The Hindu : Karnataka News : Our own exceptionalism

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Tuesday, Dec 04, 2007
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Karnataka

Karnataka

Our own exceptionalism

In actual fact, Karnataka’s politics has always had its seamy side

A recurring theme in much of the analysis of the recent political drama in Karnataka is that the “dirty politicians” have brought disgrace to the glorious history and heritage of the State and its people, bringing them down to the level of Bihar, the very nadir of “dirty politics.”

A recent article in a Kannada daily, scathing in its attack on one of the principal actors, charged him with “reducing” Karnataka to the level of Bihar, adding Uttar Pradesh and Goa to the list of contemporary political infamy.

Such assumptions about the exceptional nobility of the character and sensibility of the Kannada people necessarily have to have as an extreme contrary contrast the despised other. This, conveniently, is Bihar. Unlike those nasty others, we in Karnataka have always taken the high road of political morality and virtue. By reneging on the power-sharing arrangement, that unspeakable person broke his word, something that is utterly alien to the culture and values of this fair land. After all, is this not the land that gave birth to the legendary Punyakoti, the blessed cow that voluntarily returned to the tiger that had ambushed her, but most unusually for a tiger had let her go to feed her calf on the promise that she would return? And when Punyakoti did return and boldly dared the predator to kill and eat her, did not the tiger, struck with remorse, kill itself? The verses, and the morality of the tale, are permanently etched in the memory of most Kannadigas, children and adults.

Such idealised myths and memories however belong to another country, another time; besides, the cow, the calf and even the tiger, like the wench in the play, are dead. Has contemporary Karnataka any claims on this imagined heritage of loyalty and fair play towards the vulnerable? In actual fact, Karnataka’s politics has always had its seamy side going back even to the halcyon days of the princely state of Mysore, now viewed nostalgically as having been immaculate, uncontaminated by “dirty politics.” True, time lends such a patina to the past. But any reading of the reminiscences of the senior officials of the princely state of Mysore tells a different story. “Dirty politics”, not very different from its current version, also influenced political decisions of those days, including appointments and removals of Dewans and other senior officials, as indeed of lesser persons.

As for fair play, the State’s vaunted economic growth, self-evidently skewed, has significantly contributed to the general squalor and increasing inequalities in even small towns, let alone the major cities where the even the middle classes feel alienated, and the rich, in cynical disdain of their larger social environment including the language and culture of the ordinary people, live behind high walls in gated communities. Ideally, they would like the poor to be invisible, except when they are needed to provide services, though typically of the poor, they refuse to go away. The most widely selling English tabloid of Bangalore, designed to cater to the consuming classes, routinely carries indignant reports of people like its readers being harassed for alms and such things by these dregs of society.

With such an authentic and unbroken tradition of political skulduggery and very little social conscience, why is Bihar so frequently cited in deploring Karnataka’s seamy political drama? Perhaps peninsular arrogance and contempt for anything north of the Vindhyas, once seen as the exclusive vice of the Tamil but now assimilated by the more prosperous and successful Kannadigas, may be the explanation.

M.S. Prabhakara

kamaroopi@gmail.com

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