Guts and emotions

How can a king be faulted who removes his own fault/ Before seeing that of others?  — Kural

It seems chief minister BS Yeddyurappa has removed at least one stain on the liberal reputation that Bangalore has grown up on in moving men and matters towards successfully unveiling the statue of ancient saint-poet Thiruvalluvar.

The shrouded statue, covered in fear and shame, had been a symbol of an irresponsible establishment, winking at and indulgent with the worst representations of chauvinism in the city.

First, a bit of history: The Bangalore Tamil Sangam sought to get a statue of the great Thiruvalluvar installed near Halasoor Lake in the early sixties. In a more sensible age, the then chief minister, S Nijalingappa, readily welcomed the idea but the proposal couldn’t move forward because, if you will believe it, the Bangalore Urban Arts Commission (there is such a thing) opposed it on aesthetic grounds.

But the Sangam was tenacious and, after nearly 20 years of seeking, managed to get a small plot allotted for the proposed statue, which was designed and built and the unveiling was set for September 1, 1991. Some chauvinistic outfits were already making plans to make this an issue.  The municipal authorities backtracked in the face of protests and withdrew permission to unveil it.

And then followed the Cauvery riots that December, triggered by a government-sponsored strike against a Supreme Court verdict. The chief culprit, it may be said, was the then Congress chief minister, S Bangarappa, but the troublemakers had the tacit backing of the Opposition too.

The riots that started here in the city on December 13, 1991, were allowed to take the form of a full-scale attack of local Tamil-speaking people, especially the poor whose homes and small businesses were targeted. About 20 persons were killed, hundreds of buildings were destroyed and, it is believed, more than 15,000 victims were forced to abandon their homes.

And the statue remained under shroud. This was easily the most shameful episode in the state’s history matched, if not in scale, in ugliness only by the chauvinistic riots against the broadcast of news in Urdu by the local Doordarshan Kendra in 1994.

In this penitent and statesmanlike gesture, Yeddyurappa needs to be congratulated for making efforts to garner the support of the Congress party, which was directly guilty of complicity in the 1991 riots, and other Opposition leaders, who were less direct supporters of the lumpen chauvinism of the time.

The technological and post-liberalisation advances of satellite television, which offers close to 600 channels to anybody with a cable connection, makes nonsense of the 1994 efforts to prevent telecast of a 10-minute Urdu bulletin by a local station. But the point to be made here is about genuine representation. Who represents the Kannada state?

Without question, in a substantial way, the elected representatives, which is the reason that S Bangarappa must continue to wear the ignominy of 1991. But also artistes, writers and thinkers of the age. When these chauvinists take up for Kannada, are they speaking for us?

Do they hold up the identity and glory of Kuvempu, Karanth and Bendre? Are they the Kannada of Masti, DVG, Gorur, PuTiNa or Rajaratnam? Could they claim to aspire to the dignity and grace of the great Dr Rajkumar? Even in protest, is it the quality of Lankesh, Tejasvi or DR Nagaraj?

The government of the day should have stood up to this mindless chauvinism anytime in these 18 years. It takes the guts and gumption that, amazingly, this chief minister has displayed. To call Mahatma Gandhi a Gujarati, Vivekananda a Bengali or Thiruvalluvar a Tamilian is stupid. Soon, as Lalu Prasad Yadav once asked, they will be asking address-proof for Shiva, Rama and Vishnu.

When ‘Kannada theatre activists’ once got together to prevent staging of an English language play at Ravindra Kalakshetra, my father, the late Make-up Nani, was deeply saddened. A committed theatre enthusiast, among the first recipients of the Karnataka Nataka Academy award, he said: “Do these people realise what the meaning of community in a city is?”

He recalled that among the few private contributions to build the Ravindra Kalakshetra was that of Shivaji Ganeshan. When he heard of the proposal to build a theatre here, he announced a donation of Rs 25,000. It was about 1960. To give you an idea what that means, my father bought his Jayanagar site at that time for Rs 3,000. It is now, even in recession times, worth about Rs2 crore.

The Kannada cultural identity is not under siege as these chauvinists claim. A decent feature film in Kannada, as Mungaru Male demonstrated, will do more than well. The government, now that it has moved on this, must be alive that the thwarted ‘activists’ will look to provoke, probably with damage and desecration. The government must have the patience and determination to win this significant war of attrition. It’s time we called their bluff.

The writer is a theatre person, film and television director and journalist