Movement for a hill council-type of self-administration gathers support, as human chains are formed in the district.
After being dormant for years, the movement for an autonomous Kodava land is gathering pace.
Members of the Codava National Committee (CNC) claim that for the first time they were seeing ordinary people in Kodagu districts voicing the demand for a separate administrative unit for Kodagu, outside the jurisdiction of Karnataka.
“We are not contemplating building a larger movement,” NU Nachappa Codava, convener of the CNC, told dna.”It is no more important what kind of autonomy we are looking at, but one thing is sure: No more will we tolerate the neglect Codavas have suffered since Independence,” he says.
The CNC wants nothing short of a hill council (on the lines of some eastern states), autonomous area status or even a separate state,” Nachappa said.
Early this week, the CNC organized a human chain at Birunani in South Kodagu which is among the most underdeveloped areas in Karnataka.
“All the residents of the village participated in the human chain activity, demonstrating the vehemance with which the people of Kodagu now articulate their demand for autonomy,” said Nachappa.
Similar events have been organized in bigger towns like Virajpet, Napoklu, Gonikoppa, Balele and many other places where original Kodava settlers were in good numbers and the reception was total, he said. The Padnett Naad (18 areas) council has also ratified the demand of the CNC will join the separatist movement in coming days.
Kodava leaders say Codava Land could be created out of Karataka under the Sixth Schedule of the Constitution which provides for bifurcating a state, which had been resorted to many times in the past, notably in the case of Telangana recently.
Senior leaders of Kodavas point out that Kodagu was a separate state before the unification of India and was inhabited with the ethno-linguistic minorities. It had independent Naads numbering 45 areas in Kodagu. The demands were also on for including the Kodava Thakk (language) into the eighth schedule of the constitution on lines with Konkani.
“The leaders of Karnataka played dirty with Kodagu, encouraging influx of people from other parts of Karnataka to Kodagu, buy lands and start business, just to make the original Kodava people a hopeless minority in their own lands,” SP Chengappa, a senior advocate says.
“The effects of this state-sponsored treachery could be seen all over Madikeri, where most of the business concerns belong to non-Kodavas,” Chengappa says. If the state government does not recommend our case for an independent administrative unit, in the likes of a hill council, separate state or an autonomous area, things might go still more radical when organizations like Liberation Warriors of Kodagu (LIWAK) and Kodagu Rajya Mukti Morcha (KRMM) that went inactive in the last 10 years, may come alive again, warn the Kodava leaders.
Some offer a counter-argument
“There were issues of separatist activism for some years, but many of the issues that have been raised by the Kodavas have been already met by the democratically-elected government after the unification of India. Moreover, many Kodavas have moved out of Kodagu and have settled in places like Mysore, Bangalore and Mangalore and I estimate that there could be only 1.5 lakh Kodavas in Kodagu out of a total of 5lakh Kodava population in the state,” says KG Bopaiah, former speaker of the Assembly, and MLA from the district.
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