SPECIAL ARTICLE

The Composite State and Its Nation:

Karnatakas Reunification Revisited
Janaki Nair

Has the idea of the linguistic state been rendered

increasingly irrelevant or less pertinent in the current
stage of capitalist development? The unfolding political
scenario in Karnataka calls for a return to its founding
moments as a linguistic state. In the early 1950s, Kengal
Hanumanthaiah developed the idea of a composite
state partly in order to channelise the discontent within
Mysore about the possible loss of (caste) power but
equally to provide an alternative matrix (that of
development) within the expanded state. What were
the roots of that alternative to the (linguistic) state that
was being imagined, and have the recent political
developments been a realisation of that imagined
composite state or its demise? This article attempts to
frame these questions through a return to the legislative
assembly debates of the early 1950s.

The author was compelled to return to, and rethink, a previous and
much shorter, version of this article which is to appear in a collection
of her essays entitled Mysore Modern: Rethinking the Region under
Princely Rule (2011, University of Minnesota Press). She is grateful to
A R Vasavi and M S S Pandian for their comments.
Janaki Nair (nair.janaki@gmail.com) teaches at the Centre for Historical
Studies, Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi.

52

ontemporary events that are unfolding in Karnataka are

baffling even the most astute of commentators and politi
cal analysts.1 The implications of the new contract that
is being forged by Karnataka politicians with god as witness
and mediated by the powerful leaders of assorted religious insti
tutions, bypassing existing judicial and constitutional authorities
and institutions demand urgent analyses rather than condem
nation alone. While journalists rail against the unparalleled self-
interest that drives and empowers only the political/bureaucratic
class,2 the much cherished Modern Mysore heritage has been
recently refashioned into a Karnataka Model of Development
premised on the twin pillars of technology led growth and
improved governance.3 The Mysore First argument which the
model state made its emblem before 1947 has been burnished
anew for the post-independence period, during which time, as
some argue, democracy has been both broadened by Devaraj
Urs, and deepened by Ramakrishna Hegde. 4 An academic
interest in highlighting the pioneering role played by the State
well before Independence, and its continuance in the post-inde
pendence period,5 is nevertheless simultaneously placed under
the strain of explaining the democratisation and deepening
of corruption, the steady dismantling of state schemes and inter
ventions, coupled with the dizzying rise of market forces, and
the complex interplay of inherited and newly invented hierar
chies.6 For instance, was the appeal of former Chief Minister
Yeddyurappa and his political opponent H D Kumaraswamy,
another former chief minister, to the power of the deity at
Dharmasthala an expression of faith in the only enduring insti
tutions within Karnataka, and a disavowal of the more brittle
institutions of the nation state?7
Such questions will require much deeper historical research
and analysis of not only the Mysore bureaucracy and its moderni
sing agenda but the powerful role played by non-state institutions
in providing legitimacy and defining political power. I will
attempt a far more modest framing of such questions by return
ing to the moment of expanded state formation to ask: does the
case of Karnataka decisively demonstrate the limits, perhaps
even the growing irrelevance, of linguistic nationalism? Was
another political possibility articulated in the early 1950s by both
opponents and supporters of the enlarged state? And finally, is
the new face of Karnataka politics a fulfilment or a betrayal of
this vision? The new directions taken by electoral politics in
Karnataka, and the multiple claims on the district of Bellary and
its mineral wealth, as well as the scant respect for linguistic
borders or indeed affective sentiments shown by the robber
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SPECIAL ARTICLE

barons of the mining belt,8 appear to make very relevant, though

perhaps not in its intended senses, the discourse on economic de
velopment, with a stress on a composite Kannada nation which
was initiated by Kengal Hanumanthaiah, among others, during
the debates of the early 1950s in Mysore.
In 1956, Mysores independent existence as a former princely
state ended, as it became part of an expanded linguistic state
(later renamed as Karnataka). This expansion was far from
eagerly sought by Mysore: the reluctance was marked from the
time when seven taluks of Bellary were severed from Madras
Presidency and added to Mysore in 1953, right up until the
eventual unification in 1956. It would therefore be easy to trace
the political rumblings 50 years later separatist movements in
Kodagu,9 similar expressions of discontent in Uttara Karnataka,
and the states own acknowledgement of its failures in that
region10 to the unfulfilled goals or viability of linguistic states.
Indeed, these rumblings appear to confirm the early misgivings
of many Mysoreans about the embrace of their fellow language
speakers to the north.11 Added to this is the widespread dissatis
faction with the role of the state in nurturing and developing the
community of Kannada speakers12: indeed, the love of language
expressed by a range of Kannada protagonists in the recent past has
dismayed the early campaigners for unification. As Patil Puttappa
described the predicament, Mysoreans had achieved political
integration, without an accompanying emotional unification.13
Kannada nationalism, in its broader and more inclusive sense,
therefore followed, rather than preceded, the establishment of
the state of Mysore/Karnataka, with unexpected consequences.
Of what then did unification consist?

Territorialising Caste or Language?

Nationalist accounts of karnataka ekikarana (Karnataka uni
fication) adopt the familiar mode of all nationalist histories: the
idea of Karnataka has existed from the time of the earliest
dynasties in the southern and northern Karnataka regions, but its
historical unity was broken in the 13th century with the sack of
Dwarasamudra by Malik Kafur. A striving for linguistic unity is
traced back to the time of the Vijayanagar kings: the rule of the
Bahmani sultans marks a break in the cultural continuity of the
region.14 The classical/folk heritage of Islam was thus kept away
from the cultural history of Karnataka or more properly, Kan
nada.15 Yet, although Kannada suffered blows from at least the
14th century, the actual territorial disintegration and the dis
memberment of the Kannada people occurred with the defeat of
Tipu Sultan and the start of British rule in 1799.
The demand for a unified linguistic state gathered political
force only in the third decade of the 20th century, following the
Congress acceptance of the principle of linguistic state forma
tion. The creation of Pradesh Congress Committees for states
which did not yet exist, such as Karnataka, was an acknowl
edgement of the yearnings of substantial proportions of
Kannada speakers who lived in the British ruled provinces of
Bombay, Madras, Coorg (Kodagu) and in the princely state of
Hyderabad. In 1956, the formation of the new Mysore healed the
cartographic wounds inflicted by British rule for strategic or
administrative convenience.16
Economic & Political Weekly EPW novemBER 19, 2011 vol xlvi no 47

The corrective to this nationalist version of unification takes as

its starting point the well known opposition of some political
leaders and intellectuals in Mysore to the idea of submerging the
princely state within a larger political and administrative unity.17
A unified Karnataka would, by including large numbers of
Lingayats from the northern Karnataka regions, forever alter
the demographic composition that gave Vokkaligas the edge in
Mysore state politics. This interpretation was amply aided by the
States Reorganisation Commission (SRC) report itself, which
singled out Mysore as the state haunted by bitter acrimony
between the two castes. According to the SRC, state reorganisa
tion would produce an administrative unity in which no com
munity may be dominant.18
This raises the question about what was re-terrritorialised
when the larger Mysore came into being language or caste? The
self-evident rivalries of dominant castes dog all analyses of
Karnataka politics up to the present day19 despite the fact that
there is much that they fail to explain. A return to this founding
moment of Karnataka may therefore be imperative to generate
new approaches to an understanding of its contemporary history.

The Shifting Grounds of Unification

In 1944, D V Gundappa (DVG) addressed the Karnataka Sangha
Rajothsava at Bangalores Central College with a programme for
building up the language, which included consolidation of the
Kannada-speaking areas within two or more states.20 By the time
of the SRC in 1955, DVG had become a staunch opponent of a sin
gular Karnataka.21 Others opposed to the idea of linguistic unifi
cation while supporting the idea of two states, Karnataka and
Mysore, were ex-dewans such as M Visvesvaraya and M Mirza
Ismail, scholars such as M P L Sastry, Congressmen such as A G
Ramachandra Rao and T Channaiah (who had also earlier sup
ported unification), and members of caste associations such as
Vokkaligara and Kuruba Sanghas. This assortment of cultural
royalists, non-dominant castes, and technocrat-administrators
who had built Mysores formidable reputation as a model state
clouds the clarity provided by a singular focus on communal
difference in historical accounts of unification.
Equally heterogeneous were the votaries of unification within
and outside the Mysore legislature: socialists such as Gopala
Gowda and well-known writer-poets of Mysore such as Kuvempu
(both Vokkaligas), literary figures such as Aa Na Kru (A N Krishna
Rao), critics of unification turned supporters such as the writer
Shivarama Karanth, and representatives of parties such as the
Praja Socialist Party (notably J Mohamed Imam), also disturb the
strictly communal categories within which Karnataka unifica
tion has been understood.22 Gopala Gowda said that between
1953 and 1955, he was viewed widely as betraying, on the one
hand, both Mysore and his caste, and on the other, the unifica
tion movement itself.23
Neither the nationalist nor the communal modes of concep
tualising the moment seem adequate in explaining developments
in Mysore in the early 1950s. The obsessive focus on caste and
secular power has thrust the form taken by the debate on a
possible Karnataka into the shadows. The rethinking on unification
that occurred between 1949 and 1955 may provide important

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clues on the conceptions of democracy and development that

were being fashioned. The crystallisation of the linguistic nation
after the state occurred when the stage was already prepared by
another political logic, the logic of state-led development.
Which of the two languages of linguistic unity, or of economic
development possessed the greater prospect of being the bearer
of democracy? Did developmental discourse play a crucial role in
marking the passage from the limited literary love of language
and country as it was expressed in the demand for karnataka
ekikarana, and an expanded political mobilisation? In other
words, what were the stakes on both sides of the debate as they
shaped the practice of democracy in Karnataka?
I would like to return to the contentious official debates on the
wisdom of karnataka ekikarana for the crucial insights they pro
vide on the imagined economy of Karnataka state.24 This economy
had long been in the making, as I have shown elsewhere. In its
1950s version, it was reflected in official debates on the Andhra
State Bill in December 1953/January 1954; the (Seshadri) Fact
Finding Committee Report in March/April 1955; and the SRCs
report in November/December 1955. This series of debates
focused above all on the question of development. The term
was used primarily in two senses, to refer to the historical
achievements of the model Mysore state, on the one hand, and to
discuss the potentialities for expansion (i e, capitalist develop
ment) offered by the acquisition of new territories. Development
was thus used both in arguments by the protagonists of, and
opponents to, the idea of an expanded Mysore state.
Was development merely the smokescreen for real anxieties
about the likely political dominance of Lingayats? The many
unabashed discussions of caste and its links to political power
in both the assembly and the council reveal that there was no
hesitation at all in naming enlightened self-interest for what it
was.25 However, once the Congress and other politicians were
reconciled to the inevitability of linguistic states, the develop
ment discourse became the principal means of reorganising the
political order and developing a notion of hegemony outside
the framework of representative politics. The attempt to turn a
potential political threat into an opportunity via the discourse of
development focused strongly on the economy, particularly a
process of accumulation that risked no radical social change.26
Mysore Chief Minister Kengal Hanumanthaiahs support for the
recommendations of the SRC in 1955 and his insistence on Mysores
legacy as a composite state which countered the settled ortho
doxies of linguistic nationalism, was thus an effort to imagine a
new economy and forge new political goals through development
and planning, namely a modality of political power constituted
outside the immediate political process itself.27
My purpose here will be to discuss the discernible shift within
law-making bodies away from history and its affective senti
ments about love of the Karnataka country, to geography and the
economic value of the landscape as natural resource.28 No
doubt, the reliance on development and its enabling material
conditions did succeed in displacing the question of caste, at least
in this territorialised form. Indeed, debates about the addition of
Bellary (district and taluk) revealed the problems of a strict
adherence to linguistic norms in state formation. The near total

54

absence of a popular nationalism in the Mysore region meant

that when the people did conceptualise the nation, they laid
claim to language as a precious cultural object, a form of selfdefinition against outsiders within the state and not as a vehicle
of democracy.

Linguistic Imaginings
Kannada language speakers were recognised by the SRC of 1955
as the most fragmented during the period of British rule.29
Geographical distance from the capitals of those provinces only
heightened the perception of being marginalised. Since Kannadaspeaking minorities were present in parts of Bombay, Madras,
and Coorg, with a substantial minority in Hyderabad, they were
to be converted into a majority of their own.30
Karnatakas demand for a separate state, however, was primarily
driven by Congress workers from north Karnataka, and especially
from Bombay-Karnataka. Satish Deshpande has defined this as a
cusp-region, an overlap zone, or a hybrid (or mixed) cultural
space, where the transition from one pure cultural identity to
another can take place. Since it straddles the cultural domain
between north and south India, the Bombay-Karnataka region
marks both the southern boundary of northern culture as well as
the northern boundary of the southern culture.31 There were, in
other words, marked cultural differences between this region
and Old Mysore.
After the formal acceptance by the Congress in 1920 of the
linguistic state principle, the demand for karnataka ekikarana
quickened. The Karnataka Handbook, brought out on the occa
sion of the 1924 Congress Session, recognised that the physical
boundaries of this new entity were not quite firm, though it had
already taken shape as a province in the Congress lexicon.32 By
1937, the establishment of a Mysore Pradesh Congress Committee,
as distinct from the Karnataka Pradesh Congress Committee
(KPCC) set up in 1924, raised the possibility of two states using
the same language. The meetings of the Kannada Sahitya
Parishat routinely mentioned the prospect of unification, but a
meeting devoted to ekikarana first took place only in 1946 at
Davangere, and was attended by elected representatives from the
British presidencies of Madras and Bombay.
In that year, a determined move was made to yoke the KPCCs
demand for a linguistic state with Mysores yearning for a
responsible government. The pragmatic arrangements that
could follow Indian independence alarmed many young Mysore
leaders, such as Kengal Hanumanthaiah and H C Dasappa at the
10th karnataka ekikarana conference held in Bombay in 1946. The
writer Sriranga recalled that when some important [n Karnataka]
leaders said, with Mysore if possible, without Mysore if necessary,
leaders from Mysore pleaded for the inclusion of their province.33
Yet questions of unification remained muted in Mysore, and
were somewhat confined even in the Bombay-Karnataka region
thereafter though many calculations were made between 1947
and 1953 about the potential strengths of brahmins, Lingayats
and Vokkaligas in a unified Mysore.34 The possibility of two
states strengthened as clear preferences were being made among
provinces such as Kodagu, parts of Salem and the Niligiris to join
Mysore, while Bombay-Karnataka leaders not only distanced
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themselves from princely Mysore, but wanted to relocate the

state capital to Dharwad.35

The Gift of Bellary

The sudden gift of seven of Bellary taluks from Madras Presi
dency to Mysore by the first Partition Committee of 1949 made it
clear that Mysores preferences regarding reorganisation would
be overlooked when stronger claims were made, as by Andhra
Pradesh. The Partition Committee, which consisted of Andhra and
Tamil leaders (but no Mysoreans) granted Bellary with neither a
demand nor a struggle from the Mysore side (though Karnataka
politicians such as Nijalingappa and Tekur Subrahmanyam had
been active in demanding its inclusion in Kannada-speaking state
all along).36 Mysore legislators were sceptical of the Partition
Committees generosity towards these backward districts, even
though they consisted of a majority of Kannada speakers. There
was a persistent feeling that the backward region of Bellary was
thrust on Mysore since neither Tamil Nadu nor Andhra was inter
ested in keeping it. Mulka Govinda Reddy, while discussing the
possible return of Bellary taluk alone to Andhra, said that The
chief minister of Mysore did not agitate for those seven taluks
from Madras. It was done at the instance of the Government of
India. it is their bounden duty to subsidise to the extent that the
Mysore Government is going to suffer on account of the trans
ferred seven taluks.37
However, Kengal Hanumanthaiah used a filial metaphor to
describe the addition of Bellary to Mysore: the return of the
Bellary District to Mysore is like the calf returning to its mother.38
He then began to outline a different vision of territory, one that
was associated neither with language nor cultural history (though
he was not averse to invoking the latter), but of development, of
land as natural resource. Bellary, he anticipated, would not be
the Rs 30 lakh drain on the budget expected by many critics,
but a potential new Mandya, the area which flourished after the
building of the Krishnarajasagar dam. This promise of agricultural
growth was held out by the upcoming Tungabhadra project.
Bellarys addition to Mysore was protracted and complex: as a
border district with substantial populations of Telugu speakers, it
pushed Kannada speakers below the 70% mark. In 1921, the
Congress District Arbitration Committee (headed by N C Kelkar)
said that The Telugu province, as now reorganised, is already
too strong and extensive to lose much by losing the Bellary
district, and suggested awarding the whole to Karnataka. Even
tually, however, he gave three taluks of Bellary (Alur, Adoni
and Rayadurg) to Andhra on the basis of the census, and the rest
to Karnataka. It was recognised that Bellary was not merely
bilingual; it was of a mixed character, including Hindusthani
speakers who were mostly Muslims, and whose political affilia
tions were not firmly rooted in language.
The 1948 Dar Commission recognised the problems of bilingual
districts in border areas which had developed an economic and
organic life of their own, which should not be broken up and
should be disposed of on consideration of their own special
needs. However, the Partition Committee of 1949, faced with an
intransigent Andhra that wanted a purely Telugu-speaking
state and a sullen Madras Presidency, which did not want to
Economic & Political Weekly EPW novemBER 19, 2011 vol xlvi no 47

r etain seven Bellary taluks which were not contiguous with its
territory, awarded those taluks to Mysore.
At the time of the formation of Andhra province in 1953, justice
Wanchoo noted that the headworks of Tungabhadra dam were in
a predominantly Kannada-speaking taluk, and that the new state
was (now) demanding the whole district, which was opposed by
Karnataka. Wanchoo wanted the district to be administered by
Andhra until Mysore/Karnataka could be created, and did not en
visage discrimination against the Kannada-speaking areas of Bel
lary district.39 In its 1953 declaration, the Government of India
however stuck to the linguistic principle in giving three taluks to
Andhra and six to Mysore, with Bellary taluks fate to be decided
later, and the Tungabhadra scheme to be jointly administered by
the two states.
The next committee headed by justice L S Mishra concluded
that Bellary taluk as a whole should be transferred to Mysore.
However, following the SRC suggestion in 1955 to return Bellary
taluk to Andhra, fierce resistance broke out in the district, with
Mysore objecting strenuously since the areas joint to Mysore are
comparatively poorer than the areas going to Andhra which
Bellarys addition to Mysore would mitigate.40 While Mysore
clung simultaneously to the historical, linguistic and economic
factors, Andhra demanded Bellary for its capital, claiming that
language alone should not be deciding factor (emphasis added).
The Government of India noted with some asperity that It is a
little surprising that the [States Reorganisation] Commission
which in effect conceded the linguistic principle in redrawing the
map of India, should have chosen to ignore it in the case of a
predominantly Kannada-speaking area like Bellary which has
had historical economic and cultural kinship with Kannadaspeaking territories all through the history of the area in modern
times. However, it weighed in favour of Bellary going to Andhra
on economic and administrative grounds since the Tungabhadra
headworks were located there and the project was crucial to
famine stricken Rayalseema.41 Yet, flooded with representations
from a wide range of organisations in Karnataka, and faced with
seething revolt,42 the taluk was retained in Mysore.43
In this debate, Hanumanthaiah said that the L S Mishra award
which had conferred seven of Bellarys 10 taluks to Mysore, must
not be questioned or reopened.44 He was supported by others who
invoked administrative and cultural advantages. Bellary had
been a part of Karnataka state for a long time, said P R Ramaiah,
but for some reasons, it was briefly separated from Mysore. Its
cultural heritage alone warranted a return to its parent.45
J Mohammad Imam stressed the long cultural ties between
Mysore state and Bellary, arguing against those who saw Bellary
as an economic drain by saying I must point out that this is not a
mercenary businesswe are reclaiming our brethren who lived
with us for centuries, together, but who parted from us for a short
timethey may be poor they may be helpless but that need not
frighten us.46
Bellary was thus variously welcomed on the basis of cultural
affinity, administrative convenience, and on other affective
grounds, but it was Bellary as natural resource that held out the
most promise. That this was not immediately a rosy future
became clear when the Rajpramukh of Mysore himself declared

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in 1954, while welcoming four new members of the legislative

assembly from that area, that the 3,821 sq km territory and 7
lakh population was a temporary economic burden to be borne
until the Tungabhadra project made the area self-sufficient.47
Central aid under the First Five-Year Plan was indeed enhanced
to bear the extra burden.48 It is striking however that the region
was primarily seen as a potentially rich agricultural district
rather than a source of mineral wealth.
The Bellary landfall quickened the debate on the possibility
of a unified Karnataka. K S Gurusiddappa wrote to the prime
minister that Karnataka had to be formed soon after the constitu
tion of Andhra Pradesh.49 Rajashekara Murthy noted that the
people of Karnataka were being punished for remaining silent,
and for not agitating for a new province as Andhra had done.50

The Promises of a Linguistic State

It is true that Andhra had precipitated the demand for state reor
ganisation, and there were significant differences in both the
concerns and the paths chosen by each language region. The
Andhra Sahitya Parishat set up in 1911 was quickly followed by
the demand for an Andhra Province in 1912. Once this goal was
achieved in 1953, it was linked to the movement in the Telangana
region of Hyderabad by the demand for Vishal Andhra.
Such warmth between the literary and political realms was
less a feature of the Karnataka movement,51 where the demand
for unified statehood was slow to develop. Kerala was a late
developer on the question of an Aikya Keralam with firm steps
taken in that direction only in the 1940s.52 Tamil remained
safely corralled within the erstwhile Madras Presidency, and
the demand for a separate province was articulated only in
1938: according to K V Narayana Rao, the first official demand
for Tamil Nadu was made as late as 1948.53 Dilip Menon
suggests however that the Dravidian movement conceived of
southern India, at least after 1944, in racial terms, as Dravidanadu,
its motto being Divide on the basis of language; unite on the
basis of race.54
Only in Karnataka was caste territorialised in a distinctive
way. While the struggle between the Kammas and Reddys for the
control of regions (coastal Andhra and Rayalseema respectively)
subtended some of the discussions on unification and resistance
to it, it never assumed the charge that questions of caste and ter
ritoriality attained in Mysore/Karnataka. Nor did such equations
become possible in Tamil Nadu or Kerala.55
Nevertheless, it also became clear that the centre could make
decisions that state governments could do little to oppose. The Dar
Commission of 1948 firmly ruled out the necessity of linguistic
states when a precarious stability had just been achieved in
the subcontinent in the aftermath of partition, but a year later,
the Congress Partys Jawaharlal-Vallabhbhai-Pattabhi Sitaramayya
(JVP) Committee conceded the possibility of Andhra Pradesh. The
appointment of the Fazl Ali Commission in 1954 after the forma
tion of Andhra Pradesh was a breathtaking display of how cen
tralised power could refashion the nation-space according to its
priorities of unity and administrative rationalisation.
Mysores response to the appointment of the commission was
a hard-nosed assessment of the territories to be added, taking

56

the experience of the difficulties already posed by Bellary.

Hanumanthaiahs discovery of Karnataka in 1949 had persuaded
him of the need to remain open to the addition of territory.56
In 1954, as chief minister, Hanumanthaiah, who had virtually
gagged dissenting Congressmen by preventing them from
appearing before the SRC in Mysore, appointed a committee
headed by M Seshadri, a professor of philosophy from Mysore
University.57 Appropriately named the Fact Finding Committee,
it focused on gathering data relating to the area and popula
tion of the Kannada-speaking people in the states of Madras,
Bombay, Hyderabad and Coorg, while assessing the level
of development in those areas particularly in the fields of
Education, Medical and Public Health, Rural Development,
Industries, Irrigation, and Power and the the availability of
natural resources.58
The committee minced no words in declaring that these areas
were decades behind Mysore on practically all counts, and would
require massive doses of central aid. The discussion of this report
was the dress rehearsal for the discussion of the SRC report,
generating bitter debate about the appropriate grounds on which
the proposed unity should be assessed, though arguments for
economic well-being overshadowed the more sentimental
grounds for unity.
The committee avoided any reference to caste, and steered
clear of the quicksands of popular sentiment. As B K Puttaramaiah,
a vociferous opponent of Mysore unification, said, the committee
was appointed to see whether the political costs of saying no to
Karnataka were as high as saying yes to Karnataka, concluding
that saying no is not a problem.59 T Mariappa, however, pointed
out that the Seshadri Committee furnished a first class argu
ment for the formation of [unified] Karnataka: we ourselves
furnisheda handle to say [an independent] Karnataka is not
financially viable.60 By focusing on the compelling economic
reasons against including these underdeveloped regions in the
new state, the ground was also laid for invoking development
goals, rather than memories of a greater historical Karnataka, in
making a case for a linguistically unified state.
Nevertheless, the actual decision to reorganise the state of
Mysore to include areas from Bombay and Madras Presidencies,
Coorg, Hyderabad and several other small regions in the SRC
report of 1955 officially brought together questions of caste and
territory in Mysores representative politics.
It has been estimated that Lingayats or Veerashaivas constitute about
30% to 40% of the population in the Kannada areas outside Mysore at
present. The other important section of the Kannadigas namely the
Vakkaligas (sic) similarly constitute a little less than 29% of the popu
lation of Mysore. In the united Karnataka, it has been estimated that a
little more than 20% of the population may be Lingayats between 13%
and 14% Vakkaligas and about 17% to 18% Harijans. It is clear there
fore that no one community will therefore be dominant and any one
section can be reduced to the status of a minority if other groups
combine against it61

Legislative Council member M P L Sastry was among those

who pointed out that The Commission has done a great injustice
to the people and classes of Mysore by bringing in the question of
caste62 But by this time, the question of caste had become the
indisputable common sense of administrative unification.
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The Limits of History in Imagining Karnataka

In his memoirs, Alura Venkatarao recalled that he first raised
hopes of a unified Karnataka in the journal Vagbhushana in 1903.
The more influential term karnatakatwa was historicised in
Karnataka Gatha Vaibhava, first published in 1917. Signifying
the love of country, karnatakatwa was that single word which
was coined in my mint to describe the politics, dharma, history and
art [of Karnataka].63 Widely circulated as the most important
statement of Kannada, and unmistakably Hindu, pride,64 Karnataka
Gatha Vaibhava strongly focused on history as a resource for
remembering the achievements and the loss suffered by the
Kannada people and their nation.
As a political entity, Karnataka first found expression in 1923,
a few years after the Congress acceptance of Nagpur resolution
on linguistic states. The shuttling between history, especially of
the medieval period, and the discussion of injustices suffered
by Kannadigas living under different administrations was not
accidental. Throughout the debates on the Andhra State Bill
(1953) the Seshadri Fact Finding Committee Report (1954), and
the States Reorganisation Commission Report (1955) in the
Mysore legislature, the past was used to build, not the love of
country, but a hard case for justice under the new Indian dispen
sation. Hanumanthaiah, however, steered attention away from
history during the debate on the Andhra State Bill in 1953 when
he declared:
It is history that has cemented our feelings into one administrative
unit. It would be unwise to break up that administrative unity
Mysore State is going to remain the administrative unit which it is
today. The question next arises as to what we should do if some people
of the neighbouring area express a wish to come to the Mysore State.
To them we have decided to extend a hearty welcome[but] we are
not thinking in terms of Visala Mysore65

By the end of 1955, his idea of the composite structure of

Mysore66 became useful in advocating a complete change of
political authority based neither on language nor its history but on
the pragmatics of power, of accommodating multiple languages
and ethnicities for administrative, and especially developmental
convenience. Drawing on H G Wells theory of history he said
Just as human beings have a life expectancy of 100-120 years, political
regimes also have a life. The Mysore kingdom developed as an inde
pendent kingdom from the time of Chamaraja Wodeyar in 1566. In the
intervening 389 years, Mysore has waxed and waned. Even in this 389
year period, it did not remain stable. In the end, when Hyder and Tipu
were the commandersall of south India was joined to Mysore.67

By emphasising the unstable contours of Mysore territory and

the ever-present possibility of changing regimes, he signalled
that there was nothing worth preserving about the rump state of
Mysore (a mere 29,000 square miles carved out of 80,000 in
1799) even if the territory had remained stable for nearly 160
years. Yet it was precisely this latter day stability, and improve
ment under the auspices of a modernising bureaucracy, that the
no-changers wished to preserve. M P L Sastry emphasised the
precious heritage of the model state of Mysore that stood
endangered by the inclusion of much less civilised regions.68
History served to compensate for the disincentives of adding
underdeveloped regions: the symbolic gains of the Vijayanagar
Economic & Political Weekly EPW novemBER 19, 2011 vol xlvi no 47

capital at Hampi were emphasised to counter the suspicion that

the Bellary addition was a result of Madras refusal to retain this
deficit region. A consensus on the addition of Bellary was achieved
within the houses, but although Hanumanthaiah wished for a
similar consensus on the SRC Report barely two years later, there
was little hope of history playing this cementing role. If anything,
his own minister for Law and Education, A G Ramachandra Rao,
a vehement opponent of unification, declared that there had
been no moment in history when Karnataka had been united. It
had always been divided either between the east and west or north
and south The North Karnataka looked to the North and North
east. The south Karnataka looked to the South and South east and
there was no Karnataka kingdom comprising the entire area.
Neladaha (a thirst for territory) only recalled the time of the
paleyagaras, so he proposed support for two separate but robust
states which were not haunted by the ghost of linguism.69
From love of language and country to the evocation of the
ghost of linguism: as Gopala Gowda had pointed out even during
the discussion on the Andhra State Bill in 1953, there was a gulf
between those (such as the littrateurs and poets) who under
stood the history of the language and its beauty and those who
spoke in more practical but squint-eyed political terms. If we
take our claims from history and entertain hopes of a new state
there will be lots of obstacles, he said, adding we must make
history ourselves: we must take the opportunity of the Andhra
State Bill and argue for our own state from the centre.70
Hanumanthaiah himself returned to the pragmatic use of
historical symbols in a moment of transition by urging the retention
of the name Mysore, which he claimed would give psychological
satisfaction to the people who speak languages other than
Kannada.71 By this time, historical geography has lost its primacy
as the basis for imagining the new nation, its place increasingly
taken by a calculated interest in resources of the region.

Towards a Geography of National Resources

Although 42 pages of the Report of the Fact Finding Committee
headed by Seshadri covered Karnatakas history from 550 AD to
1799 AD,72 K Shivarudrappa pointed out that As soon as you read
the facts and figures, you will conclude that Mysore will be
destroyed by the addition of regions beyond where Kannada
speaking people reside.73 These aspects of Mysore/Karnatakas
future were not just proportionately larger than appeals based
on history, but shifted the ground away from linguistic states to
developmental strategies and their outcomes. There was, in other
words, a distinct shift away from the cultural basis for imagining
the nation to the realm of the economy. Modern, rather than
medieval or ancient Karnataka history, was therefore pertinent
to discussions of the potentialities for development in different
regions of Mysore:
This Mysore state from its earlier times was a unique and careful
administration and is growing from strength to strength. This region
is richer than the surrounding areas, and in education and urbanity it
has reached a high level. If other types of adjoining areas are joined
to this developing state the economic status will decline.74

Several others were also for the preservation of the advantages

of a smaller constituent unit, the ideal size being a population of

57

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one crore (as opposed to the proposed Karnataka population of

two crores). When the merger of seven taluks of the Bellary district
was welcomed, despite the Rs 30,00,000 annual deficit that it
involved, hopes were pinned on the Tungabhadra River Valley
project and its promise of bringing self-sufficiency to the area.75 By
1954, it was clear that Bellary had been an expensive addition.76
As Devaraj Urs noted, Without us saying we want these areas,
without satyagrahas, without agitations, by themselves they
[Bellary] have joined our Mysore Province.77 This landfall,
which should have been welcomed as the first step towards the
achievement of the linguistic state, stoked the fears of the Mysore
leaders. Even more ignominious was the recommendation of the
SRC in 1955 to return some areas of Bellary to Andhra Pradesh on
administrative grounds (as we have seen above).78
Yet even this shared indignation did not unite the Mysore political
leadership. I have never heard in history, said R Chennigaramaiah
of a country that wants to expand being offered more territory
and refusing to take it.79 Even those supporting the idea of a
united Karnataka were thus forced to make their arguments on
new grounds that held out the promise of development. Aa Na Kru
struck a pragmatic note, in contrast to his cultural arguments for
unification, when he said,
The gains and losses of a state are to be seen not only from the point of
view of the present.But the raw materials of North Karnataka and
North Canara , the convenience of ports at Bhatkal, Kumta and Malpe,
and the commercial co-operation of north Karnataka are vital for
Mysore. If all these advantages of Mysore and other parts of Karnataka
are combined, there will be no state as rich as Mysore.80

Unlike the supporters of Aikya Keralam, who saw little prospect

of progress in the smaller units of the state, Mysores vibrant
self-sufficiency could be enhanced by unification. Mysore may be
troubled but in the long run things will be fine.81
Partha Chatterjee has pointed out that as early as the 1940s,
planning had emerged as a crucial institutional modality by
which the state would determine the material allocation of
productive resources within the nation: a modality of political
power constituted outside the immediate political process itself.82
It is to this domain of political power that I believe the prochangers were pointing, effecting another change of heart from
their earlier opposition to the idea of a linguistically unified state
to a more pragmatic embrace of a multilingual developmentalist
state. Thus Hanumanthaiah enhanced the attractions of going
beyond the pragmatics of administration: in 1953 he emphasised
that the Tungabhadra project was three times larger than the
Kannambadi (Krishnarajasagar in Mysore) dam.83 In 1955, he
dwelt on what the new territory would add to Mysore: a 200-mile
coastline to landlocked Mysore, three valuable harbours of
Bhatkal, Malpe and Karwar; new cities; crops; rivers and water
falls of north Karnataka as potential hydroelectric dam sites.
Nature thus became a productive resource, subordinated to the
demands of development and quite different from the Karnataka
evoked in the poetry of Kuvempu.
Mysore state had long prided itself on its policy of state aid to
industries (particularly at the time when private capital was
shy).84 However, in the post-independence years, such regional
patriotism reached its limits, since, as Bjorn Hettne has shown,

58

many of Mysores state-run enterprises had become loss-making

units, followed by a distinct ruralisation of the Mysore economy.85
Hanumanthaiah was therefore not merely echoing the etatisme
of the old Mysore State, but signalling an important shift that
sought an extended role for the power and resources of the
centre. Three public sector giants (ITI, HMT and BEL) had been
established in Bangalore by this time, to provide a way out of
the states impasse.86 However, those who extolled the rich
natural resources of the Bombay-Karnataka, Coorg and S Canara
regions also provided their opponents with ready arguments for
proposing a separate and equal Kannada-speaking state. As
Mudalagiri Gowda asked, Is the development of [Bombay and
Hyderabad] regions contingent on them belonging to one
linguistic province?87
An argument based on the developmental prospects of the
resource-rich region served to repress the more difficult question
of expanded populations, and addressed even less the question of
the people-nation in whose name the unification, or resistance to
it, was being undertaken. It was, however, in the very lacks of the
people of Mysore that some legislators found a compelling reason
for unification, and for building up the resources for sustained
development. Mohamed Imam drew attention to the Mysoreans
reputation for laziness and lack of entrepreneurship, which left
most of the industrial jobs within the state to Tamilians in KGF,
Bhadravathi and Bangalore.88 Gopala Gowda went further in
comparing Mysoreans with the people of Dakshina Kannada,
who were very hardworking and filled the demand for work in
the plantations and areca plantations of Malnadu and for agricul
ture.89 They would infuse areas such as Malnadu with the breath
of enterprise.90
At the end of the discussion on the SRC Report, hard-nosed cal
culations of economic benefit won the day over concerns that
were expressed about the communal designs of the Lingayats, or
even the dark fears about conversion that were thrown up by
some representatives such as Shivananjegowda.91

From State to Nation: Making Room

for the Manina Maga (Son of the Soil)
It was a sentimental A G Ramachandra Rao, minister for law,
labour and education, who wrote a letter to the prime minister
and president in October 1955:
Linguism as admitted by the Commission is a devitalising force, in
that it promotes conflicts in the body politic. In the interests of Indi
an unity, linguism must be liquidated before it is too late. Mysore
should be enabled to decide about the continuance of their state and
its head. Democratic policies and practices should not be denied to
Mysore the nursery of democracy in India. For these minor adjust
ments, Mysore, like minorities, prays for protection from your august
hands to enable her to continue to pursue her progressive life.92

The ministers anguish was in vain, and the end of Mysore as it

had been for nearly 160 years was quickly turned into cause for
official celebration, despite his desperate attempt to appeal for
central protection. An emphatically new state of 73,560 square
miles, containing 1.94 crore people had been formed out of dispa
rate and reluctant entities: this was indeed an unprecedented
moment, both in Karnatakas history and in the brief history of
the independent Indian nation state.93
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SPECIAL ARTICLE

In discussions on territory and its relationship to language and

caste, the question of democracy was left unspecified. Further
more, even the much touted economic benefits of unification
were questioned by Devaraj Urs:
Linguistic province is not an issue that concerns most people and
therefore there is not much interest in it. Only intelligent merchant
class is enthusiastic about this [sic]for the people of the country and
the workers, if the linguistic province is not formed, their lives will not
become worse. From this economic point of view, it is difficult to say
that their lives will improve.94

He declared himself opposed to the idea of forming a linguistic

state, though reorganisation on other principles could be acceptable.
Devaraj Urs remark sparked no debate but took the discussion
of language and caste in a direction that anticipated develop
ments for decades to come. By introducing the question of class,
and speaking of a figure that had largely been kept out of the
discussion on unification, namely the worker-citizen, Urs ques
tioned the ways in which the citizen of Karnataka had been
normed. In less than 10 years time, the figure around whom the
Kannada nation would crystallise was indeed the worker-citizen
and his entitlements to livelihood within the finite boundaries of
the Mysore/Karnataka state, and here the gendering of the sub
ject/citizen as male was not accidental.95 In the wake of the mas
sive expansion of the state sector, increasing focus was placed on
the knowledge of Kannada as the qualification for jobs. If the
debates before and on the SRC report engaged primarily with the
dominance of Andhra Pradesh and its many claims on Mysore
territory (Bangalore included!) post unification discourse defined
the Kannadiga in ways that excluded minorities such as Tamils
and Muslims.
Throughout the discussions of 1953-55, some legislators, led
by Hanumanthaiah, recalled the multilingual traditions of
Mysore. Yet, despite Hanumanthaiahs acknowledgement of
the many cusp cultures of the state, Urdu was consistently
ignored. H R Gaffar Khan pointed out this shocking silence by
saying Even as the chief minister of Mysore, he [Hanuman
thaiah] forgot that there are eight lakhs of people in the state of
Mysore who speak Hindusthani and for whom thousands of
Hindusthani schools are being managed by the government.96
In some ways, the identification of Kannada with Mysore/
Karnataka and simultaneously with Hindu97 was to have serious
consequences in the decades to come.
Devaraj Urs and Lakshmi Devi Ramanna were among the earliest
to point to another significant gap in the discourse on unification,
namely the castes that were sandwiched between the big two
Vokkaliga and Lingayat castes.98 The SRC report itself hinted that
the logic of representative democracy could render them subordi
nate in the dominant caste equations. What promises did the
prospect of unification hold to the large numbers of minority
castes who could not be so easily territorialised? Demographi
cally they constituted a good 50 lakh of the 73 lakh population of
Mysore and represented 45 castes.99 There was, as G Dugappa
pointed out, no room for territorialising the Harijan who was not
confined to any one region of India.100
None of these critiques of the way in which the citizen-subject
was being normed paid attention to the large and significant
Economic & Political Weekly EPW novemBER 19, 2011 vol xlvi no 47

opulation that had remained invisible in all these decades of

p
struggle and would remain thus until well into the 1980s. Only
as a sign of the language itself, circulating as a feminised and
captive icon of Kannada Bhuvaneswari or Kannada Thayi, did
women enter into the discourse of language politics, whose
supplicants and devotees were more or less entirely male.101 The
hyper-masculinism that surrounded the language protection
movements of the region flared into public view only when the
son-of-the-soil movement got under way, though the silencing
of women had been a persistent feature from the unification
movements origins.
On the whole, Hanumanthaiahs effort at reorienting the
discussion in the legislature deliberately focused on the potentials
of the new areas for economic development and succeeded in
tamping down the potential fire of resistance. Yet rather than
planning and development under the aegis of the state being the
driving force, the exploitation of the regions resources now
occurs without and against the state which is no longer seen as
enabling but a stifling institutional space.

Conclusions
By insisting that name of the new state should remain Mysore,
the Mysore Legislature retained a symbolic continuity with the
older monarchical state, and softened the blow to those who per
ceived the expanded state as a loss of identity.102 Hanumanthaiah
declared that what was coming into being was not a linguistic
state but a composite one, derived from Mysores unique history.
The task of nation-building remained. Through the crucial
years of the early 1950s, there were attempts to construct a
Karnataka aesthetic and perhaps even define its unique elements
within the well-known boundaries of the new Karnataka state.
Litterateurs and writers such as R R Diwakar and Kuvempu
had knocked on the studio-doors of Mysores premier modern
artist, K Venkatappa, for help in defining a uniquely Karnataka
aesthetic.103 Shivarama Karanth similarly undertook something
of a pilgrimage around Karnataka to document and classify
Karnatakas artistic tradition104 and more importantly deployed
folklore as a unifying cultural element.
These were, however, no match to the mass mobilising aspects
of cinema. As Madhava Prasad has argued in his analysis of the
cinepolitics of southern India, in the aftermath of linguistic re
organisation of states, cinematic icons in Tamil Nadu, Karnataka
and Andhra Pradesh began to supplement the political life of the
people in a parallel state form. Indeed, the national address that
the cinema adopts as a marketing device gives body to the lin
guistic nation more concretely than any other cultural form.105
The influence exerted by the literary/cultural imagination of the
Kannada language and people on the field of politics grew slighter
with the expansion of the cinematic field. By the 1970s, though
the Kannada nation was mobilised through the parallel state
form of cinepolitics, one of the principal anchors of this mobili
sation was the question of jobs and the economy, for which
demography became an invaluable resource.106 The uses of
history as a useful discourse for wresting, or more correctly pro
tecting, privilege, had been dismissed by Abdul Gaffar during the
debate on the SRC report: I think in the present set-up historic

59

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factors need not be given any consideration whatsoever. It is the

facts that exist today that have got to be considered.107 In 1973,
Mysore was renamed Karnataka, thereby obliterating even the
one small link with its long past.
By this time, it was the beleagured minorities of Karnataka that
took recourse to history as an explanation for their predicament.
The movement away from topography of Mysore products and
resources, from the Mysorean as a patriotic producer to a focus
on the social origins of the producer soon occurred. Vociferous
demands were made to restrict recruitment to the sons-of-thesoil, following, and followed by direct attacks on linguistic mi
norities ignoring the historical processes that had drawn them to
Mysore. Despite several warnings against the dangers of narrowly
defining Karnataka as a state for Kannadigas, the concept of the
son-of-the-soil became useful. Shivananjegowdas statement in
the Assembly, which painted the image of a deprived son-of-thesoil, became the war cry of Kannada nationalism in the years
after unification.108 It is precisely against such war cries that
Hanumanthaiah had warned when he preached the virtues of
compromise:
War cries have potency and force during times of war. We cannot use
these cries and slogans in times of peace. They are unnecessary. In the
same way, the war cries of Karnataka Matha ki Jai, etc, must now be laid
to rest, and they must come to this state with that approach of a happy
compromise.109

Although the reference here was to the plight of the Vokkaligas,

in its post-ekikarana version, this feeling of inadequacy was
useful in getting the state to protect the son-of-the-soil from the
claims of other language speakers, rather than his dominant
caste counterparts. H K Veeranna Gowdhs dire predictions that a
Notes
1 A good instance of the academic confusion about
how to make sense of recent economic and political
developments, (most of which are characterised
as anti-democratic, intolerant and exploitative)
and the variety of inherited practices and cultural
traditions (most of which are characterised as
instances of syncretism, tolerance and under
standing) is in the recent issue that focuses on
Karnataka: Vignettes of Karnataka, Seminar, 612,
(August 2010). These are commendable efforts
to accurately describe, without an explanatory
framework, the contradictory tendencies that are
exhibited in contemporary Karnataka. No clear
effort is made to disentangle its specificities from
the broader developments in the Indian economy
and society. So while Siddalingaiah may describe
the virtues of local religious practices, another
author reports the continued moral authority of
religious institutions in north Karnataka, along
side the lament about economic exploitation of
that area, implying, rather than demonstrating, a
structural link.
2 See for instance Sugata Srinivasaraju, A Golden
Laden Ship: All Hands on the Deck in Outlook,
25 October 2010.
3 Gopal Kadekodi, Ravi Kanbur and Vijayendra
Rao, Assessing the Karnataka Model of Deve
lopment in Kadekodi, Kanbur and Rao (ed.),
Development in Karnataka: Challenges of Governance, Equity and Empowerment (New Delhi:
Academic Foundation 2008), pp 17-34.
4 E Raghavan and James Manor, Broadening and
Deepening Democracy: Political Innovation in
Karnataka, Routledge, 2009.
5 This is not to discount the specificities of Karnataka
policies, as have been pointed out more generally

60

unified Karnataka was doomed to a short life and would lead

to a struggle for two Karnatakas have thus far proved wrong,
after briefly flaring into view in 1969,110 though his demand that
peoples wishes be given greater importance has been realised
in unanticipated ways.111
One might ask by way of conclusion whether a new stage has been
reached in contemporary Karnataka politics which goes beyond
the moment when cinepolitics supplemented formal political
power, while remaining tied to linguistic nationalism. The path of
economic development, of which the likes of Hanumanthaiah
and Urs dreamed, has been trodden, after the withdrawal of
the state as the principal mobiliser of economic resources in ways
that were unanticipated. In the current moment, the capture of
political capital by those who have already secured the exploita
tion of mineral resources in the quickest way using the shortest
route possible has rendered the law an irrelevant feature of
this new stage of capitalism. The intergenerational responsibility
to which linguistic nationalism was tied, and which even its
critics tried to anchor in an alternative vision of the composite
state of Mysore/Karnataka in the 1950s has been forced out by
the large and growing demand for quick exploitation of land
and minerals, to which the law is a block rather than an aid.
Does the simultaneous recourse of elected representatives to
extra-constitutional, and extra-judicial institutions and practices
in Karnataka, as in the large and growing absorption with a
return to the temple/matha signal the drawing of a new
political contract in post-Independence India, an ascendance of
moral in the place of legal authority? This is the question that
demands an urgent answer from observers and analysts of
Mysore/Karnataka.

by James Manor, and others such as Balaji

Parthasarathy, Envisioning the Future in Bangalore,
Seminar, 612, August 2010, pp 39-43.
6 A variety of strategies is adopted to address this
contradictory demand, as in a recent book on
Karnatakas development. See Gopal Kadekodi,
Ravi Kanbur and Vijayendra Rao, Assessing the
Karnataka Model of Development in Kadekodi,
Kanbur and Rao (ed.), Development in Karnataka:
Challenges of Governance, Equity and Empowerment (New Delhi: Academic Foundation 2008).
For instance, one author places Karnataka on a
comparative plane with other states which are more
criminalised, more corrupt with a less autonomous
bureaucracy (pp 44-45), another emphasises the
continued role of notions of honour and respect
in contemporary politics (pp 87-104) while per
sistent hierarchies and state failures are also
attributed to older historical reasons, such as the
political regions from which districts of (northern)
Karnataka were drawn (p 19; note however, that
this attribution does not reflect the argument in
the actual article summarised: see Gita Sen, Aditi
Iyer, and Asha George, Systematic Hierarchies
and Systemic Failures, pp 351-76). Finally, per
sisting anomalies are covered by such banal ob
servations as good ideas do not always translate
into good politics (p 32) and Deepening demo
cracy is a very slow process with lots of ups and
downs in which even social movements are
an impediment. For a more pessimistic reading of
the role of the Mysore bureaucracy in fulfilling a
role since nationalist politicians were absent
see Vinod Vyasulu, Celebrating Karnataka,
Seminar, 612, August 2010, pp 59-63, esp 62. I
have outlined a fuller argument from a similar
standpoint for the colonial period in Mysore, in
Reconceptualising the Modern, the Region, and

10

Princely Rule in Mysore Modern (forthcoming,

University of Minnesota Press 2011).
A more recent pessimistic reading of contem
porary Karnataka as a state in Decline is in
A R Vasavi Beyond Corruption in Mining: A
Derailed Democracy, Economic & Political Weekly,
Vol XLVI, No 33, 13 August 2011, pp 14-17. Within
this general portrait of Decline Vasavi points to
the new concentration of secular/moral-spiritual
power at what has curiously been identified as a
Math-temple-Resort complex, which would
need further research and elaboration.
Those who just a few years ago touted the uniqueness
of the Karnataka model may be hard pressed to ex
plain the new and unprecedented role that politics is
being made to play in enabling routes to capitalist
accumulation of a primitive kind, and its entail
ing lack of intergenerational responsibility or
respect for legal norms. There is some recognition
of these problems, and much intellectual anguish,
expressed in the issue Vignettes of Karnataka,
Seminar (August 2010), 612. We may justly ask, for
instance, how the self-denigrating protests staged
within and outside the Karnataka Assembly in
mid-2010 can be fit with claims of enduring heritage
of Mana Maryada and palegar conceptions of
honour/respect. See Pamela Price, Ideological
Elements in Political Stability in Karnataka in
Kadekodi, Kanbur and Rao (ed.), D
evelopment in
Karnataka, pp 87-106.
Vijaya Poonacha Thambanda, Conflicting Identities
in Karnataka: Separate State and Anti-Separate
State Movements in Coorg (Hampi: Prasaranga,
Kannada University, 2004); Adhunika Kodagu
(Hampi: Prasaranga, Kannada University 2000).
A High Power Committee headed by D M Nanjun
dappa for Redressal of Regional Imbalances (2002),

novemBER 19, 2011 vol xlvi no 47 EPW Economic & Political Weekly

SPECIAL ARTICLE

11

12

13
14

15

16
17

18
19

20
21

recommended investments of up to Rs 31,000

crore and a series of other measures such as
choosing at least 50% of the cabinet of ministers
from the region.
For instance, DVG to C Rajagopalachari, 29 March
1958, DVG Private Papers, Karnataka State Archives
(KSA) Bangalore; also B K Puttaramaiah Mysore
Legislative Council Debates (hereafter MLCD),
Vol VII (1955), 771; M P L Sastry MLCD, Vol VII,
(1955), 595.
The literature is huge and growing: among some
of the recent statements are V Narayana Rao,
Kannadathana Mattu Bhaaratheeyathe (Belgavi:
Kannada Jagruti Pustaka Male 2000); Bargur
Ramachandrappa, Kannadaabhimana (Bangalore:
Ankita Pustaka, 2002); Chidananda Murthy, Kanna
dada Samasyegalu in Ra Nam Chandrasekhar
(ed.), Kannada-Kannadiga-Karnataka Kannada
Shakti (Bangalore: Kannada Shakthi Kendra,
1996). K V Narayana offers a different optic on
the predicament of Kannada today, which draws
attention to the homogenisation of Kannada that
has already been violently achieved. Narayana
What Should We Address? Kannada Cause or
the Kannada Hegemony?, Journal of Karnataka
Studies, Vol 2.1 (2 May and 5 April 2006), pp 257-64.
H S Gopala Rao, Karnataka Ekikarana Itihasa,
315.
See fn 18 and Alura Venkata Rao, Karnataka
Gatha Vaibhava (Dharwad 1917). A newer version
of the attempt to instil Pride though without
making an overt plea for territorial claims is
Chidanandamurthy, Bhasika Bruhat Karnataka
(Bangalore: Sapna Book House 2005).
Nair, Memories of Underdevelopment: The
Identities of Language in Contemporary Karnataka
Economic & Political Weekly, Vol 21, No 42 (12 October
1996); see, however, Rahmat Tarikere, Karnatakada Sufigalu (Hampi: Prasaranga, Kannada
University 1998).
Halappa, History of the Freedom Movement in
Karnataka, pp 419-26.
S Chandrasekhar, Mysuru Mattu Ekikruta Karna
takada Rachane 1937-56, Adhunika Karnatakada
Aandolanagalu (Belegere, Tiptur 2002), pp 93-104.
Robert King, Nehru and the Language Politics of
India (Delhi: Oxford University Press 1997);
Manor, Political Change, 84-85; Karnataka: Caste,
Class, Dominance and Politics in a Cohesive
Society in Sudipta Kaviraj (ed.), Politics in India:
Oxford India Readings in Sociology and Social
Anthropology (Delhi: OUP 1997); S Nijalingappa,
My Life and Politics: An Autobiography (Delhi:
Vision Books 2000), p 62 provides a brief and tell
ing account of the late development of karnataka
ekikarana: This frive to unify Kannadigas had
begun in 1915, when the first conference of
Kannadigas was organised by the Karnataka
Sahitya Parishad in Bangalore. Subsequently it
held its meetings in different parts of the Kannadaspeaking areas from year to year. While this kept
people thinking of a unified Karnataka State it
had no political clout. It was only after Congress
took up this unification work from 1945 that it
began to influence the all-India Congress and its
working committee.
States Reorganisation Commission Report (Govern
ment of India 1955), 91.
Among the earliest to suggest that all the linguistic
movements were in fact masks for other agendas
was Selig Harrison, India: The Most Dangerous
Decades (Princeton: Princeton University Press
1960).
Presidents speech by D V Gundappa at the Karnataka
Sangha Rajathotsava, Bangalore Central College,
16 January 1944.
K V Subbanna, The Kannada Cosmos Formed by
Kavirajamarga in N Manu Chakravarthy (ed.),
Community and Culture: Selected Writings by K V
Subbanna (Heggodu: Akshara Prakashana 2009),
pp 220-21. Subbanna refers briefly to DVGs de
mand for even five Karnatakas.

22 Here it must be remembered that the term Com

munal in administrative terminology referred to
the two dominant caste groups of Mysore, Lingayats
and Vokkaligas.
23 S Gopala Gowda, Mysore Legislative Assembly
Debates, (hereafter ) Vol XIII, No 15 (1955), 873.
24 Deshpande, Contemporary India, 48-73.
25 For instance, A Thimmappa Gowda, MLAD,
Vol XIII, No 20 (1955), 1295.
26 Partha Chatterjee, Development Planning and
the Indian State in Chatterjee (ed.), State and
Politics in India (Delhi: Oxford University Press
1997), pp 271-98.
27 Ibid, p 276.
28 Here I draw inspiration from J Devikas discussion
of the Aikya Keralam Movement in The Idea of
Being Malayali: The Aikyakeralam Movement of
the Mid-20th Century (mimeo).
29 States Reorganisation Commission Report (Govern
ment of India 1955), 93 (hereafter SRC Report).
30 Rao, Karnataka Ekikarana Itihasa, lists the 19
administrations under which Kannada speakers
beyond Mysore were found.
31 Deshpande, Contemporary India, 158.
32 The boundary of Karnataka, it said with respect
to the map that was included, Marked by thin
straight lines, may only be taken as approximately
marking the limits of the Kannada-speaking
people. It does not follow the Congress division.
Suggestions for rendering it accurate will be
thankfully received, The Karnataka Handbook
(Bangalore 1924?), note on the map, Preface.
33 Rao, Karnataka ekikarana itihasa, 67. Before the
Congress session of 1946 at Birur, Mysores Con
gressmen, such as T Channaiah, T Siddalingaiya,
A G Bandi Gowda, K G Wodeyar, T Subrahmanyam
and others raised the question of forming Karnataka
with the Maharaja as the constitutional head.
J Mohamed Imam, MLAD, Vol XII, No 11, March
1955, 646.
34 Rao, Karnataka Ekikarana Itihasa, 146. Proposed
Union of Karnatak: Move to include Mysore,
The Times of India, 26 April 1948; The Karnataka
Unification Movement, as it was originally
conceived, never took Mysore into account until
two years ago when India attained Independence,
and the first steps were taken to integrate the
state with union territory. A Separate Province?:
Some Undecided Issues, The Times of India,
11 November 1949.
35 Rao, Karnataka Ekikarana Itihasa, 155. The All
Karnataka Unification Sangha in its response to
the Linguistic Provinces Commission of 1948
said that every attempt would be made to unite
the Union Karnataka and Mysore, but if this is
not possible, the formation of Karnataka Prov
ince of Union Karnataka area ought not to be
postponed under any circumstances, Replies by
AKUS p 22.
36 Inclusion of Kannada Areas in Andhra Criticised,
The Times of India, 28 December 1949.
37 Mulka Govinda Reddy, MLAD, Vol IX, No 37
(1953), p 2662-63.
38 Hanumanthaiah, MLAD, Vol IX, No 37 (1953),
pp 2499.
39 Note by O S D/SR: Ministry of Home Affairs:
Appendix to Notes, File No 58/2/55-SR, 1955,
Ministry of Home Affairs, GOI, SR Section, NAI.
40 Ibid.
41 Ibid.
42 Visions of Greater Mysore Conjured Up: Cautions
Approach to Bellary Merger, Times of India,
11 June 1953.
43 File No 16/1/55-SR, 1955. Government of India,
Ministry of Home Affairs, S R Section
44 Discussion of the Andhra State Bill, MLAD, Vol IX,
No 37, 1953, pp 2499-500.
45 Discussion of the Andhra State Bill, MLAD,
Vol IX, No 37, 1953, pp 2509-10.

Economic & Political Weekly EPW novemBER 19, 2011 vol xlvi no 47

46 Discussion of the Andhra State Bill, MLAD, Vol IX,

No 37, 1953, p 2549. A similar note was struck
by Boranna Gowda and Rajashekhara Murthy,
Discussion of the Andhra State Bill, MLAD, Vol IX,
No 37, 1953, pp 2563, 2645.
47 Address of His Highness, the Rajpramukh, on
Monday 11 January 1954, MLAD, Vol X, Part I,
1954.
48 G Thimmaiah, Political Leadership and Economic
Development in Karnataka in Kadekodi et al
(ed.), Development in Karnataka, p 71.
49 K S Gurusuddappa to Prime Minister, 5/9/1953,
File No F 2(8) PA/53, 1953, Ministry of States,
Political A Section, Sl No 1-2, NAI.
50 M Rajashekara Murthy, MLAD, Vol IX, No 38,
(1953), 2658.
51 Rao, Karnataka Ekikarana Itihasa.
52 J Devika, The Idea of Being Malayali. See also,
Dilip Menon, Being Brahman the Marxist Way:
E M S Namboodiripad and the Pasts of Kerala in
Daud Ali (ed.), Invoking the Past: The Uses of
History in South Asia (Delhi: Oxford University
Press 1996).
53 K V Narayana Rao, The Emergence of Andhra
Pradesh (Bombay: Popular Prakashan), 1973.
54 Menon, Being Brahman the Marxist Way, 82.
55 One might say that the territorialisation of caste
in Tamil Nadu occurred well after the moment of
independence, with alliances between sets of
castes in northern and southern Tamil Nadu.
56 Hanumanthaiah was accompanied by J Mohamed
Imam on the tour of the regions of north Karnataka,
when according to Imam, he was moved by the
predicament of people in those regions.
57 Others included T Singaravelu, a High Court Judge,
V L DSouza, V C of Mysore University, H R Guruve
Reddy and lawyer O Veerabasappa.
58 Report of the Fact Finding Committee (States
Reorganisation), (Bangalore 1954), 1.
59 B K Puttaramaiah, MLCD, Vol VII, No 18, (1955),
772.
60 T Mariappa, MLAD, Vol XIII, No 20 (1955), 1269.
61 SRC Report, 91 (emphasis added). The idea of the
linguistic state being a panacea to the irritants of
caste were echoed within the Assembly as well by
R Ramaiah among others. See also, Karnataka
Handbook, 130.
62 M P L Sastry, MLCD, Vol VII (1955), 595.
63 Rao, Karnataka Ekikarana Itihasa, 72.
64 Alura proposed that festivals similar to Mahar
ashtras Ganeshotsava be organised to honour
Karnatakas heroes: Kannada poets like Pampa
and Kumara Vyasa, Vidyaranya, the intellectual
guide of Vijayanagar kings; Basaveswara the 12th
century reformer.
65 Hanumanthaiah, MLAD, Vol IX, No 38 (1953),
2716.
66 People who speak Kannada, people who speak
Telugu and people who speak Tamilthese three
form what is called the constituents of the state of
Mysorethe composite character of this portion
of India has been there probably for several thou
sands of years. it [Mysore] was not only one set
of people talking one language who constituted
the unit. Hanumanthaiah, MLCD, 1955, 583;
MLAD, Vol XIII, No 13, (1955) 791.
67 Ibid.
68 Sastry, MLCD, Vol VII (1955), 594.
69 A G Ramachandra Rao, MLAD, Vol 13, No 14
(1955), 880.
70 Gopala Gowda, MLAD, Vol IX, No 37 (1953), 2556.
71 K Hanumanthaiah, MLCD, Vol VII, No (1955), 585.
72 Shivananjegowda, MLAD, Vol XII, No 1 (1955),
606-07.
73 H K Shivarudrappa, MLAD, 7 (1955), p 570.
74 G A Thimmappa Gowda, MLAD, Vol IX, No 39
(1953), 2782.
75 Address of His Highness the Rajapramukh,
MLAD, 10, Part 1 (1954), 2-3.

61

SPECIAL ARTICLE
76 Srinivasa Gowda, MLAD, Vol XII, No 1 (1955), 607.
77 Devaraj Urs, MLAD, Vol IX, No 37 (1953), 2708.
78 File No 56/2/55-SR, 1955, Ministry of Home
A ffairs, GOI, SR Section, NAI.
79 Chennigramaiah, MLAD, Vol XII, No 1 (1954), 668.
80 Aa Na Kru, Karnataka Ekikarana Kaipidi, Vol I,
Dharwad, 1947, as cited in H S Rao Karnataka
Ekikarana Itihasa (Bangalore: Navakarnataka,
2004 [1996]), 15.
81 B Madhavachar (Bhadravathi), MLAD, Vol XII,
No 6 (1955), 577.
82 Chatterjee, State and Politics, 276.
83 Hanumanthaiah, MLAD (1953), 2499.
84 There has been a continuing interest in tracing
the roots of Mysores absorption with capitalist
modernity and its development agenda: most
recently Chandan Gowda Advance Mysore: The
Cultural Logic of a Developmental State, EPW,
Vol XLV, No 29 (17 July 2010).
85 Hettne, The Political Economy of Indirect Rule,
345.
86 Ibid: 346, Hanumanthaiah, MLAD, Vol XIII, No 13
(1955), 797.
87 T M Mudalagiri Gowda, MLAD, Vol XII, No 2
(1955),
88 Imam, MLAD, Vol XIII, No 14 (1955), 870.
89 Gopala Gowda, MLAD, Vol XIII, No 12 (1955), 622.
90 Ibid: p 23. Gowda complained that the people of
Malnad had been referred to as blanket wearing
bears but their development on new lines was
possible with the available energies of unifica
tion. Simply saying Mysore is ours will not fill
our stomachs, 624.

91 Shivananjegowda, MLAD, Vol XII, No 1 (1955),

606-07.
92 A G Ramachandra Rao Minister for Law Labour
and Education, to President and Prime Minister,
25 October 1955, Box 22, Palace Papers, KSA.
93 I am not taking up here the very serious questions
about the modalities of representative democracy
that were thrown up during these debates. Hanu
manthaiah firmly denied the need for a plebiscite,
or a two-thirds majority vote, or a referendum, or
even a postponement of the decision of unifica
tion until the next elections.
94 Devaraj Urs, MLAD, Vol IX, No 37 (1953), 2708.
95 On the norming of the citizen as male, see Susie
Tharu and Tejaswini Niranjana (1996), Problems
for a Contemporary Theory of Gender in Shahid
Amin and Dipesh Chakrabarty (ed.), Subaltern
Studies IX: Writings on South Asian History and
Society (Delhi: Oxford University Press), 1996.
96 The speech by Velluri in Urdu was not even trans
lated! H R Abdul Gaffar (teachers Constituency),
MLCD, Vol VII, 839.
97 For a recent espousal of Kannadathana as a
quality that has endured the rise and fall of
dynasties, fluctuating economic fortunes, war
and peace, see Narayana, Kannadathana mattu
Bharatiyate, 15. Narayana says that the splinter
ing of people into regions that spoke other lan
guages occurred with the destruction of Vijayana
gar, unity restored by ekikarana movement and
lost once more thereafter. 43
98 Devaraj Urs, MLAD, Vol IX, No 37 (1953), 2708.
99 Lakshmi Devi Ramanna (Anekal-Hoskote), MLAD,
Vol XIII (1955), 1259.

100 G Duggappa (Holalkere, Scheduled Caste),

MLAD, Vol XIII (1955), 1049.
101 For Tamil, see Ramaswamy, Passions of the Tongue,
esp 79-134. See also Tejaswini Niranajana,
Reworking Masculinities: Rajkumar and the
Kannada Public Sphere, Economic & Political
Weekly, 35: (47) (2000).
102 K Hanumanthaiah to G V Pant, Minister for Home
Affairs, 5 December 1955, Sl No 1, D O letter mo
K K 1558 dated 5/18 December 1955 from the
Chief Minister, Mysore State, Government of In
dia, Ministry of Home Affairs, S R Section, NAI.
103 See Janaki Nair K Venkatappa and the fashioning
of a Mysore Modern in Art in Mysore Modern:
Rethinking the Princely State (University of
Minnesota Press 2011, forthcoming).
104 Karanth, Karnataka Painting.
105 Madhava Prasad, Cinema as a Site of Nationalist
Identity in Journal of Karnataka Studies, 1,
1 November 2003-April 2004, pp 60-85, esp 80.
106 T M Joseph Politics of Recruitment in Public Sector
Undertakings: A Study of the Nativist Movement
in Bangalore (PhD Thesis, ISEC, Bangalore, 1994).
107 H R Abdul Gaffar, MLCD, Vol VII (1955), 838.
108 Shivananjegowda, MLAD, Vol XIII (1955), 981.
109 Extempore Speech delivered by Sri K Hanuman
thaiah on the 30 November 1955, on the floor of
the Legislative Council while moving an amend
ment to the Official resolution of 17 November
1955. File No 16/2/55-SR 1955 Government of
India, Ministry of Home Affairs, S R Section, NAI.
110 Statehood for Old Mysore Area: Stir Threatened
TOI, 14 April 1969.
111 B K Veeranna Gowdh, MLAD, Vol XIII, 1109.

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