Thoughts on Oppenheimer & the absolute brilliance of Christopher Nolan

It was sometime that I had seen a good movie in theatres, and I write to report that Oppenheimer broke that stint. With the trend of production budgets  getting diverted to OTT platforms, the movie going experience in itself was soon becoming a thing of the past. But the Christopher Nolans of the cinematic world with their sheer audacity and belief in the big screens coupled with artistic brilliance can bend time backwards to help us enjoy pure cinematic art.

Oppenheimer the movie is an ode to Nolan’s genius as much as for the man himself. How does a film maker present the multitudes of a genius scientist to the everyday audience and hold their attention for close to 3 hours of run time? How do you showcase a genius of a human battling mental dichotomy, toying with uncertainty and fear?

Nolan explores this conflict by taking the hard but engaging route, instead of the easy & predictable one. He tells the story of the atomic bomb & its creator’s mental dilemma without ever showing the footage of its wreckage in Hiroshima & Nagasaki.  Cillian (pronounced Kill-ee-un) Murphy is so darn good as Oppenheimer that the audience can see the impact of his horrendous invention in his dialogues and the body language. One scene which particularly hits you is when Oppenheimer goes in to see President Truman (played by Gary Oldman) after he is declared a hero, featured on the cover of TIME magazine and credited for ending the war with his invention. President Truman is in a congratulatory mood while Oppenheimer avoids eye contact throughout the scene. He is visibly shaken and his demeanor apologetic. He says, “I feel like I have blood on my hands”. President Truman scoffs, - “Do you think people in Hiroshima & Nagasaki fucking care about who invented the bomb? They care about who dropped it”

Nolan holds himself and the audience to high standards throughout the movie. He showcases the inner life of physicists, especially theorists beautifully. Not just in the individual central character of Oppenheimer but with the group of scientists and the dynamics at play. The Manhattan project of course was a group project headed by Oppenheimer but the individual characters of Ernest Lawrence, Neils Bohr, Isidor Rabi, Hans Bethe all brilliant scientists in their own right, are shown artfully well. The inner working group discussions of whether the bomb itself is needed and how they cannot control the outcome of their own creation are brilliantly adapted into cinema sowing the questions on the righteousness of science in viewers minds.

Credit: Universal Pictures

 

Can or should science solve for war?

This question took a monstrous form during the 2^nd world war when science had advanced enough to give the world precision bombing capabilities. Inflicting death and destruction had reduced to game theory of who will blink first. Technological might mattered more than military might for the first time in world history. With the advancement of Quantum mechanics, it was evident that a vast amount of energy could be generated by splitting the atom. Nuclear explosion would have been discovered one way or the other. The only question was who would get to the finish line first- Hitler or the Allies? That Hitler considered Quantum mechanics as Jewish science made him lose out on the race. It would have been a very different world today if religious hatred did not blind Hitler’s views on science.

Oppenheimer’s moral turpitude was considering the burden that future wars would place on science. Are scientists’ going to be mere pawns or conduits in a nation’s ability to inflict damage on the enemy? In his trial post the war he succinctly summarized his thoughts- “We believe that the safety of this nation — as opposed to its ability to inflict damage on an enemy power – cannot lie wholly or even primarily in its scientific or technical prowess. It can be based only on making future wars impossible.”

The moral dilemma against the bomb is as significant as the bomb itself. Oppenheimer’s early infatuation with Communism and his further disenchantment with having to prove himself to his country makes his life intriguing to an outsider and hence provides a perfect backdrop for a wonderful biography. Pulitzer winning  biography American Prometheus: The triumph & tragedy of J Robert Oppenheimer written by Kai Bird & Martin Sherwin provided the perfect base for Nolan to depict the complexities of the man.

Prometheus in Greek mythology is chained & tortured for stealing fire from heaven and giving it to humankind. Oppenheimer truly is the Prometheus of the modern world. He not only had to face the torment of the post war American polity but also of his own internal contradictions.

When a human rises to become death & the destroyer of worlds, he goes through an intense turpitude of self-scrutiny and is forever chained and questioned by those on whom he inflicted his wrath. Christopher Nolan does an exceptional job in depicting this cinematically.

The Loss of Belonging as an Expat

Much to my chagrin, I haven’t written in a while on this blog and it puts me at a loss of words. Over the last 2 years of the pandemic, having holed up in quarantine in a foreign country, one experiences a myriad of inner feelings and a train of thoughts. Joan Didion, the stellar American writer who passed away a few days ago once said- “I cannot think until I write it down”. It is such a powerful thought. Having come to India after a 2 year long break, I feel an eerie sense of belonging here- something that I missed very much while being abroad but couldn't quite put a finger on. Taking Joan’s advice, I attempt to write it down- my train of thoughts.

I have come to stay in the town of Bijapur in northern Karnataka, where my parents have relocated after their retirement. The town with a population of close to 5 lakh is broken. The moment you step out of the home, you are drenched in dust and people from young to old participate in the Olympic sport of public spitting. To an outsider the town offers little hope. But for me, having spent my childhood summers here, my mind always tries to go back and fetch happy memories from those days. There is always a sweet reference point. This emotional comfort, even momentarily sometimes, appears to be far greater than the physical discomfort emanating from the city in shambles. This seems absurd but offers an uncanny sense of belonging which fails me while in Kuala Lumpur. It's quite strange and counter intuitive. I never knew this feeling earlier simply because I hadn’t experienced it at all.

Why is there a loss of belonging in a foreign land? Benedict Anderson in his book Imagined Communities which came out in 1983, much before I was born, depicts a nation as a socially constructed community, imagined by the people who perceive themselves as part of a group. Understanding one’s own homeland from this lens is hard having socially attuned to a shared common reality with our fellow citizens. The homeland no longer is just confined to geographical borders but a shared commonality of the emotions with those around us. We build our emotional self, pillar by pillar on this shared reality and shared memories. Perhaps this is what belonging is.

The vulnerabilities of life abroad

As an economic migrant, one does try to live an idyllic life. Things are rosy, the air is clean, the people are (mostly) nice and of course the work which forms your only identity seems to be good. Back home, your work and designation figure low in the pecking order of things that define who you are. The people, who know you in your homeland, know you for your past and the family. Both of which are completely absent now living abroad. At once you get a feeling of walking into a cricket field to bat without the protective gear. You are afraid to take on the bowler head on for your own safety. And thus settle for an innings of defensive play having fully learnt to step out and hit back home. You want predictability now. You want to know the next bowl before the bowler. You turn into an analyst instead of the batsman that you are.

It’s not too bad you tell yourself. You try getting accustomed to certainty. Life revolves around a handful of traits, all of them very specific with little to no glitches to daily life. No aberrations. No unscheduled power cuts, no unscheduled relative visits bringing in varied & distant news. Life seems to be good until it isn’t. Predictability is boring, you realise. Having a set life only takes you so far, you start fretting. And it is this feeling that is hard to define and to be put it into context.

Back Home

While being back home on a short vacation, a myriad of feelings crisscross inside of me. The contrast is far too stark. Dusty alleys ready to give me asthma the moment I step out of the house, the risk of the overhead tank running dry until the next scheduled municipal water supply and a constant search for good cell phone receptivity in my own house. The unpredictable nature of life is all around and yet people aren’t bothered too much about it. I was one among them a few years ago but now I see the contrast. When you are in your own country, or what you can confidently call your own, you have this luxury of unpredictability. Unpredictability doesn't shackle you, although it will irritate you but won't be unnerving. While being abroad the most minor of the problems start weighing on you, perhaps because of that feeling of batsmen without the protective gear. You start second guessing even the spinners. You don’t know what to do next should there be a break to the continuum. There is no neighbourhood handyman who you trust that you can call. When a law enforcement officer stops you for a regular check, there is an awkward silence. The first thing he wants to see is your passport; you are but an alien- a foreign citizen. You realise you cannot afford to live a life of unpredictability in a foreign land.

You trade this idiosyncratic luxury for that plane ticket and the visa as an economic migrant and still hope to retain that sense of belonging. As an NRI, you go through this emotional turmoil on each of your visits to the country. 

You realise there is predictability here as well. 

The year 2020

Much has been written about the year 2020- an year filled with devastating tales and mind numbing realities. An invisible enemy, a novel virus unleashed upon us death and destruction and changed the course of our lives. The enemy did not directly come after our wealth or our power hierarchy but it came after the root of our existence- our social & collective spirit. Wealth & power were only the collateral damages that we incurred. As humans, the one thing that is core to our progress is social intermingling and the virus took it away without even sounding the war bugle. Social intermingling gave rise to its ugly alter ego- social distancing.

This has been the year where we genuinely experienced the oft used term of “information overload” so much so that it has become nearly impossible to distinguish information from noise. This year made us experience human emotion as mere information because we couldn’t be near one another. The losing of a loved one, a relative, a friend, a celebrity, and the nameless man on the street have all been reduced to one message on WhatsApp being forwarded thousands of times because we couldn’t leave our houses, couldn’t grieve looking at our phone screens and did not know what else to do. The number of deaths and the virus case load tickers on news channels ran just like the stock market ones. Both soared at the same time to all-time highs. We did not know how to experience this emotion.

More than 1.7 million people disappeared from the face of the earth this year owing to just one novel disease caused by the virus. At its peak in May 2020, the virus had made it difficult to make ends meet for 1.7 billion of the world’s workforce. Even in December 2020, hundreds of millions of people globally have been put out of work simply because there are no opportunities that once existed. We can only imagine the chilling effects of these numbers and the devastation that these effects would bring on the billions of people-the immediate family members dependent on these workers.

As I write this, I cannot possibly undermine the privilege of having had a job and a steady income throughout this year which made me less prone to the virus, less affected by the disaster unfolding all around me. Having cocooned in a shell of relative privilege, this year has made me reflect on things in sharp contrast.

Where do we go from here?

Although we have extremely heartening news of the vaccine roll out in certain countries, the end of this dark tunnel is still quite far away, especially for people in the low and middle income countries. Social distancing giving way to social intermingling again is still debatable. Having adopted remote communication and remote work to make do with social intermingling, as people and as organisations we have lost that human spark. How soon can we meet people in person, share, laugh, cry and celebrate without masks and standard operating procedures is a question that still needs answers to.

Saving Capitalism from the Capitalists

This year I read Raghuram Rajan’s famous book which brilliantly highlights the raging disparities that the ills of capitalism have created. Rajan writes- “Government, even in a democracy, can be captured by a small well organised class that has little interest in seeing broad-based access to finance”. If I could extrapolate, this small organised class is against equitable distribution of wealth and wants concentration of it thus creating deep economic imbalances. Owing to the pressure of the pandemic, governments across the world have borrowed money, devalued their currencies, essentially robbing the future generations to pay for the present. But this kind of a Ponzi scheme will keep hitting us hard over and over again.  People will start moving away from traditional assets and look for creating a newer world order once the trust starts eroding. As investor and philosopher Naval Ravikant Tweeted - "It is not so much bitcoin going up as dollar going down"

What does it mean to remain in uncertainty?

Our parent’s generation (the baby boomers) had more or less one large geopolitical uncertainty to deal with- the cold war. The levers to that war were held by humans and it could be controlled. To put it in a blind spot matrix, it was known known scenario and was easier to deal with. 2 actors (US & the Soviet Union) both with nuclear capability acting rationally would lead to the outcome of maintaining status quo. Cut to 2020, the information age has moved us to the far end of the matrix of unknown unknowns. The next warfare isn’t going to be nuclear, because the origins and the outcomes of which are known. The next warfare is going to be information and chemical/biological warfare where it is impossible to definitely pinpoint to the origins or the outcomes. These have both the seen and the unseen effects, to borrow from Amit Varma’s famous podcast. Often, the unseen effects far outweigh the seen effects. We are already the foot soldiers of the information warfare unleashed upon us through fake and asymmetrical news propaganda and this year we have all now entered the era of a biological one.

For the foreseeable future, we will remain in the state of unknown unknowns. The next big human invention, I believe would be to devise a cyber mechanism which can analyse humungous amounts of data for us to toggle between the state of unknown unknowns to the state of known knowns where it is easier to predict, control and restore. Much of the work in this is already happening and what it needs is state capacity, scale and the global acceptance. 

Optimising outcomes in uncertainty

Many of the post-doctoral scholars have looked at optimising decision making amidst uncertainty from a theoretical standpoint. What I have often wondered is amidst the daily hustle, how do we inculcate the mind set of optimising for the best outcome?  In an environment of uncertainty what is it that we hold on to? In this I always tend to go back to my residential school days where we chanted the Bhagavad Gita before every meal.  The Gita says, one should choose the right thing to do- Karma and keep doing it till its perfection. And that is all one can control- his/her own Karma and not its outcome. My intention is not to offer a philosophical answer to a practical question staring at us, but is to drive home a straightforward point. We can optimise the outcomes when we deliver 100% on the factors that we can control- our work, our relationships, our responsibilities and stop fretting on the factors which we cannot control- the next pandemic, the next recession, the next stock market crash.

The year 2020 has been a year where a lot of things happened, without much happening.

Thoughts on turning 32

Turning 32 is not counted amongst any milestones, unlike when you turn say 10 or 20 years old. There is a certain excitement to life which you feel when you turn 10. You get to play cricket in the big boys league of your locality. You get to wear pants in school. Your parents buy you a bicycle which you can now ride to school. It feels great. You start to appreciate your hobbies- sport and cinema because you can understand what’s going on rather than rely on someone else for pop culture, often a 10+ year old senior kid. You envied to be like him. Now you are him. Turning 20 is a milestone because it hits you with a tinge of reality. It is colourful. There are multiple paths that are now visible to you. You consider to be a rebel. You find merit in the argument that that world is indeed run by scoundrels and you got to be a scoundrel to play the big game yourself. You consider to renounce everything and become a sanyasin. You consider going to the USA for your masters, because you think it is a land of self liberation. At 20, you could pretty much consider every possible option life could throw at you and try your hand at it. 20 is an age of possibilities. You are invincible. And then you hit 30. It is a milestone which is both feared & ridiculed at. Feared because from a decade of possibilities, you enter a phase of life which is almost procedural. You by now know the city you have lived in. Which potholes to avoid while driving. Which day of the week to leave early from office so that you are not stuck longer than usual. You seem so sure, that you start answering Quora threads with a certain confidence that comes only with age.

And one day, you no longer relate to the things which made sense earlier. You try figuring out what has happened. Your political thought becomes nuanced; the way you deal with colleagues, customers, the cashier at the local grocery store- you see a marked change in yourself. You are nodding more and thanking others more often than you need to. You start seeing the world other than in binaries which the political establishment wants you to see. You start worrying about your carbon footprint. You are scared for the world in which your daughter will grow up. Will this be enough? You start reading up more. It is never enough. You have opened your mind and the thirst is now seemingly unquenching. And then you understand why the 30s is ridiculed at. Because from the other side of the fence, this is all worth ridiculing.

The things that you were sure of a couple of years ago, you are no longer sure of now. And you realise that is a good thing. The world does not operate in binaries. Although it would be nice if it did. So you stop being sure and cocky on social media. What appealed to you once as a platform to stay connected and discuss no longer appeals to you. And 32 appears to be an year of inconsequence because you know, this too shall change. At 12, all of which I thought when I was 10 seemed true. Somehow, time moved slowly back then. At 22 I was saying to myself what I thought when I was 20 was destined to happen. You are adamantly idealistic. There is a tinge of boyish boorishness. At 32, I now am single minded about my flawed understanding of life when I was 30. At 32, life has opened up again fascinating me with multitudes which I did not know existed up until now.

It has made me question what I once thought was already answered. Perhaps, 32 is not an year of inconsequence.

Chronicling our time: Reflections on the last 3 decades and the next 3 to come

Last March, I crossed the carefree twenties and hit the tense thirties. Today, I complete my first year of being tense about my thirties. There is a reason I chose to use the adjective tense. If one were to draw his or her life’s parallel to sport- being in your 30s is like batting on a 90s score in cricket, which is often referred to as the nervous nineties.  My generation referred to as the 90s kids in pop culture, would distinctly remember every time Sachin hit the 90s mark- the nation would become nervous. Hitting those last 10 runs mattered to everybody. After all, a century was what was really counted and remembered, which invariably went a long way in making the overall team’s fortunes. Likewise, if there was a nervous decade for the sport called life, I’d argue it would be the 30s. For what one would build in this phase of life (relationships, friendships, career, wealth etc.) would be a defining factor for what one would be remembered for.

It is in this time period most adults get married, get to know their partners strongly, start a family, buy a home, get to define themselves at work with some amount of expertise, move up in the career ladder and in a way truly become independent- financially and emotionally. This decade (2018-2028) is quite scary yet exciting for anybody to hit the 30s age group. Scary and exciting as in taking the world’s fastest roller coaster ride. Let me explain why.

The decade of the 1980s & the 1990s:

The decade of 1980s was when I was born and my father hit his thirties. Doordarshan was the only channel yet and getting to watch the Sunday evening movie without power cuts was like winning a free Netflix subscription. You were lucky. Life was simple and Salman Khan made films with scripts. Things largely seemed under control- you knew where you were heading.

My father’s 30s went in establishing his career as an accountant and saving for his children’s education. The wants were limited and his life goals too, which led to contentment. In the end he made sure he did what he set out to do in his 30s.

Liberalization & the Internet Boom (The decade of 2000 & 2010):

The democratization of internet post the Cold War is by far the most defining moment of humankind’s history. One can hardly find a parallel event which would have such a widespread impact on people’s lives for times to come. The guttenberg printing press made Christianity the most popular religion in the world, the steam engine revolutionalised transport but I’d argue did not have such behavior changing, era defining impact as the internet. Come to think of it, the printing press invented by Guttenberg in c. 1440 has become a 3D printer in 2019, the steam locomotive invented by George Stephenson in c. 1812 has become a bullet train in 2019, but the internet which most people could only start using in the 1990s has become everything that one could possibly imagine- even a virtual human being poised to take over the real human beings.

The decade of 2020 and after:

The internet has made everything seem smaller and doable. This most often makes life seem smaller. You finish a hard day’s work and get a pat on your back from your boss and are ready to leave office with some contentment. Just as you book a cab with surge pricing to go home, you open Facebook to see that a friend whom you met at a weekend party some 6 months ago has been nominated by some magazine’s 30 under 30 list. You feel it is a big deal compared to your desk job. You start feeling small. You feel there is a lot to do. You forget what you were happy about, just a while ago. You go home to do nothing.  Your life seems smaller. This is induced not necessarily by envy but by too much information that the internet constantly brings to us. 

The decades to come next will only aggravate the crisis if you are not looking at the brighter side. Our generation is the richest generation in humankind’s history from a per capita income, access to earth’s resources and collective human knowledge standpoint. The reason why I refer to this phase of our lives as scary yet exciting is because we stand at a crossroad without knowing which way to go. The next 3 decades especially is going to define much of humankind’s future. Will the growth of artificial intelligence prove to be inversely proportional to growth of human intelligence? Will we stop comprehending simple tasks like how to make an entry in a diary, write down a phone number because a virtually intelligent machine will always do it for us? Is there an end to this?

My own study and understanding shows that all growth will one day plateau and humans will find a balance. Will we the 90s kids play a part in finding that balance for our next generation? I believe our legacy will largely be defined by what role we chose to play in these defining times- my yearly birthday reminder. 

Eager to know your feedback if you are in the same journey in life as me. Leave a feedback in the comment section below.

Thoughts on Federalism and the Karnataka State Elections of 2018

In 2013 the last time Karnataka went to polls, I was in Hyderabad with no access to Kannada newspapers. The Hindu’s Hyderabad edition which I used to read regularly did not cover the pre-election campaign extensively. Neither did the national (read English/Hindi) news channels. With the Congress government’s enormous scams coming out of the closet and Narendra Modi’s behind the scenes maneuvering to become the Prime Minister, most of the print and electronic media focused on taking sides. Karnataka, going by Rajdeep Sardesai’s ironical phrase, suffered from the “tyranny of distance”. Thus 5 years later, people outside Karnataka still struggle to pronounce S-I-D-D-A-R-A-M-A-I-A-H and Y-E-D-D-Y-U-R-A-P-P-A.

So what has changed now?

 

 

National journalists, the likes of Sunetra Choudhury are talking about the new political reality which was quite unthinkable a few years ago. A leader of a southern state holding key to an entire opposition unity and the fortunes of the Congress Party. South India up till now was only seen as a revenue stream, the easy to handle part of the political puzzle. The BIMARU states (Bihar, Madhya Pradesh, Rajasthan and Uttar Pradesh) occupied most of the political spectrum, for one being bimaru (economically sick) and two, they sent the most number of MPs to parliament. The language policy of the Indian government meant that a MP from Sitamarhi who could speak Hindi fluently had a natural upper hand than a MP from Mandya or Machilipatnam who had to give prior notices to parliament to speak in their mother tongues. The election of 2018, with a weaker BJP and a resurgent opposition mainly from southern India is being defined as a game changer.

It is in the wake of this reality that Karnataka elections of 2018 gain importance on the national stage. Issues ranging from demands of a separate religion for Lingayats in Kalaburagi to the drinking water problem in Varuna are being discussed on prime time news channels of the “national media”. As a Kannadiga I am happy that the state’s issues are finally getting their due in terms of national awareness and media coverage. Up till now, you couldn’t imagine India Today sending a reporter to Kalaburagi to cover the Lingayat agitation. The things are changing with the change in headwinds in Indian politics. But the road ahead is long to correct the notion of “national” and “regional” in a media created world.  Sample this, in what seems to be a black and white case of fiscal federalism and governance, Siddaramaiah’s social media post has created a storm of cacophony on the national stage.

 The Kannadiga Identity of “Adjust maadi”

 On 17^th October 1990, Rajiv Gandhi dismissed the government of Veerendra Patil through Bhanu Pratap Singh who was the governor of Karnataka. A year earlier, he dismissed the government of S.R Bommai using article 356 of the Indian constitution, which later became a landmark case in the Supreme Court. Rajiv Gandhi’s mother Indira Gandhi, dismissed the hugely popular government of Devraj Urs in 1980. For the Congress Party, Karnataka which the high command refers to as “Karnatak”, has remained an easy state. The moment a leader or a rebel emerges, the high command uses all its muscle to quell him. Devraj Urs, Ramakrishna Hegde, Veerendra Patil, SR Bommai, Bangarappa, SM Krishna- all of them sidelined because they grew too big for the party. A clarion call was given to us in each of the elections – ‘swalpa adjust maadi’ and us Kannadigas buckled up and adjusted. That defined our identity to a large extent for the rest of India.

The elections of 2018 are a welcome change. Chief Minister Siddaramaiah having grown up in the Janata School of politics identifies himself as a local “Halli Haida”, and has largely been successful in not becoming a Yes Man like his predecessors. Thanks to his non-congress politics for most of his life and a weakened, desperate Congress high command. He has been able to assert his power. This is good for the state. Siddaramaiah is leading the Congress’s campaign, deciding on the list of candidates to field and strategizing on the rallies to hold. Rahul Gandhi has been largely ceremonious in his presence in the election arena. This is precisely how a state election needs to be fought, with state leaders calling the shot. The BJP with an all-powerful Narendra Modi and Amit Shah will learn the lesson the hard way. Yeddyurappa has been turned into a Yes Man and has been given no real ammunition to fight the local boy Siddaramaiah. For the people of Karnataka, the cycle is all the same again. We haven’t yet come out of the “adjust maadi” stereotype. The high command of BJP, Congress cannot dictate terms to our neighboring states of Andhra Pradesh, Telangana, Kerala and Tamil Nadu. Each of those states has successfully fought against receiving their order from Delhi.

 

Is Federalism against Nationalism?

When Chief Minister Siddaramaiah launched the newly designed Karnataka flag, all hell broke loose in the TV studios at 9 p.m. The panelists, some journalists unilaterally in the middle of debate termed it “anti-national”, the new buzzword in Indian politics. When Kannadigas protested against rampant Hindi imposition in all walks of life, the panelists who most often are proxies for the men in power, termed it “anti-national”. Any step to assert our federal rights was viewed with suspicion. The time has finally arrived when dedicated groups of conscious Kannada voters are demanding their fundamental right of equality. Apart from fighting for our federal rights, the onus is on us to make the rest of the country aware the federalism is not against nationalism, indeed it complements it. History has it, that rogue nations emerge from consolidation of power. The most significant change in German government after the Nazis took power was the destruction of the power of the states of Germany. While the greatest achievement of America was that the sovereign states were persuaded to allow in the constitution very limited powers to a national government and the states retained a vast amount of governmental power.

The Karnataka flag, or the flag of any other Indian state is a beautiful identity of the vision of our founding fathers of the constitution and the States Reorganization Committee which took the wisest decision in keeping the sub-continent intact. The Unity in Diversity arises from our multi-culturalism and our linguistic heritage. The RSS like any other totalitarian organization believes in a Hindi and Hindu India which helps its cause to gain total foothold in the country. The politician from the Hindi heartland has had it easy till now to win elections by speaking in Hindi and believes Hindi is better for Hindustan. The IAS officer from Tamil Nadu has been taught Hindi in Mussourie and he has now come to believe Hindi is good for the Indian unity. It is time to bust the myth that federalism negates nationalism.

If a student in Bhopal is given an option to learn Kannada or Tamil or Bengali, like how a student in Bagalkot is given to learn Hindi, it would lead to a stronger nation. And politicians coming to campaign to Karnataka needn’t struggle to pronounce the name of Sir M Visveshwaraiah or to utter any of Basavanna’s vachanas.

It is time for the self-aware Kannadiga to Stand Up and vote for Karnataka. ಸಾಕು ಸರ್ ಇನ್ನು adjust ಮಾಡಕ್ಕೆ ಆಗಲ್ಲ!!

 

 

 

P.S.: My last article is here: Is it time for a self aware Kannadiga to Stand Up?

 

Is it time for the Self-Aware Kannadiga to Stand Up?

It was 1977. After a tumultuous iron fisted reign of emergency, Indira Gandhi lost her election to a maverick named Raj Narain in her political bastion of Rae Bareli, Uttar Pradesh. In desperate need to get back into parliament she had nowhere to go, except for that one state where she knew would experience least resistance from the voters. Proving her expectations right, the sitting MP of Chickmagalur resigned, Indira Gandhi flew in a chopper, waived her hand and won the by election in 1978 from the constituency. The town still remembers the election dearly, but Chickmagalur could never get the political attention of Rae Bareli. It never became worthy enough of Delhi Durbar. In 1999, the Gandhis were still unsure in their family bastion of Amethi in Uttar Pradesh and hence Sonia Gandhi wanted a safer option to contest the general election. Bellary, the mining town played safe house, this time to Indira Gandhi’s daughter in law. The town could never come close to Amethi  in national imagination in getting rail coach factories and universities sanctioned by the government. In 2014, general elections B.S. Yedyurappa, Karnataka’s poster-boy politician promised Narendra Modi that he would send 25 MPs from BJP to parliament out of 28 seats allotted to the state. Indeed, he succeeded to a very large extent. The 17 BJP MPs who belong to the ruling dispensation in the centre, could not make a difference for Karnataka’s most pressing need- Water. First, it was the setback in Mahadayi river dispute with Goa and then with the Cauvery Water dispute with Tamil Nadu. Karanataka was never allowed to become anything other than a safe political house for the National Parties, for they know, Kannadigas would most happily oblige when someone told them- “Swalpa adjust maadi”. It is true that Karnataka has been an ATM for National Parties all these years.

Captured from Vasant Shetty's Facebook Wall

I’ve been troubled by this question for many years now- Why is there no such thing called the Kannadiga identity? For far too long we have lived, falsely under the image of a Madrasi. Malayalees and Telugites too were victims of this stereotype but they were quick and clever to carve their unique identities detaching themselves from the racist Madrasi tag. For far too long, we have laughed at the ignorance of the world outside us thinking they couldn’t tell a Tamilian from a Kannadiga, never making a conscious effort to go out and tell the world that we are all not the same. We never asserted our identity as Kannadigas. When our icons were no longer depicted as Kannadigas but instead were called Bangaloreans, we did not think it mattered. We had made Bangalore our new identity. Kannadigas from Bidar, Gulbarga, Chitradurga and every other town in Karnataka when they traveled outside the state called themselves Bangaloreans. You would notice a stark contrast when you meet a Tamilian from Thanjavur, because he will tell you exactly that. Karnataka became Bangalore and Bangalore became Karnataka for everyone.  No other city was deemed worthy enough to be put on the map. Barring Belagavi, Mysuru and Mangaluru, no other city or town in Karnataka today would be recognized by most non-Kannadigas. We never tried to explore our identity beyond Bangalore! The rampant migration to Bangalore both from within and from outside created a skewed image as well as understanding of the state. I was baffled to read tweets like this coming out of the violence that erupted in the wake of the Cauvery order. 

Bengaluru became ugly in front of Bangalore

Soft Power of the State:

A state can wield as much power as it can portray to possess. Kannadiga politicians have long believed that Bengaluru gives them a lifetime access to unlimited political credit at the power table. One cannot get the genie to sanction an infinite set of wishes. When Bengaluru became unsustainable, when the government wanted to look beyond the usual, it needed all the soft power it could muster to get water for its burgeoning populace, to get its land decongested, to make its cities smart, to get world class educational institutes and to get its fair share of tax in the federal structure. When you see setbacks for Karnataka in matters like these, you wonder how would a Tamil Nadu or a Uttar Pradesh get disproportionate political attention? The answer lies in their cultural identity which leads to unity and political strength.

Is the time ripe for a new regional political party in Karnataka?

The problem with regional parties in India is that they have lost their appeal to the educated middle class due to their involvement in rampant and self-serving corruption and feudalism. Even the ones like Aam Aadmi Party which promised to fight corruption, have been reduced to a laughing stock. A political party without a mass base will remain an ideology and nothing more- Lok Satta, anyone? A Kannadiga centric political party should result out of a political movement of self-aware Kannadigas standing up for their right. A movement which revives the lost Kannada literature treasure of Bendre, Kuvempu, DVG, Narasimhaswamy, Tejaswi, TP Kailasam and a host others. A movement which popularizes the movies of Puttana Kanagal, Shankar Nag and revives the now mediocre Kannada film industry. A movement which doesn’t have to struggle to organize camps on weekends to encourage Kannadigas to speak Kannada. Leaders will have to emerge from such a movement and will have to take the leadership of a new political outfit from Karnataka with a Kannadiga identity.

It is high time for the self-aware Kannadiga to stand up and take charge of the future. It is important to see the setbacks of Cauvery and Mahadayi river water sharing or the share of central taxes that the state gets in this light.