Srikar Raghavan interview: ‘Impossible to destroy Karnataka’s richly inclusive legacy’

Raghavan, born in Bangalore and raised in Mysore, wrote this remarkable book in the quietude of a small village, Parkala in South Canara, which imbues it with a sense of introspection and groundedness. Through biographical sketches, immersive reportage, and an open-minded examination of contradictions, he dissects subjects as wide-ranging as feminism, trade unionism, Naxalism, and the evolution of Kannada cinema.

In this interview to The Federal, Raghavan talks about the playful metaphor behind the title, the dangers of linguistic chauvinism, the fragmentation of leftist movements, and Gandhi’s resonance in Karnataka. With a keen eye for nuance, he critiques the binaries dominating current political discourse while calling for a renewal of Karnataka’s pluralistic traditions through cultural activism and intellectual inquiry. Excerpts:

The title is derived from a game that beautifully encapsulates democracy, power, and interdependence. How does this playful metaphor shape your exploration of Karnataka’s modern socio-political landscape, and in what ways does it echo the themes of power dynamics, cultural diversity, and collective struggle?

Games are wonderful springboards for studying societies (Squid Game is doing this brilliantly) and I sprung to this idea when it first struck me. I have since learnt that this particular game is played across the country under different names.

Humans are mutual creations. Ideologies and ideologues always play off each other, and I have tried to investigate some of these relationships — Ambedkarites vs Marxists, Lohiaites and Communists, or the extremities of the Left-Right spectrum, say — it felt important because we seem to live in a world where all nuance is sacrificed at the altar of some big, all-encompassing binary. Reality is more complex. Patriarchy isn’t limited to any particular wing of the political spectrum, and neither is hero worship. As a broad ideal, Rama Bhima Soma helped me keep the form of the book fluid and juxtapose themes unpredictably.

In terms of cultural diversity, the evolution of Kannada literature across the 20th century is a wonderful example of how passionate inter-generation squabbles can generate much meaning and vigour and passion. What felt wonderful to me about the seventies and eighties is that despite these fights and squabbles, there was a sense of collective struggle, as though society was trying to learn from itself and grow meaningfully. The game captured that moment quite uncannily.

How has Kannada been wielded as a tool for both cultural assertion and political mobilisation, and what risks does linguistic chauvinism pose to Karnataka’s pluralistic identity?

Historically, the region has been a melting pot of languages and migrants and cultures. The revered Kannada poet Kuvempu called it sarvajanangada shantiya tota (a peaceful haven for all peoples) — which is as utopian an ideal as can get. Most historical fiction in Kannada from the early twentieth century carries a measure of this utopianism, which is understandable for its own times — they were vital in creating the idea of Karnataka. It was really Kannada cinema that sowed the seeds of mass Kannada-consciousness though, but the great Kannada actor Dr Rajkumar, unlike his peers in Tamil Nadu or Andhra Pradesh, never attempted to enter politics or capitalise on his fame. He also decried efforts made in his name to use Kannada for violent chauvinism.

I personally find this kind of chauvinist politics (tearing down English name-boards, for example) to be benign and infantile. There are so many fruitful avenues towards which this energy may be more constructively directed — pushing for better universities and scholastic environments with a genuinely multilingual pedagogy, or funding more creative work in Kannada literature and the performing arts.

Your book highlights the failure of left-leaning movements to form a united political front. How did ideological rigidity and personal rivalries undermine these movements, and what role did this fragmentation play in paving the way for the Hindu Right’s ascendancy in Karnataka? Do you see any hope for a new ideological framework that could address the failings of both these binaries while resonating with Karnataka’s historical and cultural ethos?

One of the biggest fault-lines within the Left was its poor understanding of cultural and religious histories, but this was already apparent to many by the 1980s. Hierarchy and patriarchy within social movements can also quickly defeat aspirations to democratic ideals. Of course, the current Hindu Right has hardly offered a corrective in any of these matters, but has instead made a virtue of all these drawbacks. The failure of the Left to form a united front is directly related to this regression because it allowed the centre-right and far-right to create a false dichotomy and begin feeding each other into power.

I certainly see a new generation (myself included) that has grown tired of the mediocrity and bigotry in the prevailing political discourse. A strong Left populism would certainly be valuable (where is the Indian Bernie Sanders, one might ask), but more than ideological frameworks, I’d like to see a robust and sensible media/entertainment ecosystem in the Kannada mainstream that will raise the bar of journalism and cultural discourse beyond mere sensationalism. What is currently in vogue is certainly a disservice to the rich tradition of humanism and pluralism inherent in Kannada culture.

You discuss how patriarchal structures have stymied efforts toward women’s empowerment. Can you talk about how this dynamic has evolved in Karnataka’s social and political landscape, and how figures like Du Saraswathi redefined agency in spaces traditionally dominated by men?

Reactionary elements continue to work against it. Love Jihad is a patriarchal conspiracy theory. On the one hand, it strips women of the agency to make their own choices, even as it releases a horde of misguided muscle to morally police this fiction. The hijab controversy forced hundreds of Muslim girls to leave colleges in South Canara — a patriarchal assault from both inside their homes and from political/media forces outside. Of course, politicians themselves are often horribly regressive, too — Prajwal Revanna is merely one exaggerated symptom. Female foeticide is still a reality in pockets of rural Karnataka, and one keeps hearing stories every other day of young men resorting to violence after being rejected by women. But I also heard some cautiously optimistic takes on feminist progress in Karnataka — feminism might yet turn out to be the most enduring legacy of all the social movements from the late twentieth century.

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Trade unions were dominated by men, and the writer Poornachandra Tejaswi once mocked their adversarial tendencies and ‘moustache-twirling.’ This was what my own conception of trade-union leaders had been, so it was refreshing to meet Du Saraswathi, who has been working with zen-like passion alongside sanitation workers, sex workers, and women in garment-factory jobs. She also performs one-woman shows for small groups of workers, and conducts drama workshops too. Storytelling always happens from a position of equality, as opposed to the hectoring tone of a mass-leader. I felt like this was a form of activism that Tejaswi might have admired if he were alive.

Gandhi appears as both an idealist and a pragmatic leader in your narrative. How have his philosophies been interpreted — or misinterpreted — by Karnataka’s political leaders and movements, particularly during the state’s socialist and post-socialist periods?

The admiration for Gandhi goes back to the freedom struggle and Kannada literati of the early twentieth century were, by and large, admirers of Gandhi. Pandit Taranath, DV Gundappa, and Kuvempu — to name a few big figures. The socialist left in Karnataka of the sixties preferred the trio of Gandhi, Ambedkar and Lohia to that of Marx, Lenin and Mao. Some of the most notable intellectuals and artists in the Dalit movement have regarded him with respect — from DR Nagaraj to Devanura Mahadeva to Du Saraswati — all of whose reflections on Gandhi come up in the book. Of course, there is a concerted effort in recent times to character-assassinate Gandhi, but in my own explorations I found no dearth of individuals (from diverse ideological leanings) who found inspiration from Gandhi’s moral struggles, often late in their lives. Indeed, it became an unintended running-thread that I noticed only when I was putting all the chapters together — almost as if representing a potential ideological synthesis that can challenge the ruling Right.

Kuvempu and other Kannada literary stalwarts like U.R. Ananthamurthy used literature as a form of intellectual resistance. How do you view their works as responses to specific historical moments, and do you believe contemporary Kannada literature carries the same weight and gravitas in engaging with the state’s social and political issues?

People often say that a book like Samskara could not be written in today’s atmosphere, and perhaps they’re right. Kuvempu’s diatribes against religious fundamentalism, if delivered as a speech today, would really rankle the prevailing dispensation. I think you can say that these progressive voices emerged from the reformist tenor of the Kannada renaissance itself, and were also a reaction to the horrors of communalism and caste-violence.

There is fine Kannada literature and theatre being written (and performed) today, but it survives in niche spaces — the discursive world of the ’70s and ’80s seems to be absent. One of my interviewees commented that the present Kannada world doesn’t seem to read each other much — there might be some truth to this. And even when it does, the discourse tends to often devolve into easy and uncritical praise. Passionate, vociferous debate is rare, and there is also a paucity of public intellectuals who are ready to voice their thoughts boldly — the atmosphere of fear is quite real.

Your book also dwells on the transition to a neoliberal era. How has Karnataka’s embrace of economic liberalisation reshaped its socio-political fabric, particularly in terms of inequality, regional disparities, and the marginalisation of its agrarian and working-class populations?

Like the rest of the country (and the world) it has mostly exacerbated inequality and converted politics into a moneyed slugfest. Within Karnataka itself, there is a regular flow of migrant labourers from the arid northern districts to cities like Bangalore or plantations in the Western Ghats, say. Contract labour continues to snatch dignity and security from the workforce, and has affected every realm of care work that is vital to our society — teachers, nurses, sanitation-workers, for example. Which is why welfare politics — like the Congress ‘guarantees’ — find such great traction. The cost of living has grown by leaps and bounds, but wages have stagnated, so a woman in rural Karnataka has great reason to vote for anybody who offers her two thousand rupees a month. Most politicians seem to think that building highways and expanding roads counts for development and shout hurrahs. Very few are actually thinking about real structural change that can transform the countryside into sustainable communities with great education and healthcare infrastructure. If there is serious political will, this is not a difficult thing to pull off, but politics has become all about merely maintaining the status-quo. So the exodus from villages to cities continues apace.

The trajectory of the Janata Dal (Secular) is also a good case in point. It was originally supposed to be an agrarian party (their logo is a woman farmer), but it is now mostly a feudal lordship trying to instigate communal politics after allying with the BJP — negating all its original motives. H.D. Kumaraswamy is now Union Minister of Heavy Industries, which really tells you what their priorities are.

D.R. Nagaraj envisioned participatory democracy as the antidote to a paternalistic welfare state. Has Karnataka succeeded in nurturing such grassroots movements, or has the state’s governance remained tethered to a top-down approach? What does this mean for the state’s political future?

We seem to live in times where ordinary citizens can hardly aspire to participate in a representative democracy (which is itself a diluted form of democracy) because of the serious money and lineage required to even contest elections. Participatory democracy is still quite far away, and we’d have to imagine a world where politics is not wholly dictated by oligarchs and thugs, and there has been a genuine decentralisation of power and resources.

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There are actually very few historical instances in the modern world where a genuinely bottom-up approach — direct democracy — has been experimented with. The communes during the Spanish Civil War during the 1930s, or the autonomous region of Rojava in north-east Syria in recent times are a couple of them, but these experiments are never allowed to flourish by the military powers of their times. The social movements in Karnataka during the ’70s and ’80s did exert pressure on the state governments of its times, and there was a rejuvenation of Panchayat Raj structures in the 1980s.

Bureaucrats can certainly help expand these legacies. For instance, I bring up the work of the extremely resourceful IAS officer Uma Mahadevan-Dasgupta in the book — she’s basically revitalised the public library network in rural Karnataka, opening thousands of libraries and encouraging them to become inclusive community spaces, especially for children. I think these are silent and invaluable revolutions in their own right — and we often seem to forget what the State can do with its resources if determined and idealistic civil servants are allowed to take the lead. Ultimately, participatory democracy can emerge only when civil society is afforded the time and resources to begin articulating its demands vigorously.

You write about the importance of revisiting Karnataka’s cultural and political history. How do you see this “amnesia” manifesting today, especially in the younger generation, and how can Karnataka’s intellectual and artistic traditions be revitalised to counter this trend? In the face of growing polarisation and the rise of identity-based politics, do you see a path forward for Karnataka to reclaim its tradition of inclusivity?

They are already being revitalised. For instance, I was blown away by the recent play Daklakatha Devikavya (directed by KP Lakshmana) which transformed the poems of the Kannada poet KB Siddaiah into a powerful musical and theatrical production. The Kannada tradition has always been richly inclusive, and it is impossible to destroy this legacy. I have only a cliched response regarding the path forward — revitalisation of the education system and enabling deep imaginative spaces for children at the primary level. At the higher education level, there is a great deal of mediocrity and lack of funds; the State must seriously invest in restoring universities to positions of eminence and making high-quality education accessible to everyone. The increasing privatisation of education poses a significant hurdle in this regard.