Column: Recovering Mangalore

First Published: Mirror | 25 December 2019
Link: https://mumbaimirror.indiatimes.com/opinion/columnists/recovering-mangalore/articleshow/72959343.cms

The tale of a stillborn city

First Published: HT Mint | 23 December 2019
Link: https://www.livemint.com/news/india/how-bellary-went-from-boom-to-bust-11577114594687.html

Column: The politics of food

First Published: Mirror | 11 December 2019
Link: https://mumbaimirror.indiatimes.com/opinion/columnists/the-politics-of-food/articleshow/72462407.cms

Column: Emotions versus economy

First Published: Mirror | 27 November 2019
Link: https://mumbaimirror.indiatimes.com/opinion/columnists/emotions-versus-economy/articleshow/72247410.cms

English is the latest cure for the jobs crisis

First Published: HT Mint | 26 November 2019
Link: https://www.livemint.com/news/india/english-is-the-latest-cure-for-the-jobs-crisis-11574696995585.html

Column: Truce with Tipu Sultan

First Published: Mirror | 13 November 2019
Link: https://mumbaimirror.indiatimes.com/opinion/columnists/truce-with-tipu-sultan/articleshow/72027878.cms

The battles in the mind

First Published: Indian Express | 10 November 2019

Link: https://indianexpress.com/article/express-sunday-eye/the-battles-in-the-mind-6108324/

Column: All men brown as soil

First Published: Mirror | 30 October 2019
Link: https://mumbaimirror.indiatimes.com/opinion/columnists/all-men-brown-as-soil/articleshow/71811782.cms

Column: Can the Tamils love Modi?

First Published: Mirror | 16 October 2019
Link: https://mumbaimirror.indiatimes.com/opinion/columnists/can-the-tamils-love-modi/articleshow/71602706.cms

What's really going on in Karnataka?

First Published: The Wire | 11 October 2019
Link: https://thewire.in/politics/karnataka-congress-jds-bjp

Column: The Myth and the Mahatma

First Published: Mirror | 02 October 2019
Link: https://mumbaimirror.indiatimes.com/opinion/columnists/the-myth-and-the-mahatma/articleshow/71398667.cms

Why resisting Hindi is no longer enough

First Published: HT Mint | 24 September 2019
Link: https://www.livemint.com/news/india/why-resisting-hindi-is-no-longer-enough-1569231720799.html

Column: A movement becomes a memory

First Published: 18 September 2019 | Mirror
Link: https://mumbaimirror.indiatimes.com/opinion/columnists/a-movement-becomes-a-memory/articleshow/71171744.cms

Column: Political Vendetta

First Published: Mirror | 4 September 2019
Link: https://mumbaimirror.indiatimes.com/opinion/columnists/political-vendetta/articleshow/70967243.cms

Wrenching Paradoxes Facing the Congress

First Published: 28 August 2019 | The Wire
Link: https://thewire.in/politics/chidambaram-congress-moral-ground-paradox

Kanyakumari to Kashmir

First Published: The Economic Times | 18 August 2019
Link: https://economictimes.indiatimes.com/news/politics-and-nation/kanyakumari-to-kashmir-how-a-few-south-indians-had-vital-links-to-kashmirs-modern-history/articleshow/70718004.cms

My Outlook Archives: 2002 -- 2012

My reportage, features, columns and histories for OUTLOOK's magazine and digital editions between August 2002 and March 2012. Editor-in-Chief of the magazine during this period was Vinod Mehta.

Link: https://www.outlookindia.com/search/375?title=sugata+srinivasaraju

Freedoms & Resistance

First Published: The New Indian Express | 15 August 2019
Link: http://www.newindianexpress.com/opinions/2019/aug/15/freedoms-and-resistance-2019242.html

Rahul's Karmic Dependents

First Published: Mumbai Mirror | 12 August 2019
Link: https://mumbaimirror.indiatimes.com/news/india/rahuls-karmic-dependents/articleshow/70633513.cms

A fall that had been brewing

First Published: Mirror | 04 August 2019
Link: https://mumbaimirror.indiatimes.com/mumbai/cover-story/a-fall-that-had-been-brewing/articleshow/70517653.cms

Politics of a different kind

First Published: Indian Express | 27 July 2019
Link: https://indianexpress.com/article/opinion/columns/karnataka-crisis-politics-assembly-speaker-flor-test-bjp-congress-jds-5855063/

Trust vote debates and a legislator’s neem wisdom

First Published: The New Indian Express | 22 July 2019
Link: http://www.newindianexpress.com/states/karnataka/2019/jul/22/trust-vote-debates-and-a-legislators-neem-wisdom-2007443.html

Decoding DK, the self-styled 'saviour' of the Karnataka Congress

First Published: Mirror | 14 July 2019
Link: https://mumbaimirror.indiatimes.com/others/sunday-read/decoding-dk/articleshow/70211031.cms

The Imminent Implosion of the Congress-JD(S) in Karnataka Has Happened

First Published: The Wire | 09 July 2019
Link: https://thewire.in/politics/congress-karnataka-coalition-rahul-gandhi

Winning the Culture War

First Published | The Economic Times Magazine | 30 June 2019
Link: https://economictimes.indiatimes.com/news/politics-and-nation/view-how-the-bjp-is-able-to-win-over-the-voters-mind/articleshow/70004868.cms

The Untold Story of Girish Karnad

First Published: HT Mint | 14 June 2019
Link: https://www.livemint.com/news/india/the-untold-story-of-girish-karnad-1560438038742.html

Curtains down, but rehearsals will go on

First published: BBC News (abridged version) | 10 June 2019
Link: https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-india-48580607

‘Girish Karnad has passed away at the age of 81,’ read an impassive message on my phone from an old acquaintance. His passing away had been announced like a palace sentry in one of his many historical plays would casually inform the arrival or departure of somebody to the audience. But, let’s be sure, this is no ordinary announcement for Indian public life or the world of arts. It signals the departure of a colossus who straddled many creative realms, and quaffed gently from various cups of public life, leaving a deep impression for over five decades and across generations.

Karnad was foremost a playwright, but he was also an actor, a filmmaker, a translator, an administrator, and a daring public intellectual. This multi-tasking that he tirelessly subjected himself to made him one of the most prominent voices among those who built a robust liberal tradition for India, since Independence in 1947. When India’s plural history, diverse traditions are being severely challenged now, mourning his demise acquires a different meaning. A frame of reference seems to have vanished, a pillar to lean on appears to have collapsed, yet, his works, and his life promise to inspire and instruct how we need to stand steadfastly, and do what we need to do, that is, fight a good fight.

It was quite accidental for Karnad to make an entry into the materially uncertain world of arts. Raised in quaint Dharwad town in colonial India’s Mumbai presidency, now in Karnataka, one expected him to make it big in the academic world, and seek a more certain and firmer foundation to life. He was born into a middle class Chitrapur Saraswat brahmin family, and his mother, who worked as a nurse, had remarried as a widow, which was a revolutionary act then. She was the second wife of a doctor. His autobiography in Kannada ‘Aadatha Aayushya’ (roughly translated would mean, ‘A Life Spent Playfully’) has a precious chapter on his mother’s life, and the enormous social pressures she had to confront in shriveling silence.

In such circumstances, the young man Karnad won the prestigious Rhodes scholarship to study mathematics at Oxford. He thrived there and also became the president of the Oxford Students’ Union. He could have settled down in any part of the world, but made a ‘mad choice’ to get into the arts and write not in English, but in Kannada, a language which was only his acquired mother tongue. He is a native Konkani speaker. This conflict between Konkani, Kannada and English, remained in him till the very end. It also found expression in a play that he wrote in 2006, titled ‘Odakalu Bimba’ (Heap of Broken Images).

This play was not just about choice of language for writers, but also about the worldview they nourish: local or global? More specifically, for Karnad, to swim contently inside the Kannada world, or develop a pan-Indian appeal, or cater to a global audience. Karnad, I think, chose the pan-Indian ideal, this often made him look a little distant to other Kannada writers who employed a very specific native idiom. The debate of how much he was a Kannada writer never ended till the very end. In fact, when he won the prestigious Jnanpith award, for lifetime achievement, his compatriot genius, P Lankesh (father of Gauri Lankesh), wrote an editorial raising these doubts. But they were such good friends, they probably settled their arguments over a drink.

This play, ‘Broken Images,’ was also significant for the reason that for the first time in his writing career, Karnad had addressed another charge that the literary critics had made against him for a longtime. Until then, he had only made voyages in the past, or in mythological worlds, to conceive characters, scenes, and dialogues for his eponymous plays like ‘Tuglaq’, ‘Dreams of Sultan Tipu’, ‘Taledanda’ (on the life of 12^th century saint-social reformer Basaveshwara), ‘Yayati’ (his first play), Hayavadana (inspired by Thomas Mann’s ‘Transposed Heads’), Anju Mallige or Nagamandala. In these plays, Karnad had had the cushion of time, and a complete view of the mutation of meaning that these characters and tales had undergone over centuries. But, with ‘Broken Images’ he had finally arrived on the shores of the present. In this play, set in a television studio, he also looks at the impact of technology on modern living and thinking. He subverts the classic technique of mirror speaking as the alter ego and gets the television image of the protagonist to have a dialogue with her. After this, he wrote more plays like ‘Marriage Album’ and ‘Boiled Beans on Toast,’ which were situated in the present.

When I spoke to Karnad in 2006, about this transition from history and mythology to social plays, he had explained it this way: “It was a conscious decision to write historical plays, because all historical plays we had until then were costume dramas. I was quite cerebral and it suited my way. Also, my contemporaries like Vijay Tendulkar were doing a great job with social plays, so I didn’t want to dabble with it.” On being accused of having a pan-Indian, rather than a native approach he had said: “I always need a bigger canvas to write.” But interestingly, in 2000, when I had met Karnad in his South Audley Street office, when he was Director at London’s Nehru Centre, he had told me that he would perhaps never write a social play. The same year his ‘Dreams of Tipu Sultan’ was published, and in 2002, he wrote a paly ‘Bali’ (Sacrifice) for the Leicester Haymarket Theatre on a tenth century theme.

However, Karnad perhaps will be known for his historical plays, and if one is pushed to pick one among the many he has written, it would be ‘Tuglaq.’ This play, published in 1964 (the year Nehru died), based on the life of 14^th century Sultan of Delhi, was translated and produced in all major Indian languages, and it permanently altered the Indian amateur theatre scene. This play was so powerful, that a person who played the lead role in its over hundred Kannada productions, C R Simha, not only built a flourishing career for himself, but spoke and walked all his life like he was asked to in the play, with a certain self-consuming imperiousness. He struggled to escape the mould, perhaps the way Ben Kingsley struggled to outplay the Gandhi he had become for Richard Attenborough.

In the very last play that Karnad wrote, ‘Rakshasa Tangadi,’ in 2018, he returned home to his favourite historical theme. It deals with the battle between the Bahmani Sultans and the last of the Vijayanagar kings. This poignant work that he explained passionately on camera to the portal I edited, for over two hours, holds lessons for today’s India, when centuries of Hindu-Muslim relationship has been conveniently typecast for political gains.

Karnad’s film career will make for a separate appraisal. Likewise, his public interventions. He never ceased to speak for communal harmony and India’s rich diversity. The way he had taken on Nobel laureate V S Naipaul at a literary fest, in Mumbai, in 2012, on his mis-characterizations of Indian history, politics and Muslims, were deeply felt. The image of Karnad with his oxygen tubes holding a placard in the middle of Bangalore’s streets when Gauri Lankesh was assassinated, can never escape one’s mind. There are several such images and words. Curtains may be down, but the rehearsals will go on. His words and images will stay.

The Trap of the Lutyens' Liberal

First Published: The Wire | 08 June 2019

Link: https://thewire.in/rights/india-liberalism-lutyens-regional

Could the Mahatma’s Trusteeship Idea Solve Rahul Gandhi’s Dilemma?

First Published: The Wire | 29 May 2019

Link: https://thewire.in/politics/mahatma-gandhi-trusteeship-idea-rahul-gandhi-dilemma

Seesaw in the South

First Published: The Economic Times | 26 May 2019
Link: https://economictimes.indiatimes.com/news/elections/lok-sabha/india/barring-karnataka-modi-wave-fails-to-conquer-south-india/articleshow/69498053.cms

In Post-Truth Era, a Tectonic Shift in the Mind of the Indian Voter

First Published: The New Indian Express | 24 May 2019
Link: http://www.newindianexpress.com/states/karnataka/2019/may/24/in-post-truth-era-a-tectonic-shift-in-the-mind-of-the-indian-voter-1981068.html

Has Congress Been Delivered a Death Blow in Karnataka?

First Published | 23 May 2019

Link: https://thewire.in/politics/karnataka-congress-jds-bjp-election-2019-results

Karnataka power play: These Twitter accounts have a tale to tell

First Published: The Indian Express | 20 May 2019
Link: http://www.newindianexpress.com/opinions/2019/may/20/karnataka-power-play-these-twitter-accounts-have-a-tale-to-tell---1979253.html

Yogendra Yadav's Flip-Flop on NOTA Mirrors the Alternative Reality of Saramago

First Published: The Wire | 10 May 2019

Link: https://thewire.in/politics/yogendra-yadav-nota-delhi-elections

How Election 2019 Looks from the South

First Published: HT Mint | 16 April 2019
Link: https://www.livemint.com/elections/lok-sabha-elections/how-elections-2019-looks-from-the-south-1555380037800.html

As Rahul Gandhi Chooses Wayanad, is the South Still a Safe Haven for Congress?

First Published: The Wire | 31 March 2019

Link: https://thewire.in/politics/as-rahul-gandhi-chooses-wayanad-is-the-south-still-a-safe-haven-for-congress

SRIRAJU unicode type family with six weights

SRIRAJU: A unicode typeface family with four weights (Sriraju Bold and Sriraju Bold Italic, Sriraju Regular and Sriraju Regular Italic) was released on 28 November 2017 to commemorate the 75th birth anniversary of my father, C Srinivasaraju (28 November 1942 - 28 December 2007). Two more weights are being added to the type family today, 28 November 2019, to remember him on his 77th birthday. The newly added weights are Sriraju Stencil/Outline and Sriraju Stencil/Outline Italic. Please feel free to download and use. 

DOWNLOAD HERE:

Sri Raju Stencil/Outline NEW

Sriraju Stencil/Outline Italic NEW

Sri Raju Regular

Sri Raju Regular Italic

Sri Raju Bold      

Sri Raju Bold Italic

Poem/Translation: The Child Is Dead, The Nation is Defiled

Kannada poem: Vaidehi

Translated from the Kannada: Sugata Srinivasaraju
Link: https://thewire.in/rights/kathua-vaidehi-poem-the-child-is-dead-the-nation-is-defiled

Baithak: Video interview with Pandit Rajeev Taranath (Parts 1, 2 & 3)

First Published: The State | April 2018

YouTube Channel: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC3nmSE9tjxM-Yyq2ZYVMTPg?view_as=subscriber

Baithak: Video interview with Sharad Yadav

First Published: SouthWord, The State | March 2018
YouTube Channel: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC3nmSE9tjxM-Yyq2ZYVMTPg?view_as=subscriber

Baithak: Video Interview with sisters Arundhati Nag and Padmavati Rao (Parts 1 & 2)

First Published: The State | March 2018

YouTube Channel: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC3nmSE9tjxM-Yyq2ZYVMTPg?view_as=subscriber

Baithak: Video interview with minister Krishna Byre Gowda (Parts 1 & 2)

First Published: The State | February 2018

YouTube Channel: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC3nmSE9tjxM-Yyq2ZYVMTPg?view_as=subscriber

Baithak: Video interview with actor, politician Anantnag (Parts 1, 2 & 3)

First Published: The State | December 2017

YouTube Channel: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC3nmSE9tjxM-Yyq2ZYVMTPg?view_as=subscriber

Baithak: Video interview with Chief Minister Siddaramaiah

First Published: The State | November 2017

YouTube Channel: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC3nmSE9tjxM-Yyq2ZYVMTPg?view_as=subscriber

Animation of my book jackets

Kittale, Nervale, Perle: Avasarakke Yetukida Maat, Baraha; Swargakke Moore Maili; Pickles From Home: The Worlds Of A Bilingual; Window on the Wall: Quit India Prison Diary Of A Nineteen-Year-Old; Keeping Faith With The Mother Tongue: Anxieties Of A Local Culture; Phoenix And Four Other Mime Plays; Ekushey February

Courtesy: Mahesh Chidre

Is it false moral equivalence that ails the media today?

First Published: SouthWord | June 2018

In recent times many have attempted to draw up a long list of what ails the Indian media. Quite often, the endeavour to build a rhetoric makes them pull out a cliché from the Emergency years (‘When they were asked to bend they crawled’) and redeploy it in a rather lazy inversion to say: ‘They crawled even when nobody asked them to bend’ or ‘They no longer know if they are standing, bending or crawling’. A slightly more damning version would read: ‘They are not bothered anymore if they are standing, bending or crawling.’

There is an essential problem in invoking a phrase from 45 years ago, from a time in history when not just politics, but the ‘beast’ too had a predictable demeanour. There were essentially four or five big newspapers to deal with and one didn’t have problems with radio and television since they were government-controlled and hence automatically aligned. Therefore, recalling this phrase, in a way, means constantly recycling an old memory to perpetually lock the Congress in guilt. While doing this there is an attempt to cleverly hide behind the victimhood of the Emergency the illiberalism of the present as well as the current regime. Nobody has ever demanded the victims of the Emergency to put out a more liberal manifesto for the media and society than what existed in the 1970s. The Congress obviously is hesitant to demand that, the BJP exploits this hesitation, and the others conveniently speak about it through the convenience of an old phrase that has no forward moment.

The media as well as the political and government apparatuses are infinitely more complex today and one needn’t reckon the number of round-the-clock news and entertainment channels, daily newspapers, radio stations, social media tools and digital outlets to drive home the point. There is a parading obviousness to this fact as well as to the complex control and circuitry of information and news.

All this aside, there is a new problem that afflicts the Indian media, one which the old phrase does not even imagine or capture. Let’s be sure, the media today displays full-blown symptoms of a false moral equivalence. In the name of being ‘objective’ (a word that none has so far convincingly described), in the name of maintaining ‘balance’ (a quasi mercantile term) it tries to do ‘both sides’ journalism. It tries to be value-neutral, representing alternate sides of an argument equally. It ingeniously inserts the ‘other’ point view to remain preciously non-committal. In fact, journalists get paranoid about getting everybody in, be it in a piece they are writing, a prime time debate they are moderating, or tweets they are putting out.

This trapeze act they attribute to the fundamentals of journalism. Agreed, but journalism does not tell you to be blind to right and wrong, to justice and injustice. In fact, to be alive to this distinction is its true mission. Yet, there is no outrage about falsehoods. There are only blind facts from both sides, carefully arranged in a manner so as to not ambush you. They try to sell the idea that this, that and the other are all eminently possible. The game of corporate cancelling out of any negative effect there may be to a position that you may take today is obliterated by a position that you may take the day after. Editorials may change from edition to edition in the name of editorial federalism. The game may be even more tightly knit if you are a bigger player. If one media outlet you own takes a certain position, the other may be on exactly the opposite side. The cleverness will ensure that your business never suffers. But sadly, this deception has made media impact-less and less credible. Readers and viewers have stopped worrying about this endless manipulation because the mainstream media does not inform their opinion anymore. For the media, not to state its opinion with a ringing clarity has become a pragmatic option.

In recent weeks, be it elections, opinion polls, exit polls, Dalit violence, the Cobrapost sting, Pranab Mukherjee’s visit to the RSS headquarters in Nagpur, the economy’s growth figures, Rahul Gandhi’s speeches or the Congress’ intervention on some issue of national importance, media organisations and editors quickly develop two correct views to suit two opposing clientele. Hedging the bet was so obvious during the Karnataka polls when one TV channel put out two exit poll numbers from two different research agencies it had commissioned! It was caught out because it was unintelligent and brazen, but others do it slyly. They don’t play around too much with fact but sing a duet with opinion. Even when it comes to fact, they have a helping hand always from a decontextualised historical setting. Figures like Nehru, Jinnah, Patel, Ambedkar and Indira Gandhi are recruited with nimbleness.

For someone who may say that hedging bets is an old art, editors and journalists have perfected, and have with a chameleon‘s precision changed from regime to regime, I would like to say that almost everything has existed in some form or the other for a long time. But, the surge of this tendency that we witness today, and in the last few years, it’s alarming guile and guiltless display, should make it contend as a defining feature of our times.

This false moral equivalence was called out during the Trump election too. Margaret Sullivan, the Washington Post’s media columnist said in her 16 August 2017 column: “During the 2016 presidential campaign, the national news media’s misguided sense of fairness helped equate the serious flaws of Hillary Clinton with the disqualifying evils of Donald Trump… In short: Clinton’s misuse of a private e-mail server was inflated to keep up with Trump’s racism, sexism and unbalanced narcissism – all in the name of seeming evenhandedness.” In a reaction to this column Christiane Amanpour of CNN had tweeted then: “We must always be truthful, not neutral. I learned from the Bosnian war never to draw false moral equivalence.”

My former editor Vinod Mehta in his nonchalant prose would often say that one ‘can’t be an ideological eunuch’. He was prognostic about the situation we live in today. In an atmosphere of carefully engineered fear journalists are indeed afraid of expressing their opinion without thinking genius means of neutering it themselves. That the Emergency was 45 years ago is merely a fact.

How Siddaramaiah was felled by his own imagination

First Published: Hindustan Times | 16 May 2018

Link: https://www.hindustantimes.com/analysis/how-siddaramaiah-was-felled-by-his-own-imagination-in-karnataka-elections-opinion/story-QcClyhbJYninE0NTU7htMP.html

This election is a bigger challenge to PM Modi than it is to the Congress

First Published: HT Mint | 08 May 2018
Link: https://www.livemint.com/Opinion/D98wk1E3elxlLJTsa8uBGJ/This-election-is-a-bigger-challenge-to-PM-Modi-than-it-is-to.html

Why Siddaramaiah should be careful when he speaks of federal autonomy

First Published: SouthWord | March 2018

Karnataka Chief Minister Siddaramaiah recently wrote a piece on federal autonomy and linguistic identity (https://www.facebook.com/Siddaramaiah.Official/posts/602181456793987), which appeared on his social media accounts, and has also been reproduced on some digital platforms. It has been widely reported in the mainstream press as well. To write is a rare form of expression for him -- his favoured mode of communication being extended speeches where he works the crowds brilliantly.

Perhaps this new structured expression of thought, and that too in English with a quasi-academic bearing, was a first not only in his tenure as chief minister but in his entire political career. I hope my memory is serving me right as I make this claim. In my view, instead of pasting his written outpourings on social media, the CM’s media managers could perhaps have sought space in the Op-Ed pages of English dailies. But that would have been the strategy employed by advisers of politicians who have deep and defined Lutyens’ Delhi ambition. Siddaramaiah isn’t that kind of politician.

That aside, his piece in question appeared in the backdrop of the `backlash’ in ‘Delhi’s TV studios’ that questioned his government’s move to adopt an independent flag for Karnataka. On his part, Siddaramaiah, through his article, attempted to reconcile the national and the regional, yet tried to counter Modi’s variety of nationalism with the ‘settled’ idea of sub-nationalism and linguistic re-organisation.

There is nothing new in the sub-nationalism argument that he presented. It is an old rhetoric, borrowed from the 1950s and 60s when Indian states were being rearranged, and Mysore/Karnataka too was in the very middle of piecing together its diverse parts. During those decades, in the excitement generated by the historic exercise, a flat narrative that was spun made every linguistic state a ‘daughter’ of ‘Mother’ India.  It appears there were two big reasons for this: This was the emotional glue to preserve a newly independent, but extremely plural republic. And, this was the only way to get richly distinct cultural, ethnic identities and dialects even within a region, to merge with a larger and more dominant linguistic identity that was being forged, like say a Karnataka or an Andhra Pradesh or a Tamil Nadu.

But, there was a little twist in the CM’s argument to defend the cause of the state flag that he had just unfurled. Siddaramaiah intelligently harped on a seemingly unconnected idea, which is the economic prosperity of some of the linguistic states below the Vindhyas. Pitching the rich southern states against the poor Hindi ones, he put across a statistic that formed the fulcrum of his entire piece: He said, for every rupee that Karnataka contributes to the Central purse, it gets back only Rs. 0.47. But for every rupee Uttar Pradesh contributes, it gets back Rs 1.79. He implied ‘they’ are being subsidised by ‘us’.

Siddaramaiah continued by stating that the Centre’s tax distribution formula is flawed as it uses population levels as the sole criteria, while performance of states like Karnataka had gone unrecognized and undervalued. The Chief Minister also noted that population growth has gone unchecked in the North while it is at replacement levels in the educated South. He followed up his piece with a series of tweets where he argued that the 15^th Finance Commission should not use 2011 census data but should continue with the 1971 data for devolution of taxes.

The encrypted message conveyed through his article and the tweets is not difficult to decipher. Crudely put, it would run something like this: ‘We are being wronged. You live on our charity. We subsidise you. Since we are prosperous and progressive, we’d like to do our own thing. We’ll have our own flag and fly it as high as we want. Who are you to question this in distant Delhi?’

While this was all about cocking a snook at the rest of the world, within Karnataka it predictably stirred machismo emotions, which may be electorally beneficial for Siddaramaiah. It was similar to an image that Modi had created for himself as Gujarat’s Chief Minister which he took with him to Delhi in 2014. This is something about which the PM remains nostalgic to this very day.

Besides flaunting regional pride, there was a larger political affront to Modi in Siddaramaiah’s statistic-based thesis. Each time the Prime Minister was in Karnataka or for that matter in any other state ruled by the opposition, he has tried to push a narrative which endeavours to establish that the Centre gives enough funds but the states underutilise them. Or, whatever welfare the state does, it is thanks to monies released by the Centre.

By raising the tax devolution issue, and in the same breath speaking about the poverty of Uttar Pradesh, the Karnataka CM was trying to fact check, and drive home the point that it is the reverse that’s true. His implicit message: ‘Forget you are giving us money, in fact it is we who are allowing you your indulgences at the Centre where you are Prime Minister, and in UP, where your constituency is located. So, don’t talk of funds allocated to us as charity doled out by the Centre.’

There is also another subtext: Remember the Prime Minister fashions himself after Sardar Patel, the unifier of India. So, given that, if the South repeatedly challenges his wisdom and hubris, and as a result, if he is seen as not being able to take them along, then there will be cracks in his a la Sardar image. After Siddaramaiah raised the issue, we have seen Chandrababu Naidu, Jaganmohan Reddy, K Chandrashekar Rao and M K Stalin joining the chorus. Below the Vindhyas, Balasaheb Thackarey’s inheritors in Maharashtra, the richest state in India, have also begun to chant this line.

Siddaramaiah may have had enough political justification to push his argument. However, he must proceed with caution because it is fraught with ideological inconsistencies and contradictions. It may serve well as a convenient election rhetoric but it can also put the Chief Minister in a spot for the following reasons:

01. To base one’s economic argument on population alone is to replicate, in a different context though, the argument of the RSS and the BJP, who use it to target alleged preferential treatment to Muslims and other minorities to create panic among Hindus.

02. The argument for greater federal autonomy should not echo the meritocracy argument of anti-Mandalites and anti-reservationists. This may badly damage the social justice plank on which Siddaramaiah has stood all through his political career.

03. To speak of North Indians the way the Thackerays and the Shiv Sena speak will translate at the ground level into violence which has been witnessed in Karnataka in the past. For example, towards the end of the BJP regime in the state, in 2012, the drummed up fear of a violent backlash against North Easterners led to their panic exodus. 

04.  Siddaramaiah extends the economic logic to regions within Karnataka, then the richest are the Old Mysore districts (from where the CM hails) and the poorest are the Hyderabad-Karnataka districts. Can he discriminate between the two regions in the allocation of resources? Holding back special grants to the poorer regions may not only be imprudent but it would be politically suicidal. There are already demands for a separate North Karnataka. Historically, Old Mysore leaders resisted poor northern districts coming together to form a unified Karnataka. To this day, it is the Old Mysore region that is culturally dominant. 

05. Further, Bangalore, the state capital, contributes the most to the state’s GDP. What if the citizens of the metro argue they should get preferential treatment over the rest of the state? What if there is a mischievous suggestion to make it a union territory? 

06. The demographic composition of Bangalore is cosmopolitan. It is common knowledge that Kannadigas are outnumbered in Karnataka’s capital. People from different states work and reside here. They also contribute hugely to its thriving economy. Somebody has to rejig the CM’s memory that Bangalore’s growth was originally spurred by establishment of public sector organisations like HAL, ITI, BEL, HMT, BEML, ISRO etc., which were funded by the Centre. Over the decades, people have come from across India and settled down in the city to work in these establishments. The software industry harvested the scientific and technological culture established by these organisations. Now, where does one ideally begin to separate the state and the Centre’s contribution here?

07. Nearly 63 per cent of the state’s revenue comes from the services sector, industry contributes 24 per cent, and agriculture another 13 per cent. But the maximum subsidy is offered to farming. Can this be altered or support to the least of the contributing sectors drastically trimmed?

08. We have seen that maximum revenues pour in from the services industry. What if tomorrow the software service jobs migrate to another country or city that offers a competitive labour price advantage and there is a sudden dip in Karnataka and Bangalore’s fortunes? Irrespective of which government is at the Centre, will not the state look for assistance? 

09. When Siddaramaiah launched his biggest social welfare programme ‘Annabhagya’ (rice and other staple grains at one rupee a kg), the argument against it was this: ‘Why are you rendering the workforce lethargic? Why are you making them lazy dependents on state subsidy? Let them earn their two square meals.’ But that sounded both cruel and irrational. In fact, I was the only editor in the mainstream press who had then favoured the policy. My editorial line was that it was not merely a hunger eradication dole but was sound economics.

10. The CM should also reckon with this fact: Only 1.5 per cent of India’s population pay income tax. What if they argue, like they have often done, that they must be given preferential treatment? Can such an argument hold? In which case, what happens to people who pay indirect taxes?

11. Finally, Siddaramaiah should not forget that the constituencies of his political bosses Rahul Gandhi and Sonia Gandhi are in Uttar Pradesh. People from those constituencies also benefit from a higher devolution of tax revenues to their state. 

12. The CM’s idea is not consistent with the Nehruvian idea of India. After all it was the Congress that evolved the tax devolution formula. Would Siddaramaiah have protested so much were it to be a Congress or UPA government at the Centre?

In the final analysis, this much can be said, whatever be the geographical location or the economic status of a state, we live today in a deeply interconnected world where it doesn’t help to speak the language of Trumpian exclusion. Federal autonomy, no doubt, is a very valid argument. But one needs to temper it carefully so that it does not become a divisive instrument that pits one region against the other.

What Google and Wikipedia will not tell you about the Lingayats

                

       First Published: SouthWord | March 2018

• Lingayats follow the 12^th century social reformer and mystic Basaveshwara, who rebelled against the tyranny of the Hindu caste order and argued for an egalitarian society. Basavanna, as he his locally known, spoke about dignity of labour and gender equality not in the way we speak about them today, but as spiritual values to be imbibed and inculcated as a service to humanity. Before he broke his caste links, Basavanna was a Brahmin and was notable as a Chief Minister in the court of Bijjala, a king of the Kalachuri dynasty. His revolutionary spiritual and social agenda met with immense resistance during his lifetime. 
• Lingayat propagandists would like us to believe that mankind’s first Parliament was set up during Basaveshwara’s time. But that is clearly an exaggeration. What he created with fellow mystics like Allama Prabhu was an open forum (Anubhava Mantapa), a kind of a debating society, which functioned as an interface between spiritual thinkers and society. Here sharanas or spiritual seekers and mystics primarily engaged and developed philosophical arguments that delved deep into the human condition.
• The best way to understand the Lingayats or the Basava philosophy is through Vachanas. These are short verses that are lucid and luminous. They are gently instructional at times, un-acrimoniously censorious of society’s ills, but always spiritual and abidingly poetic. The Vacahanas used the idiom of the common man and has had a huge influence on the way modern Kannada is written. 
• The Vachana revival as a literary and cultural project in Karnataka happened in the 1960s. These verses were mostly perceived as religious writings until then. Hindustani music legends Mallikarjun Mansur and Basavaraja Rajguru, who sang them, and A K Ramanujan who translated them (Speaking of Siva, Penguin Classics), immensely contributed to their cultural revival and universalisation.
•  The Lingayats as a demography are found across Karnataka but are mostly concentrated in the northern districts of the state. There is no accurate measure of their population (perhaps the caste census that the Siddaramaiah government is getting done will shine light on this), but an estimate pegs the figure at 12 to 14 per cent of the state’s population. Here too there is a lot of exaggeration as size helps in political perception and calculations.
• It is again estimated that Lingayats influence nearly 90-100 assembly seats (of the total 224) and that makes them extremely important in the power game. This calculation is based on a rough count of Lingayats in different Assembly seats. They range anywhere between 10,000 to 90,000 depending on the constituency. But now with the split between Lingayats and Veerashaivas, who were together perceived as a voting block there may be a slight alteration in the numbers. Anyway, Lingayats hugely outnumber Veerashaivas. There are hundreds of big and small Lingayat seminaries, also called Virakta Maths, but there are only a handful of Veerashaiva seminaries, five to be precise.
• The essential difference between Lingayats and Veerashaivas is that the Lingayats owe their existence and allegiance to Basava philosophy, while Veerashaivas follow a Shaivite order borrowing heavily from Hindu traditions. For them Basava is just one of their spiritual proponents. In other words, Basavanna is appropriated into the Shaiva order. The separate religion tag was meant to be given to only those who follow Basava philosophy, that is primarily Lingayats. But the Siddaramaiah government has rather cleverly said that this would be applicable to Veerashaivas who accept the primacy of Basavanna’s teachings as well. This sets the cats among the Veerashaiva pigeons and relatively quells resistance to the government’s move. 
• There are a set of calculations based on data from the 1972 Assembly polls and subsequent elections which is interesting. Going by that if a political party were to get only Lingayat votes they can aim to win only around 26 seats. If the two major communities, Lingayats and Vokkaligas were to come together, then they can stake claim to around 65 seats (vote share of 1978 polls). If a fairly inclusive politics of communities is forged like in 1972 and 1978 by Devaraj Urs, 1985 by Ramakrishna Hegde and 1989 by Veerendra Patil then the vote share and seat share are pretty large.
•  Now, the big question is how will Siddaramaiah’s politics be perceived? He has attempted to piece together Backward Classes, Dalits, Minorities and now a sizeable chunk of the dominant Lingayats. Since the innocence of the 1970s and 1980s no longer exists among caste groups, the chief minister’s circus of identity politics and social engineering may just about ensure that he retains the same seat and vote share as last time. That is if all other factors remain neutral.
•  So far, the BJP had seen Lingayats and Veerashaivas as one political block, but now the Congress has engineered a split by offering the numerically higher Lingayats an independent religious identity. This split also checkmates the BJP and RSS’ Hindutva project.  Caste and religious plurality as a counter strategy is intended to jeopardise the attempted Hindu consolidation.
• The risk that the Congress party and Siddaramaiah runs by recommending Lingayats for an independent religion is if the meek and ordinary followers of the faith feel their religion and unity has been splintered, and they have been made guinea pigs in a political experiment. Then, there may be a backlash at the ballot box. So far, the most vocal about this issue are political leaders. The most powerful pontiffs of the Lingayat faith are yet to make their opinion known. Laymen Lingayats will wait for the polls to cast their view.
•  Since the influential Lingayat community politicians, businessmen and pontiffs run mega educational institutions in Karnataka, across India and also in some cases on foreign soil, the religious minority tag is said to hugely benefit their businesses. Hence it is assumed that they will quietly acquiesce to the idea of a separate religion. There are also many constitutional guarantees religious minorities are accorded, plus the status opens up access to a wide array of central and state funds.
• Even as we tend to speak of Lingayats as a homogenous community, in reality it isn’t. Although Basavanna fought for a casteless society, over time, ironically, the community has reintroduced a stratification based on their original castes and occupations. When people had joined the Basava order they are said to have given up their caste affiliations to merge into one seamless ideal. But now, we have Jangamas (priestly class), the Banajigas (traders), Panchamasalis (tillers of the earth), Saadars, Nonavas, Ganigas, Gouda-Lingayats, Reddy-Lingayats etc. The Panchamasalis are numerically higher but are politically underrepresented. Banajigas, the trading sub-sect, has disproportionately walked away with political power. One has to wait and see how each of these sub-sects will respond to the separate religion tag. The reaction is not going to be uniform.
• Of the eight Lingayat chief ministers in history almost all of them, except one (S R Bommai was a Saadar Lingayat) has been a Banajiga Lingayat. Till date Karnataka has had 22 chief ministers (some of them with multiple terms) out of which eight are Lingayats (S Nijalingappa, SR Kanti, B D Jatti, Veerendra Patil, S R Bommai, J H Patel, B S Yeddyrurappa and Jagadish Shettar); seven are Vokkaligas (K C Reddy, Kengal Hanumanthaiah, Kadidal Manjappa, H D Deve Gowda, SM Krishna, H D Kumaraswamy and D V Sadananda Gowda); three from Backward Classes (S Bangarappa, Veerappa Moily and Siddaramaiah); two Kshatriyas (Devaraj Urs and Dharam Singh) and two Brahmins (Ramakrishna Hegde and R Gundu Rao).
•  Basavanna has been the most explored literary figure and metaphor in the 20^th century Kannada literature. The most celebrated works on his life are P Lankesh’s Sankranti, Girish Karnad’s Taledanda and H S Shivaprakash’s Mahachaitra. All three are plays. There are innumerable other works across genres that can easily fill up a section in a library. The best edited Vachana volumes with annotations and elaborate introductions are by scholar L Basavaraju.
• Since Lingayats have been politically powerful they have from time to time censored creative license as well as critical opinion of writers on Basavanna or the Lingayat-Veerashaiva history. Books that have been censored in the last few decades include Marga (edited by M M Kalburgi), Mahachaitra (by H S Shivaprakash), Dharmakarana (by P V Narayana) and Aanu Deva Horaginavanu (by Banjagere Jayaprakash). The intolerance of the community has exploded on many other occasions as well.
• When it comes to food habits, Lingayats are vegetarians. The Lingayat Khanavalis in all North Karanataka towns typically serve guests the food they eat: Jowar rotis, groundnut powder, sesame seed powder, fenugreek leaves, brinjal curry, lentil curry, cut onions, raw chillies and thick curd.
• Prof. M M Kalaburgi and Gauri Lankesh, who were murdered in the recent past, were both Lingayats. Incidentally, they were both for declaring Lingayats as an independent religion. While Kalburgi’s very last piece dealt with the origins and differences between Veerashaivas and Lingayats, Gauri’s last editorial endorsed the idea of Lingayats as a separate religion. The BJP did not mourn both their deaths.