Bengaluru: Ten days ago, senior BJP leader Umesh Katti raked up a long-standing dispute by demanding that North Karnataka be awarded separate state-hood. Claims of step-motherly treatment being meted out to areas like Belgaum have often been made by ministers unhappy with their rank and position and should not be seen as anything more than a political gimmick. However, even a charade can prove lethal in a region where discontentment and alienation have been allowed to simmer over decades of misrule and bad governance.
The obvious question is, therefore: Why hasn't the issue been put to rest? It is true that Katti received only condemnation for his statement, with the state unit of the BJP firmly telling him to refrain from making such inflammatory statements. Also, the Telangana-Seemandhra split has only made room for more dissent, with other districts demanding statehood as well.
Umesh Katti first spoke out on the issue a year ago, expressing a need to bifurcate the state to ensure all-round development. He supported his claim by saying that the population of Karnataka has increased three-fold since it was formed in 1956 and that the Congress government only paid attention to the southern parts of the state. His issues were largely linguistic in nature, for he talked about speaking Kannada without using words from other languages.
This discontentment over language has always been an issue in North Karnataka, going all the way back to the colonial era, when the areas that are now part of Karnataka were under the state of Mysore, Nizam's Hyderabad, the Bombay Presidency, the Madras Presidency and the Kodagu territory. This is actually about two-thirds of what is now Karnataka, which means that cultural variations are inevitable. Kannadigas under the Nizam felt Urdu was being thrust on them and the Kannada they speak still bears those influences. Those in the Bombay Presidency felt the same way about Marathi, although their traditions and their dialect continue to have strong influences from Maharashtra. This culminated in the unification movement.
The unification itself was a long-drawn out process, with the Dhar Committee being appointed in 1947 to see to the re-organisation of states. However, the commitee decided that dividing states on the basis of language would only lead to further dissent. This was ill-received by the then Nehru-led government and a new JVP Committee, headed by Nehru himself, saw to the re-organisation of the states. Karnataka still hadn't received its due, for the various committees appointed to re-organise the nation had approved the formation of Andhra Pradesh, but not Karnataka. This resulted in a movement led by the Kannada literary community, who pressed for the creation of a separate state for Kannadigas. It was the Fazal Ali Committee formed in 1953 that finally gave Kannadigas what they wanted.
For the Maharashtra government, which continued to dispute the findings of the Fazal Ali committee, Concony (or Konkani, as it is more commonly spelt today) became the basis of the argument. However, Concony was declared an independent language, so this point was moot. Still dissatisfied, the Maharashtra government appealed to Parliament, based on which the latter formed the Mahajan Committee in 1966, to look into the case. The four-member committee comprised two representatives from the Maharashtra government and two from the Mysore State government, and failed to reach a conclusion. The Maharashtra government simply said that all villages or regions in which Marathi is the predominant language need to be transferred from Karnataka, and vice versa. Maharashtra received only 262 out of the 814 villages it demanded. Karnataka claimed 516 and was given 260.
Meanwhile, Maharashtra, which was willing to accept the Mahajan Committee report, suddenly did a U-turn. Karnataka did not react well to this, saying why go back on something that has been agreed upon? In 2004, the Maharashtra government filed a suit before the Supreme Court. Karnataka said that Supreme Court has no jurisdiction over the re-organisation of states, based on Article 3 of the constitution. That case lasted a decade.
The state was renamed in 1973, under Chief Minister Devaraj Urs, who said Karnataka was a more inclusive name than Mysore. This air of inclusivity didn't go beyond the naming of the state, for the Kannadigas in areas like Bidar, Belgaum and Gulbarga continued to feel alienated from the Mysore region.
The typical mindset that exists in North Karnataka is that development is concentrated only in the Old Mysore area. People from the latter region, on their part, feel that the cultures vary too much - a strong Marathi influence continues to exist in Uttara Karnataka, which does not go down too well with those hailing from the Mysore region. Officials from Mysore are always unhappy about being transferred to places like Belgaum. They don’t understand festivals like Diwali and Ganesh Chaturthi, which are celebrated in North Karnataka and have their roots in Marathi traditions.
Belgaum 's demand to be made a second capital was also dismissed by the Siddaramaiah government, sparking further ire from Umesh Katti. He alleged that the CM's involvement with North Karnataka was cursory in nature, with development prioritised only in the state’s southern regions. Meanwhile, Maharashtra Navnirman Sena chief Raj Thackeray said that Belgaum would be made part of Maharashtra if his party was voted to power, raking up the Mahajan Committee report again in September 2014.
The history of the case only outlines discontentment that goes back decades, leading to border disputes and dissent at the local level. The people themselves have grown accustomed to their sense of alienation, perhaps even cling to it, making the situation volatile at any time. This makes it easy for dissatisfied political powers to rake up trouble any time they want. Politicians unhappy with their lot in life will demand state-hood for the region, hoping to draw attention to themselves. Maharashtra then finds the fodder it needs, leading to one more political spat. The people themselves are resigned to the feeling of being sidelined, whether or not that is truly the case. But the formation of Telangana as a separate state has given North Karnataka a reason to believe they, too, might be destined for separate state-hood.
— The writer is a member of the Karnataka-Mysore model legal cell)
