After lying covered for nearly 20 years, the statues of the Tamil poet Thiruvalluvar and the Kannada poet Sarvajna were unveiled in August in Bangalore and Chennai, respectively. Considering the strained relations between the two states over sharing the Cauvery waters, which has led to anti-Tamil violence in Bangalore on two occasions, and the militant stance of the pro-Kannadiga organisations in the Karnataka capital, how and why did the chief ministers of the two states, particularly B S Yeddyurappa of Karnataka, pilot this event successfully?

COMMENTARY

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The Unveiled Statues of Bangalore and Chennai: What Do They Reveal?

V K Natraj, G S Ganesh Prasad

After lying covered for nearly 20 years, the statues of the Tamil poet Thiruvalluvar and the Kannada poet Sarvajna were unveiled in August in Bangalore and Chennai, respectively. Considering the strained relations between the two states over sharing the Cauvery waters, which has led to anti-Tamil violence in Bangalore on two occasions, and the militant stance of the pro-Kannadiga organisations in the Karnataka capital, how and why did the chief ministers of the two states, particularly B S Yeddyurappa of Karnataka, pilot this event successfully?

V K Natraj (vknatraj@rediffmail.com) is former director, Madras Institute of Development Studies, Chennai. G S Ganesh Prasad is with the Madras Institute of Development Studies, Chennai.

Economic & Political Weekly

October 3, 2009

major initiative of the Bharatiya J anata Party (BJP) government headed by B S Yeddyurappa in

K arnataka made headlines in August. The

statue of Tamil poet Thiruvalluvar was

unveiled in Bangalore by the Tamil Nadu

Chief Minister M Karunanidhi. A week l ater,

Yeddyurappa unveiled Kannada poet Sarva

jna’s statue in Chennai. Both the statues had

been lying covered for nearly 20 years. The

Thiruvalluvar statue was languishing with

the Tamil Sangham in Bangalore, while

Sarvajna’s statue in Chennai (sponsored by

the Kannada Sangha) faced a similar fate.

One of the reasons for this state of affairs

at least in Bangalore was the opposition of

the pro-Kannada a ssociations to the unveil

ing of Thiruvalluvar’s statue given the

strained relations between Tamil Nadu and

Karnataka over the sharing of the Cauvery

waters and the violence against Tamils in

Bangalore in 1991. The violence was ru

moured to have had the backing of the then

government in Karnataka. Incidentally, it

was that government headed by S Bangara

ppa that decided to allot land for the instal

lation of the statue in Ulsoor, Bangalore.

Violence was also witnessed against Tamils

in the border areas between the two states.

Though there were violent protests again in

Bangalore in 2007 and Tamil workers ﬂed

the city, the violence was not on the same

scale and with the suspicion of state back

ing as in 1991. Many feel that it proved a

setback to any attempt at a negotiated set

tlement of the Cauvery waters dispute. In

Chennai, however, there does not appear to

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have been the same level of hostility against installing Sarvajna’s statue but no steps were taken either to ensure that it was unveiled. Tamils do not appear to s uffer from the same insecurity about their language as do the Kannadigas but we should qualify this by noting that Tamil Nadu does not have the same l inguistic-demographic character as does, for instance, the city of Ban

galore. We are tempted to suggest that the wounds received in the pre-independence past when Madras Presidency patronised the smaller princely state of Mysore have not healed fully.

And suddenly out of the blue as it were the Karnataka chief minister announced in July that he and his Tamil Nadu counterpart Karunanidhi had agreed on unveiling the two statues within days of each other in Bangalore and C hennai, respectively. In passing we may mention that Thiruvalluvar and Sarvajna are not subjects of controversy.

Taking a Stand

The Thiruvalluvar statue was unveiled by the Tamil Nadu chief minister in Bangalore on 9 August and the Karnataka chief minister unveiled the Sarvajna statue in Chennai on 13 August. While the development is to be welcomed the unveiling r aises several questions. What gave the Karnataka chief minister and indeed his government the necessary courage to conduct this programme? As remarked before it is a longstanding grievance of the Kannadigas that they are being neglected in their own capital and it has assumed r ather more emphatic manifestations in the recent past. Not a day passes without some pro-Kannada organisation staging a protest rally or a demonstration against some facet of government policy or the other. In this article we attempt to probe for an explanation to the recent events a lthough we may end up raising more questions than ﬁnding answers.

One proximate motive for this initiative and an important one has to do with the

COMMENTARY

linguistic demography of Bangalore. Some estimates place the Tamil-speaking population at as much as 40% in Bangalore and what lends an edge to this factor is that elections to the Brihat Bangalore City Corporation are scheduled to take place shortly. Given the growing stature of the city as the Silicon Valley of India and its almost unstoppable growth the election is regarded as a prize worth ﬁghting for by all political parties. The opposition parties did use this as an accusation against the government’s s tatue diplomacy but no one opposed it outright and in fact leaders of all political parties took part in the ceremony. How ever, the numerical signiﬁcance of the non-Kannada electorate is not a new d evelopment and the electoral prospect is an interesting and a highly probable partial explanation for the new deve lopment. We shall consider next if there was a m ajor push from the Tamilian side.

At one level this is not improbable. The Tamilian stake in Karnataka is much greater than the Kannadiga stake in Tamil Nadu. Also, Tamil Nadu has a more i ntense engagement with the national eco nomy than does Karnataka. Therefore, Karunanidhi would naturally be interested in ensuring a peaceful existence for Tamilians in Karnataka and especially in Bangalore where in recent times linguistic emotions (pro-Kannada and anti-Tamil) have tended to run high. Also Karunanidhi has never had to contend with anti-Kannada sentiment in his state while his Karnataka counterparts have all been compelled to engage with the language factor. Sarva jna’s statue in Chennai was also in cold storage not due to anti-Kannada sentiment but because of inaction on the unveiling of the Thiruvalluvar statue in Bangalore. Again, while this too will pass muster as a partial explanation it does not cover the whole story because none of what has been stated immediately above is a new development. And it is hard to discern a nything in more recent times that has added a different dimension.

Signiﬁcant Support in Karnataka

One factor that has helped Yeddyurappa is the fact that an overwhelming number of literary ﬁgures in Karnataka expressed open support for the installation of the Thiruvalluvar statue. It is indeed an impressive list spanning the entire political spectrum with writers like U R Anantha Murthy declaring support while dissociating himself completely from the policies of the BJP on all other matters, former governor and chief justice Rama Jois, a known BJP supporter and M Chidananda Murthy a distinguished scholar whose pro-BJP p osition is well known. Rashtrakavi ( national poet) G S Shivarudrappa also came out openly in support. Kannada writer D Javare Gowda, a former v ice chancellor of the University of Mysore i nitially expressed reservations but at a later stage supported the move and attended the installation ceremony. Did this enable the chief minister to dare the pro-Kannada organisations and leaders such as Vatal Nagaraj and Narayana Gowda of the Kannada Rakshana Vedike to try and do their best (worst) to ferment trouble during the run-up to the ceremony? A signiﬁcant number of the pro-Kannada activists were taken into preventive custody and but for some minor problems the installation ceremony passed off peacefully as did the one in Chennai. In one sense the government has exposed the limitations of the pro-Kannada outﬁts.

Another aspect which helped the chief minister was the support extended by the judiciary in the unveiling of the statue, while disposing of a public interest litigation (PIL) petition ﬁled by the Kannada organisations against the ceremony. The petitioners had argued that Tamil Nadu should be pressurised to change its stance on the pending petition in the Madras High Court on according classical l anguage status to Kannada, the H ogenakal controversy and the Cauvery Water dispute. The Karnataka High Court while dismissing the petition had given the government a free hand to deal with any agitation on the issue.

An aspect worth examining is if Yeddyurappa had a “hidden agenda” in the matter. In particular we need to focus on the intra-party compulsions that must have weighed upon him. He has been facing problems from party and ministerial colleagues. The mining lobby spearheaded by the Reddy brothers and their followers from Bellary district has placed the chief minister in a tight spot once too often generating an impression that he is not his own master. Even in respect of control over the bureaucracy he is not regarded as sufﬁciently authoritative. And therefore he may have perceived in this an opportunity to boost his sagging image. Recently Karnataka started releasing water from the Krishna

October 3, 2009

Raj Sagar (KRS) dam to Tamil Nadu. The plentiful rains in the Cauvery catchment area were a helpful factor for the statue diplomacy. It is difﬁcult to imagine this step being taken in either state if the two riparian states were locked in combat over the sharing of river waters. The interesting aspect is that the principal farmers’ organisations in Karnataka are not protesting against the release of water to Tamil Nadu. The voices of protest are essentially those of the pro-Kannada o rganisations. And the Karnataka government’s explanation is that the water is b eing released since the KRS dam cannot hold water up to its maximum level of 124+feet, an argument that was not heard in the past. Right now the storage in the dam stands at 122+ ft. Is there some more backroom diplomacy at work here? Should this be seen as an attempt by the government to ﬁnd an amicable solution to the Cauvery dispute?

Ambitious Peacemaker

If Yeddyurappa has ambitions of solving the Cauvery dispute he can hardly be faulted. It can be likened to A B Vajpayee wishing to ﬁnd a solution to the Kashmir problem. Obviously this is a simpliﬁcation but the comparison is not entirely out of place. And as stated above this would be a feather in a cap that is beginning to look more than a bit jaded and tattered! For Karunanidhi it may represent an opportunity to project himself not just as a politician but as an elder statesman. With his son Stalin (presently the deputy chief minster) virtually acting as the CM in waiting it is understandable that Karunanidhi wants to complete his innings by building bridges with the other southern states.

It is tempting to conclude this inquiry by speculating on the relationship bet ween the present developments and the Cauvery dispute. There were protests in Karnataka in 2007 when the Cauvery Tribunal gave its ﬁnal award that the state had been given a raw deal but they were by and large peaceful and lacked the passion and vigour which coloured such protests in the past. Is it, therefore, the case that Yeddyurappa has sensed that the anti-Tamil stand of the Kannadigas is far less powerful than that it is assumed to be? In all of this is there the beginnings of a new phase in the relations between Karnataka and Tamil Nadu?

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