance of others needs which have been represented as positive attributes (the

large heartedness of the Kannadiga or the civilised Kannadiga, etc) and trick the guileless Kannadiga into

happiness.7

The cosmopolitanism which is hailed by the citys bourgeoisie and the English Press in

particular takes on a pejorative meaning in Kannada writings: says G Narayana, former Mayor of Bangalore,

Bangalore is today a cosmopolitan city. If this situation continues [the whole of] Karnataka itself may

become cosmopolitan [Narayana 1997:2]. This demographic lack, these writers suggest, may be

redressed in a number of ways: by encouraging migration into the city from north Karnataka (a phenomenon

that new modes of labour mobilisation, particularly in the construction industry, has already enabled, though

hardly due to the influence of such groups. By the 1950s, as it has been shown by demographers, inter-state

migration was overshadowed by intra-state migration, a trend that has not been reversed).8

The wounds

inflicted by geography,9

namely, the location of Bangalore near the borders of two other states, Andhra

Pradesh and Tamil Nadu, may on other hand, be redressed by banning new industries in Bangalore, as Sa

Ra Govindu, the president of the Rajkumar Abhimanigala Sangha declared.10

This use of demographic data is a particularly attractive stratagem since it quickly lays bare the dominated

status of Kannada in Karnataka and particularly Bangalore, compared with Chennai, Trivandrum orHyderabad.

11But the Kannada movement did not owe its origins to the activities of the Shakti Kendra (begun

in 1988), nor the Abhimanigala Sanghas (begun in 1982). Nor do these groups today monopolise the


3/10

struggle to build a new identity for Kannada. What then were the Kannada movements early forms after

state reorganisation and how have these been transformed since the 1980s to raise not only new demands

but adopt new strategies in the achievement of its goals? How do other groups such as Karnataka

Vimochana Ranga for instance, envisage and work towards another Kannada nation and with what success?

In the early 1960s, there were two principal sites of struggle for the Kannada movement. As Old Mysore and

particularly Bangalore withdrew from its cultural dependence on the Madras Presidency, there was a call tosupport indigenous (Karnataka) cultural productions. Aa Na Krishna Rao (Aa Na Kru) and Ma Ramamurthy

of the Karnataka Samyuktha Ranga were among those who demanded that Kannada singers be given a

place in the annual Ramotsava cultural festivals, then dominated by artistes from Tamil Nadu (Idu

Ramotsava alla, Tamilotsava Aa Na Kru is reported to have angrily said) (Samyukta Karnataka, April 28,

1962). Cinema too was emerging as a site of struggle in the 1960s. On the one hand, leaders of the

Kannada movement objected to representations of Karnataka in Tamil films: in Kanchi Thalaivan (1963) a

Tamil film, the humiliation of Mayurvarman, Kadamba King, at the court of the Pallavas at Kanchi was taken

as a humiliation of the entire Kannada nation, and the movie was withdrawn from circulation.12

There were

also growing demands for the screening of more Kannada films in the city: at the start of his political career,

Vatal Nagaraj threatened to shut down, through violence if necessary, the theatres where Tamil films werebeing shown, particularly in the Majestic area (Deccan Herald, December 28, 1960; February 20, 1962,

September 8, 1962). Finally, in order to stress the separation of the new linguistic state from its earlier

cultural moorings, there were appeals to Kannada actors such as Kalyan Kumar, to refuse to act in Tamil

films. The search for a way to dominate the sphere of the cultural has passed through many phases: even

when Kannada films have a more assured presence in the city, periodic protests against the dubbing of other

language films or remakes have continued.

But there was another sphere in which the Kannada movement was relatively more successful. This was in

the realm of public sector jobs, an entitlement not merely to a salary but a whole new way of life in the city:

good wages for fairly undemanding work were accompanied by housing, transport, subsidised canteens, etc,

all of which were the gains consolidated by a left wing trade union movement. Begun in the 1940s and

1950s, the Big Four units, HAL, BEL, HMT and ITI, employed largely Malayali and Tamilian workers: the

Kannadiga presence was rather muted until the 1960s when a combination of demographic shifts,

management policies and new cultural politics began to gain ground. The Public Sector units were also

important locations of well funded cultural and fine arts groups, at first monopolised by the Malayalis and

Tamils: these were the languages of cultural organisations, as well as trade unions, in the 1970s.13

Since the 1950s, and the development of the linguistic states, migration from erstwhile Presidency areas into

Bangalore has been gradually replaced by migration from the rural Karnataka. As the new linguistic state

consolidates its resources, simultaneously redrawing and restricting the sphere of influence of the

Presidencies, labour mobility (of the Tamil vs the Kannadiga labourer for instance) has been transformed,

slowing down interstate, while enhancing intra-state migration . This process has been matched by

recruitment policies: in BEL, for example, the strength of the AITUC was challenged in 1967 by the Workers

Unity Forum, which consisted primarily of new Kannadiga (middle peasant caste) migrants, who were

encouraged by a management anxious to curb left wing militancy.14

The large number of Kannada Sanghas

which participated in the Gokak Chaluvali of 1982 was ample indication that the tide had turned in favour of

the Kannadigas. Indeed the decision of the Devaraj Urs government to make the Kannada test complusory

for Class 2, 3 and 4 employees in government even led to a temporary decline in the activities of the

Chaluvaligars [Joseph 1994:69, 168]. So much so, the Sarojini Mahishi Committee report which

recommended that 100 per cent of the Group D jobs, 80 per cent of the next scale, and up to 65 per cent of

all other categories in the public sector be reserved for Kannada speakers, came at a time when the

Kannada speakers were a growing presence in nearly all public sector units, though still not the

overwhelming majority. The sons-of-the-soil campaign resurfaced in the 1980s with the Hegde

governments decision to reverse this policy, and became the first agitation on the question of jobs led by the


4/10

Rajkumar Abhimanigala Sangha.15

The Gokak Chaluvali of 1982, at first a movement of litterateurs, artists and academics, centred in the Hubli

Dharwad region, which also included significant numbers of women, brought a fresh and positive unity to the

Kannada movement, while drawing a whole range of new groups to its fold of which the Rajkumar

Abhimanigala Sangha was the most important. The entry of Rajkumar into the Gokak Chaluvali truly made it

a mass movement, with the actor addressing meetings all over the state.

16

In turn, the emergence of theRajkumar Abhimanigala Sangha signalled a new stage in the movement, with the unhesitating use of

violence though primarily against public property (Kannada Stir Turns Violent, Deccan Herald, April 18,

1982). (The only deaths that occurred in 1982 were at Kolar Gold Field (KGF), where Tamil opposition to the

proposed language policy also took the form of violence against public property: five were killed in police

firing after setting fire to the post office and some other mine property).

Informal Economies and 'Politics in a New Key'

Two simultaneous processes in the 1980s altered the composition, course and strategies of the Kannada

movement: the marginalisation of the public sector and its (usually left wing) trade unions, and the increasing

informalisation of the economy. When the long and bitter public sector strike ended in 1981, the eclipse of

this sector as prime employer was already under way. Only sporadic protests could take place on the

question of jobs, for after all, how could the same pressure be put on the private or largely informal sector?

There was the 1984 agitation against the Hegde Government Order on Kannada tests for government jobs,

the later demand for the Wheel and Axle Plant or the Railway headquarters in Bangalore, largely anti-

government protests. Simultaneously , the gradual eclipse of well established arenas of working class action,

such as trade unions, made the informal networks (neighbourhood youth groups, Kannada Sanghas and

Abhimanigala Sanghas in particular) even more important sites of political activity. Large numbers of those

who belong to the Abhimanigala Sanghas for instance are service providers in the city: autorickshaw drivers,

tempo drivers and mechanics, recycling job workers, petty shop keepers, and KEB or BWSSB employees.17

Not surprisingly the more important arena of action in the 1980s was the symbolic reterritorialising of the city:

red and yellow Kannada flag poles that mushroomed all over the city after 1982 were compensating visually

for what might still be an audible absence. The Kannada Shakti Kendra took up these cultural questions with

an added zeal, and the Kannada movement took on more pointed attacks against minorities, particularly

against Tamils. Protests against the principal language of liturgy in churches all over the city, namely, Tamil

or, less often, English, the active renaming of roads, and opposition to symbols which consecrated other

(linguistic) cultural heroes were seen as crucial areas of intervention to make the city reflect more closely the

cultural entity of which it was a part, Karnataka. We could not prevent the installation and unveiling of the

Shivaji statue in the late 1980s said Ra Nam Chandrasekhar, citing the Shakti Kendras more successful

opposition to the Thiruvalluvar statue as a sign of the consolidation of its power.

Even so, the contentious question of language in the city was not serious enough to warrant the attention of

the state apparatuses: the deputy commissioner of police (intelligence) confessed before the N D Venkatesh

Commission enquiring into the violence against Tamils in 1991, that for purposes of collection of intelligence

he had made some classification such as labour problems, communal problems, etc, but he is certain that

linguistic relationships with the City population was not a subject for gathering information (Report of the

N D Venkatesh Commission of Inquiry Volume I:52, emphasis in original). The violence against Tamils in the

Old Mysore region and particularly in Bangalore in 1991 was indeed unprecedented, and further came at a

time when the issue of jobs for Kannadigas was less important than the questions of rights to the land and

water. Steen Volkes very important work on the agricultural uses of the Cauvery river in both Karnataka and

Tamil Nadu points to a wide range of bitter disputes over water rights, usually between head and tail endusers within the same village, with caste (rather than language) playing an important role in deciding water

allocations [Volkee 1995]. Nevertheless, the Cauvery water dispute has since the 1980s increasingly been


5/10

constructed as a dispute exclusively between two linguistic regions [Balekundry 1991].

Land Rights and Geographies of Violence

The historical conjuncture at which the violence against the Tamils occurred in 1991 is of some importance:

it was a time when the right to land whether within the city or elsewhere had become both more uncertain

and yet more critical as a resource in an informal economy. Conflicts over land rights within the city hadheightened in the decade when the population increased by a massive 76 per cent (1971-1981). The

geographies of violence both during the 1991 riots and the 1994 riots against Urdu speaking Muslims reveal

a very interesting congruence. They were both concentrated in the western parts of the city, where land

rights were most precarious, a terrain that was fully occupied by illegal constructions, and further, hilly

ground that made surveillance difficult. The riots did not affect older settlements of Tamils to the east of the

city. The Venkatesh Commission noted that violence was confined to 13 police station limits all of which were

contiguous and in the western part of the city (p 2). In the 20 sq km falling to the Basaveshwaranagar and

Kamakshipalaya police stations, there existed several revenue pockets and slums mostly inhabited by

labour class and migrant poor people considerable number of whom were linguistic minorities (p 59 also p

64). There was a striking congruence between these affected areas and those targeted in the anti-Urdutelecast riots of 1994: the properties and businesses of Muslims were now singled out for attack in the same

western divisions of the city, off Mysore Road [Peoples Democratic Forum, 1994:5, 7]. This area, as

Solomon Benjamin and Bhuvaneswari Ramans new work has clearly shown, boasts of one of the most

vibrant informal economies in Bangalore city, but ironically in an area which has the most tenuous of rights to

property, and where ownership is constantly in flux.18

The authors say of Azadnagar, near the KR market.

The land supply systems in Azadnagar comprises of a variety of sub-systems free sites formed by state

agencies and distributed to poor groups, revenue plots, gramthana or layouts on village land and squatter

settlement. Valmikinagar, one of the largest layout in the ward for example was developed partly by the state

for free sites and partly by private developers. Azadnagar, another large layout in the ward evolved on

gramthana land. In addition, there are a large number of smaller private revenue layouts exist in the ward

Markandeya layout, Vittal nagar layout, Adarsh nagar, Rudrappa garden, etc. Besides, the Bande Squatter

settlement emerged on marginal land in the abandoned quarry area, low lying land in the ward. The

different land settings encompass the variety of economic activities and its actors.

Property here has economic value not merely as housing but also as a source of livelihood, a neighbourhood

workshop. Further, as locations outside the master planning area, claims are established not only via

markets, but also [via] ethnic and political routes. Such fragile and complex economies have been most

vulnerable during the riots of the 1990s.

Both in 1991 and in 1994, the property and livelihoods of Tamils and Muslims respectively came in for far

more sustained attack than lives per se. Of the 23 deaths that are believed to have occurred in 1991, 17

were due to police firing and six due to mob violence (N D Venkatesh Commission Report). Property loss in

these riots was put at Rs 17 crore in both Tamil Nadu and Karnataka by the Indian Peoples Human Rights

Tribunal (Annexure IV). The Venkatesh Commission put the estimate of losses variously at Rs 3 crore (state

and central government losses), at Rs 15.5 crore (as per department of commerce and industries) and Rs

20.5 crore (as per police estimates). In the anti-Urdu riots 25 were killed, an equal number dying as a result

of police firing or stabbing injuries.19

These are shocking statistics for a city that had no previous history of

such deathly violence, but the statistics relating to the loss of private property and livelihoods and the threat

posed to the continuance of certain social groups in the western part of the city were indicative of much more

enduring strategies of altering claims to an area or neighbourhood.20

This definite link between the growing

violence of language politics in the past two decades (and particularly in the 1990s) and transformationswithin the economic sphere, however, must not obscure the work of ideologically constituting, and mobilising,

the Kannada people in the name of nationalism.


6/10

Modes of Mobilisation

It would be tempting to see in the actions of Kannada activists since the 1980s a mimicry of the styles and

strategies of Tamil nationalism. Ironically, in the 1960s, the relative political quiescence of the Kannadiga

was deplored by those Bangalore Tamils who threw themselves into the anti-Hindi protests:21

there is an

apocryphal tale of Tamils sending the shaming gift of bangles to their emasculated Kannadiga counterparts

to goad them into action on an issue that was not their own. The emasculated Kannadiga contrasts with thevirile Tamil, and even in the current effort to correct this characterisation, by the adoption of an aggressive

and even threatening tone, one may detect a common pattern to the gendered discourse on language on

both sides of the border. For language itself is feminised, personified as Kannada Bhuvaneswari/Tamilttay,

while her supplicants, devotees and protectors are overwhelmingly male.22

Mobilisation on the question of

language and state identity has remained resolutely and aggressively male: not only has participation in fan

clubs or language associations been overwhelmingly male, in Karnataka as elsewhere, the female has been

mobilised within this discourse as a revered but weak personification of language itself, calling for the

constant vigilance of her protectors (Thayinadu Prema Thayi Pritiashte Shrestha, Kannada Kanmani, 1993).

The woman is figured not as citizen in this discourse, but an embodiment of regional/linguistic honour: in the

aftermath of the 1991 violence, the Tamil Sangam pamphlet declared: Tamils fleeing the city expressed thatthey could have somehow withstood the physical assaults on them and their properties but not that of the

chauvinist goons laying hands on their women and indulging in outrages like raping and stripping.23

Neither

Chidanandamurthy nor Sa Ra Govindu recognised the need to draw more women into their organisations,

still less recast this profoundly gendered discourse. On his part, D R Nagaraj, while characterising virile

politics as entirely a modern invention, a weapon of the Hindu nationalists, falls back on valorising Gandhi as

the embodiment of an Indian ideal of ardhanareeswara.

The commonalities between the gendered discourses of both Kannada and Tamil may be understood within

the broader context of 19th century nationalist mobilisations that strove to correct the colonial stereotype of

the emasculated Indian male. Rather than the Kannada linguistic movement being simply imitative of the

Tamil model there are quite often common sources for both kinds of characterisations, and modalities of

mobilisation.24

But there are other discernible debts to the political energies of Tamil activists. Dalit poet,

teacher and currently MLC, Siddalingaiah recalls his early tutelage by RPI activists from Tamil Nadu (who

incidentally were vehemently anti-DMK) and the support of the Tamil dalits during the Bhoosa agitation of

1973 when he was himself under attack (Interview, December 1999). This was a time before an exclusivist

emphasis on language marked dalit or trade union politics. The gradual evolution of a stress on (exclusivist)

pride in the Kannada language has thus had serious repercussions on the tolerance for minorities:

suggesting that multilingualism was a mistake rather than a virtue Chidanandamurthy says, at the same

time we too have erred, we know it, we have been too good, we have been addressing Tamilians in Tamil,

Malayalees in Malayalam, without initiating them into our language.25

Fortunately, even the present crisis has not dimmed the pride that many people of Karnataka take in their

multilingualism: deputy chief minister Mallikarjun Kharge spoke in the chaste Urdu of his native Gulbarga to

his NDTV interlocutors; Rajkumar and his family themselves have not hesitated to use language of the

captors in their appeals. This is why the statistics may be altogether misleading, since as K S Singhs

Peoples of India project has shown there is overwhelming indication of the multilingualism of many Indians

(as much as 66 per cent in that sample). Knowledge of Kannada in Bangalore may be far more widespread

than a simple mother tongue count may reveal; the only sections who may afford the luxury of ignorance

may be the card-carrying cosmopolitansor English speakers. There are, in other words, valuable resources

for a more inclusive notions of Karnataka.

However, while it is quite possible to legislate on the language of administration, employment or education,there remains the stubborn question of taste. D V Gundappa, writing in 1950 to R R Diwakar despaired over

the relative unpopularity of Kannada songs:


7/10

We are now supposed to have as many as five AIR centres for Karnataka: But there is not even

one among them which is doing what is necessary to encourage the singing of Kannada songs.

Even the Mysore station prefers to provide Tamil and Telugu pieces as recorded music and the

Mysore Palace artist T Chowdiah prefers to render a Tamil Pallavi rather than a Kannada or a

Sanskrit one (D V Gundappa Private Papers, Karnataka State Archives (KSA), Bangalore).

More recently, Radhakrishna, president of the Jaga Mechida Maga Dr Rajkumar Abhimanigala Sangha

expressed similar dismay over the preference of Kannada speakers for the more lavish productions of the

Tamil or Hindi film industry: the same cinema ticket takes the audience to Simla Kashmir Washington,

whereas the Kannada film shows the same Nagarhole, the same Bandipura, the same Mysore Palace

(Interview, July 20, 1999). Nor is this merely as consequence of the smaller population of Kannadigas in the

country. What cannot be achieved through the mechanisms of persuasion is therefore achieved through the

modalities of compulsion: the compulsory screening of Kannada films in all theatres for a fixed number of

weeks per year has thus been a consistent demand of the Kannada movement.26

Events of the last two decades have hardened the position of both Kannadigas and Tamils who may formerly

have been political allies within the trade union or the dalit movement and even the linguistic movement. Thedefensive Tamil response to the relentless campaign against migration into the city has been to produce a

mythicised past that speaks of Tamils as the original inhabitants of the Bangalore and Kolar districts: even

Kempe Gowda the founder of the city, was a Tigala who belonged to the Tamil Vanniyar caste [Bangalore

Tamil Sangham 1992]. Many solidarities were broken, says the report produced by the Tamil Sangham

(1992), citing attacks by dalits in Siluvepura as a sign that in addition to myths of Hindu, Dravidian or class

identity, even a caste based unity of dalits has begun evaporating in the minds of Tamils. This, despite the

fact that there were many voices raised against the ferocious attacks on Tamils and Tamil properties, by a

range of organisations and individuals in Karnataka, from the Karnataka Rajya Raitha Sangha, the

Karnataka Vimochana Ranga, the womens groups in Bangalore such as Vimochana, to sections of the

Rajkumar Abhimanigala Sangha themselves. Could these alternative positions, no matter how weak, betaken as resources for envisaging another Kannada nation?

Another Kannada Nation

In an important study of the historical cleavage between patriotism and nationalism as it develops in Europe,

Maurizio Viroli (1997:8) suggests that patriotism and nationalism compete on the same terrain and are

antithetical to each other. Identifying the former with republican ideals and fights for freedom rather than a

singular language or ethnicity he says, properly understood, the language of republican patriotism could

serve as a powerful antidote to nationalism. But

the ethnocultural unity [of nationalism without a republican liberty] may translate into civicsolidarity, if a culture of citizenship is erected on it; or better, if the sense of belonging based on

common culture and common ethnic descent is translated into a culture of citizenship. Without a

political culture of liberty, ethnocultural unity generates love of ones cultural uniqueness (if not

superiority) and a desire to keep it pure from external contamination and intrusion. We would

have the nation but it would not be a nation of citizens... Democratic polities do not need

ethnocultural unity; they need citizens committed to the way of life of the republic [Viroli 1997].

Such an opposition between the sites of democratic [patriotic] actions and [modern] nationalisms (and sub-

nationalisms are hardly exempt from the monstrosities of the full-fledged nationalisms, as we well know) may

be relevant in delineating the strands of the Kannada movement. At the present time, there is no doubt that

the dominant strand is one that calls for the kind of ethnocultural unity that Viroli warns against. But there are

many signs of political activities in Karnataka that complicate the picture of a resolutely ethnocultural


8/10

nationalism. Until 1987, said the president of Jaga Mechida Maga Dr Rajkumar Abhimanigala Sangha, the

Sanghas were intolerant, particularly of the large minority of Tamils. After 1987, we realised we were wrong.

By this time, a lot of gaps had grown between Kannada and Tamil brothers...After 1987, our viewpoint

changed. People who live in Karnataka are called Kannadigas. Kannadiga is not the one who knows

Kannada...Those who live here, who migrated for the sake of livelihood...they also are the people of the

state (Interview, July 20, 1999).

And he urged that Both [Kannada and Tamil speakers] should join our movement [which opposed the

rapacious forces of the market in globalised consumption e g, the struggle against Kentucky Fried Chicken

and the appropriation of livelihood resources in return for only an image e g, the ongoing struggle against

the Bangalore-Mysore Infrastructure Corridor]. There is recognition among such groups as the Karnataka

Vimochana Ranga (KVR) that the only language that the Karnataka state is actively promoting is the

language of capitalism, and resistance to that calls for a critique of the development paradigm itself. To what

use must the resources of Karnataka be put? To benefit which people? The KVR, as Ramesh Bairys

research has pointed out, is possessed of a different vision of Karnataka, one that questions and

restructures the frames within which the language question may be posed [Bairy 1996]. The current

campaign to halt work on the massive acquisition of land for the Bangalore-Mysore infrastructure project hasbeen joined by respected Gandhians such as H S Doreswamy, green activists, KVR, Dalit groups and

branches of the Rajkumar Abhimanis.

Other critiques of the dominant voices on the predicament of Kannada have come from unexpected quarters,

and adopt other strategies of mobilisation. The Karnataka Rajya Ratha Sangha, though not unambiguous in

its agenda, has consistently questioned the emerging sovereignty of the market which has begun to reduce

the role of the state to that of service provider. Further, its critique of the absorption of rural resources by

cities has even led to a demand that no more Cauvery water should be allowed to flow into the city of

Bangalore. A strong feminist critique of the gendered discourse of linguistic politics has laid bare the

inadequacies of norming the subject of the Kannada nation as male. And although Karnatakas dalit groups

have wavered more recently on whether they must support the strident calls to defend Kannada identity, they

remain only uneasily aligned with the clearly pro-Hindutva version of Kannada nationalism: thus the

Karnataka Samata Sainik Dal, at the height of the protests against the unveiling of Thiruvalluvar statue,

detected an upper caste plot to keep a dalit hero (Thiruvalluvar) from occupying public space in the city (Dal

Pumphlet).

Indeed Rajkumar himself has remained loyal to another nation in his increasing distance from the activities of

the majority of his fans associations. In 1978, he went into hiding to avoid being dragged into standing for

elections against Indira Gandhi in Chikmagalur. In 1984, he condemned the violence during the bundh, and

refused to serve on the government panel which the Hegde government set up to solve the issue of

Kannada examinations for Class III and Class IV jobs, though he declared the cause just. By the late 1980s,

the activities of fan clubs were a positive embarrassment to him when they took to violent road and rail

rokos: the 1987 rail roko campaign which was meticulously organised to press for a Southern Railway Centre

in Karnataka, led him to publicly stage a break, saying that he was in no way related to fans associations. It

was at that moment that many Abhimanigala Sanghas publicly declared their autonomy. It is like, in a poster

somewhere, a beedi is kept in [Rajkumars] mouth explains Radhakrishna. Does that mean he is smoking a

beedi? No. So like that we will keep his name, we have that right. When he has come into public life we have

the right to use him. Thus the man who wished to represent the aspirations of 3 crore Kannadigas in 1982

has been increasingly distanced from the very organisations that invoke his name.

Still, it would be futile to deny that there is widespread support for the programmes and activities of the more

extreme linguistic nationalisms, especially during this current crisis which has increasingly (and dangerously)been read as an encounter between nationalisms. Such readings sweep complex histories out of sight,

leaving the borders of the administrative state as the final space within which such identities may unfold.


9/10

Nothing could be further from the fanciful wish of the advertisement for BPL mobiles which proclaims

Geography is history! But it is possible, even in these trying times, to detect the voice of anguish about the

destiny of a language threatened by the cosmopolitanism so dear to the votaries of globalisation who

promise a slice of the US in India at least in Bangalore.26

Karnatakas unique state formation, geography

and history may be the starting point for conceiving a different kind of nation, one that grasps both ends of a

slippery pole to achieve universality through being specific as D R Nagaraj has suggested, by placing these

gathering passions at the service of a new democratic citizenship.

Notes

1 See for instance, Ra Nam Chandrasekhar Kannada Shakthi (Bangalore: Kannada Shakthi Kendra: 1998); also his Kannada Jagruthi Varsha

Saadisideno? (mimeo); and Kannada-Kannadiga-Karnataka (Bangalore: Kannada Pusthaka Pradhikaara, 1996). This last text draws obvious inspiration in

its title from the menacing slogan Hindi-Hindu-Hindusthan.

2 I have discussed these positions briefly in Memories of Underdevelopment: Language and Its Identities in Contemporary Karnataka, EPW, xxxi: 41

and 42, (1996) and in Battles for Bangalore: Reterritorialising the City (unpublished). Several Kannada intellectuals (writers, teachers, journalists and

artistes) took a clear and uncompromising stand against the more aggressive and violent actions of several Kannada groups during the Gokak agitation

(1982), the agitation against the removal of the Kannada test for Class II and Class IV employees (1984), the Thiruvalluvar episode and Cauvery riots

(1991). Their stand on the riots against the Urdu telecast (1994) was less unambiguous although here too the violence against Muslims was severelycondemned.

3 Pierre Bourdieu, Language and Symbolic Power (Cambridge: Harvard University Press 1994), p 45. Bourdieus chief concern is the emergence of a

standardised French, as an official language that triumphs over the patois.

4 For the failure of the state to secure the victory of the Gokak Chaluvali of 1982 (which upheld the Gokak Committee Reports suggestion that Kannada

be declared the sole first language in the state), see Kannada Kaddaya: Hosa Bhasha Sutra in Kannada Shakthi, p 18. See also Govindally Devegowda,

Abhimanya Shunyada Karnataka Sarkara in Kannada Kanmani: 10neya Varshada Smarana Sanchike, 1995.

5 M Chidanandamurthy, Nanna Baduku: Ondu Kiru Chitra (M Chidanandamurthy Gourava Samputa, Samshodana dalli Prakatagonda Lekhanada Mel

Acchu, no date), p 942; see also Ve Srinivas Kannada Chaluvali Nadedubanda Daari in Kannada Kanmani which describes the humiliation experienced by

Ma Ramamurthy when the demand for the screening of Kannada films in Majestic was made.

6 Interview with R Nam Chandrasekhar, October 7 and 11, 1998; see also the chapter Valase in Kannada-Kannadiga-Karnataka, pp 163-68.

Ekathegondu Savalu: Antharajya Valase in Saarthaka, no date, pp 152-62.

7 Chidanandamurthy, Kannadadha Samsyegalu in Kannada-Kannadiga-Karnataka, p 51.

8 Chidanandamurthy Kannadadha Samsyegalu in Kannada-Kannadiga-Karnataka.

9 The States Reorganisation Committee (1956) acknowledged the particularly fragmented political status of Kannada speakers, who were reduced to

minorities in three of the administrative divisions of Karnataka in colonial India.

10 Interview with Sa Ra Govindu, president Dr Rajkumar Abhimanigala Sangha, October 23, 1998.

11 Ra Nam Chandrasekhar, Ekathegondhu Savalu, p 153.

12 Kannada Chaluvali Nadedhu Banda Dari in Kannada Kanmani; interview with Ra Nam Chandrasekhar, October 11, 1998; Chidanandamurthy elevates

what was perhaps no more than a small wrestling match into a historic event says D R Nagaraj, commenting on the use of this episode in constructing a

history of the Kannada nation, The Nature of Kannada Nationalism.

13 Interview with Ra Nam Chandrasekhar, October 7 and 11, 1998.

14 Interview by Dilip Subramanian with M S A Rao, June 1981.

15 Interview with Sa Ra Govindu October 23, 1998; Interview with R Radhakrishna, President, Jaga Mechida Maga Dr Rajkumar Abhimanigala Sangha,

July 20, 1999.

16 Raj Jumps Intro Fray, Deccan Herald, April 17, 1982; Rajkumar Vows to Fight for Kannada Supremacy, Deccan Herald, May 12, 1982; Stir Will

Continue till Kannada Gets Primacy Raj, Deccan Herald, May 17, 1982.

17 Interview with members of Jaga Mechida Maga Rajkumar Abimanigala Sangha, July 20, 1999.

18 Solomon Benjamin and Bhuvaneswari Raman, On Valmikinagar/Azadnagar unpublished material.

19 I have, however, been unable to get any statistics on property losses in these riots.

20 This has also been noted in other instances of communal violence as for instance in Ahmedabad, Surat and Bhopal in 1993: see Mehdi Arslan and

Janaki Rajan (eds), Communalism in India: Challenge and Response, Manohar, Delhi, 1994.


10/10

21 Anti Hindi protests were most conspicuous in the Tamil dominated areas of the city such as Srirampuram, Ulsoor, Murphy Town, etc.

22 On the feminising of the Tamil language see Sumathi Ramaswamy, Passions of the Tongue, esp pp 79-134.

23 A Mute Genocide, p 14. There were widely circulated reports of women being singled out for attack by the style of their thalis (the distinguishing mark

between Tamil and Kannada married women) but they were unconfirmed in the report of the Indian Peoples Human Rights Tribunal.

24 Rahamath Tarikere points to the ways in which Karnatakas historiographical tradition, following dominant nationalist strands, suppressed the rich legacy

of syncretic Sufi traditions in the medieval period. Tarikere, Karnatakada Sufigalu (Kamalapura: Kannada University, 1998), pp 4-8.

25 In his recent article, Bargur Ramachandrappa discusses the futility of struggles based so narrowly on the language of cinema, arguing for a more liberal

definition of culture and cultural resources. His studious avoidance of any discussion of Tamil nationalism, choosing instead to speak of Marathi, Bengali

and Malayalam successes is however a reminder of how closely tied are the modalities of nationalism on both sides of the border, Kannadaabhimanada

Katuvaasthava.

26 The words were those of Sanjoy Dasgupta, former secretary IT, government of Karnataka, at Bangalore IT.COM, 1998.

References

Bairy, T S Ramesh (1996): Competing Constructions of Kannada Identity: A Study of Two Organisations, M Phil University of Hyderabad.

Balekundry, S G (1991): Injustice to Karnataka in Regard to Cauvery Waters, Bangalore.

Bangaore Tamil Sangham (1992): A Mute Genocide: A Report on the Gory Incidents of Violence on Karntaka Tamils during the Black December 1991,Bangalore, pp 39, 40.

Joseph, T M (1994): Politics of Recruitment in Public Sector Undertakings a Study of the Nativist Movement in Bangalore, Unpublished PhD Thesis, ISEC,

pp 69, 168.

Narayana, G (1997): Bengaluru Nagarada Mukhya Samsyegalu (mimeo).

Peoples Democratic Forum (1994): Medium for Communalism: A Report on the Anti-Urdu Communal Riots, Bangalore.

Ramachandrappa, Bargur (2000): Kannadaabhimanda Katuvaasthava, Prajuvani, October 31.

Ramaswamy, Sumathi (1998): Passions of the Tongue: Language Devotion in Tamil Nadu, Munshilal Manoharlal, Delhi, pp 161-68.

Venkatrao, Alur (1980): Karnatakatvada Vikasa as cited in D R Nagaraj The Nature of Kannada Nationalism, Kathana Sahitya, Akshara Prakashana,

Trans by Madhava Prasad (Forthcoming).

Viroli, Maurizio (1997): For Love of Country: An Essay on Patriotism and Nationalism, Oxford University Press, Oxford, p 8.

Volke, Steen (1995): Conflicts over Natural Resources in South India in a Political Economy Perspective, Paper presented at Third Conference of the

Nordic Association for South Asian Studies, Oslo, Norway, (mimeo).

Language and Right to the City - Janaki Nair

Documents

Transcript of Language and Right to the City - Janaki Nair