Tayzwi

I guess MAyura Varma deserves the same marketing effort if not budget that Alexander and Julius Caesar have managed to garner over the centuries in western entertainment.

PErsonally, the rebel/leader/reformer in me has himself been as inspired by the urge of Mayura to be his own boss and the uplifter of his people, as has he been by the megalomania of the great Roman and the great MAcedon.

I feel Mayura definitely befits the role of a cultural icon Karnataka and KAnnada fanatics long for. He's got heroics, ambition, cultural identity, class, history, folklore and romance about him.

But I hate to blame the 'lame' Kannada fanatics for their ignorance of history and other academic disciplines. KAnnada is suffering not because of the ignorance of the fanatics, it's suffering because of the apathy of the enlightened. You spoke about Girish KArnad. I'm glad that he has done KAnnada proud with his work in literature and theater. But...try asking him to take up the cause of KAnnadiga cultural identity and you'll find how eloquently our liberal/secular/intelectual KAnnadiga makes his escape.

I have nothing against Mr. Karnad or the 'Gnanapeethi' as Ravi Belegere calls him. But I have lost hope that intellectuals, including myself, can do anything about our ailing language/culture/demography.
 

Teju's point here is in actual display here, especially if u are in UK or US, u are bound to meet a group of Tamizh's (why the £$%% do they use that letter if its not in their dictionary...i dont have anything against them, just that it irritates me why u cant use something so common to sanskrit derived languages) or Telugites or more aptly called andhrites, cause i myself am an Telugite...but i hesitate to associate myself after seeing my own country folks living a hallucinating lifestyle without getting intoxicated.

I certainly do envy how they make a "one goal" group in almost no time, and make it to point to see tamil or telugu movies, in a computer lab filled with multinationals who look at u as a trouble maker once u enter a computer lab, eventhough u vow not to have any allegiance with their cult, and when they find out that i am not watching live telecast of a new tamil or telugu flick or not listnening to meaningless songs and literally singing along with it, they pinch themselves to see if they are actually alive, some have come to me and checked if am allright, some have ran away thinkiing I may be a psycopath.

But after a few harrassing months i started to debate why we kannadigas dont do that, or are we extra sane to be ultra urban and act matured or just that we dont have good movies being made to be proud off, or is rajkumar is all to kannada as an entity and movies as a medium for us lost souls.

But then I came to a conclusion that movies or movie songs does not epitomise Kannada, yes it cetainly acts as a major catalyst for us spread our pride but its certainly not a point for others to laugh at us commenting on the appauling state of our movies.

There has to be a revolution to revive our language rather than forcefully making us use it in unexplicable situations. On a more logical scene, we can ask people who know to speak kannada...actually speak it rather than thinking it as a disgrace. (which itself is a great disgrace)

PK
Sirigannadam Gelge.
 

I'd like to draw this discussion to a different but somewhat connected issue in current affairs - The Attitude of the Indian

English media.

It's no secret that the Indian English media panders to the tastes and sensibilities of the urban(e), educated middle class.

Neither is the love of this media for so called secular and liberal ideals a secret. However, the hypocrisy displayed by this

media in the Advani-Jannah issue left me wondering if this media is Indian in the first place. I had the rare opportunity to

read almost every columnist's opinion on this matter during my trip from Delhi to Bangalore. I was forced to conclude that

the opinons of English media in India are painfully stereotypical and cliched. What was even more saddening was the eagerness

of this media to be called secular even at the cost of being pseudo secular and betraying Indian and humanitarian values.

The mainstream Indian English media unequivocally praised Mr. Advani for calling Mr. Jinnah a secular man. However it is not

the praise that saddens me. It is the reason behind the praise that I find despicable. The media's logic centered on the

following modes of reasoning.

1) Jinnah is a man hated by the RSS and other Saffron outfits. The saffron outfits are communal (non-secular) in nature. So

Jinnah is a secular man and Advani has done a great job calling a secular man secular. This line of reasoning smacks of the

simplistic beauty in arguments like "Enemey's enemy's is a friend"!

2) RSS and Co are communal and so they don't fit into a multicultural, modern India. The minorities hate the majoritarian

idealogy of the saffron brigade. So, whatever is hated by the Saffron brigade in turn does well for multiculturalism and

communal harmony!

3) Advani is at loggerheads with the RSS, despite having been a poster boy of the . And again RSS is provenly a hateworthy

entity. So Advani's is a laudable act.

I find it difficult to believe that the media is as poor at logic as it appears from the above modes modes of reasoning. It's

sense of reason seems to have been overcome by its desire to don secular apparel. My objection to this attitude of the media

is simple. If you base your secularism on the communal foundations of extreme right wing organizations, how much more

secular are you than them?

Some of the newspapers wrote that Advani's act was a brave effort to free the BJP from the shackles of the RSS. Freeing the

BJP from the idealogical confines of the RSS may be a good thing for India, or atleast for the BJP. But, isn't it also

important to look at the modus operandi employed to gain this freedom. It's good for a son not to be economically dependent

on his father. But, should we approve of the economic freedom of the son if it happens to be gained by criminal activities?

That's precisely what is happening. Assuming the best intentions of Mr. Advani, he his trying to secure freedom from the RSS

by praising an obvious villain of our country. And if the intentions of Mr. Advani are not as good as they are made out to be

by the media, his act perhaps points to nothing holier than vote bank politics. Some papers said Advani's was a great effort

in promoting Indo-Pak friendship. Perhaps these papers have a highly limited vision of friendship in addition to their

limited perception of secularism. Does anybody in the UK praise Hitler because they want better Anglo-German friendship?

Let us try to analyza the credentials of Mr. Jinnah before going further. What kind of a leader was he to begin with? One

story goes like this. A student of Cambridge university had presented to Mr. Jinnah, a vicious theory called 'two nation

theory'. The essence of the theory was that Muslims in India were economically and socially backward because they had been

dominated by the Hindus. (May I ask, why the Muslims of Afghanistan were backward?) Mr. Jinnah had not accepted the theory

because he was happy working with the Congress, which was led by high caste Hindus. Later when Mr. Jinnah was refused

presidentship of the Congress, he found love for the two nation theory. If a rich, influential man thinks his personal

political failure is because of his religion, can we call him a true leader, let alone a secular man? Before the decision on

partition was taken Mr. Jinnah was offered premiership of India. Would a communal country offer its highest legislative post

to a minority leader? Would a truly secular leader refuse the offer on grounds of an extremist theory like the two nation

theory? However, I find all this acceptable. A political leader, secular or otherwise, has a freedom to set an idealogy for

the group he leads. But, can we, as humans, condone the killing of close to a million people? The killing that has its

origins in Mr. Jinnah's fixation on a Muslim state? This million people included, Hindus, Muslims, Indians and Pakistanis. If

Pakistan condones this killing and hails Jinnah as the father of the Pakistani nation, that's not our problem. But we, as

Indians, and more importantly, as members of the human race can't afford to call this architect of communal genocide a

secular man. Jinnah remains a narrow-minded, short-sighted, selfish demagogue, no matter what the VHP thinks of him. I've

heard that a section of Shiv Sena admires Hitler for his far right wing idealogy. Tomorrow Bajrang Dal might fall in love

with the far right wing attitude of Jinnah and might decide to ignore that fact that he was Muslim. Should that change the

Indian perception of Jinnah?

I don't say that the media should be a neutral umpire. Politics is no cricket. The color the media takes is influenced by the

political inclinations of its managers, employees and customers. Nonetheless, it's time that the Indian English media stops

engaging in self deception. It's time that the media grows out of its narrow definitions of secularism and communalism.

Finally, as customers of the English media, we have the right and the duty to be more discreet in consuming what we are fed.

And we ourselves need to grow out of our archaic perception of secularism and liberalism. Secularism and liberalism are about

going beyond, one's religion, caste and other affiliations to get a bigger/unbiased picture of the world. They are not about

being ashamed to belong to your community/religion. They are not about dubbing the extremists in the other side

liberal/secular, just because the extremists on the other side are up against the extremists on your side.
 

wow, there is some verbose action going on here ....

:))))

betans wassup
 

Great Thoughts Bro. I think over the time period, we have resorted to linking our identiy of being Kannadigas to so many different things that things that really matter to our identity might have gotten lost.

But then again with such a big population there would be those - "many" who would still resort to the common symbols they can associate it with and then there are "others" who chose to go with Jog Falls, Banavasi, and so many glorius places and people of Karnataka to define some of our identity.

I felt this is a hard topic for me to comment on as lot of it is something that I have gone through myself in different phases of life, like being a Rajkumar fan was my identity once upon a time etc....

Anyways, good food for thought. Cannot write as much as Samba. :)) So, will stop here.