For weeks now, driving across the Maharashtra-Karnataka border has been like an episode of the television adventure series “Fear Factor: Khatron ke Khiladi” as angry protestors on both sides of the border indulged in acts of vandalism to prevent people from the other state crossing the border. Ministers from Maharashtra who wanted to attend a conference in Belagavi (formerly Belgaum) were stopped by mobs there while Karnataka registered buses were damaged and painted over with “Jai Maharashtra” in Pune.
The row escalated with every passing week; it is essentially political in nature with politicians of all persuasions, especially the Bharatiya Janata Party which is incidentally in power in both the states, stoking the fire. The charade goes on – Maharashtra deputy chief minister, a BJP man, spoke on the phone to the Karnataka chief minister, also a BJP man, to “convey his dismay” which was followed by union Home Minister Amit Shah stepping in to calm the tempers on both the sides. The charade is being enacted both as a distraction from more germane issues of livelihood and as a point of conflict that the party can benefit from in the Karnataka Assembly election next year – a fixed match as it were.
People’s emotions are a different story – they are part genuine and part drummed up as part of this charade. On both sides of the state border, people hold passionate opinions on Belagavi, Nipani and 814 villages of Karnataka being part of Maharashtra because of the Marathi-speaking population in them or remaining in Karnataka thanks to the Kannada-speaking population there. It’s an old row going back to 1957, immediately after the States Reorganisation Commission’s work which awarded these areas to Karnataka.
For decades, they were conversationally referred to as “Bombay-Karnataka” to signify that they had been carved out of the erstwhile Bombay Presidency to be part of the newly-formed state of Karnataka. The issue has been parsed by commissions and has had the attention of the Supreme Court of India for years. There’s little to nothing that can be forced on the ground across the border by either state and its politicians – and they know it well.
Bombay, as it was known then, was an expanding city with the blessings of the powers that were; the large Presidency had several communities and caste groups speaking more than half a dozen languages and cradling as many cultures. Many of them migrated to the developing city to fill in vacancies in factories and take up entrepreneurial or trading opportunities that it offered. For many in the Belagavi-Dharwad region and beyond, it was not about crossing a border or migrating from one province or kingdom to another; it was merely about going from one part of the Presidency to another, one that had more opportunities. Bombay became the melting pot, as it were.
From the Kannada-speaking regions of the Presidency came a number of communities with their languages. The city’s ubiquitous Udupi restaurants with their “pure vegetarian” fare – though some of them lately serve Italian and Indo-Chinese – perhaps remain the symbol of that migration to Bombay. “Chennai, Mysore and Bangalore were important destination for the Udupi migrants, but it was Mumbai that would capture the imagination for the next century,” wrote Chinmay Tumbe, IIM-A professor and author of the seminal book The Great Indian Migration Wave which is a must-read.
“Matunga in Mumbai became a veritable bastion of south Indian migrants, and Udupi restaurants with Rama Nayak’s, Café Madras and several others established in the 1930s and 40s. Land reforms in the 1970s stimulated greater migration of Bunts, a dominant peasant caste of Udupi who took on the mantle from the Brahmins to run the bulk of Udupi restaurants, often taking over old Irani restaurants…In Mumbai, night schools for the restaurant staff were a prominent feature in the initial years and working conditions improved substantially after the labour rights movement of the 1950s and 60s championed by George Fernandes, himself a product of the coastal Karnataka migration wave,” wrote Tumbe.
Bombay had Kannada speakers and Tulu speakers from the region. In the Satara-Sangli-Kolhapur-Latur region, Maharashtrians intermingled with Kannadigas; in the Belgaum-Dharwad-Nippani region, Kannada speakers with Maharashtrians. The border between the two states was carved on land when the states were formed. How could people be divided neatly into Marathi or Kannada-speaking? What of those who used both? Which state would claim these regions?
For decades then, Belgaum-Dharwad-Nipani continued to be referred to as “Bombay Karnataka” to be changed to “Kittur Karnataka” only last year. To reassert its right over the region, successive governments of Karnataka in the last 15 years have held the winter session of the state Assembly in Belgaum, now Belagavi, which is not different from Maharashtra governments holding the winter session of the state Assembly in Nagpur to reinforce that Vidarbha region belongs in Maharashtra. The present government in Karnataka has, in fact, claimed 48 villages in Sangli as rightfully belonging to it. The Maharashtra Ekikaran Samiti has played its part to keep the Marathi sentiment alive and united in Belagavi.
Just as border areas do, cities too fall prey to parochial or xenophobic sentiment from time to time but it is harder to keep the pot stirring in a city driven by its economy as Bombay/Mumbai has been. The longest that a language or culture conflict has been kept alive in Bombay/Mumbai was in the 1960-70s when the Shiv Sena picked on the “south Indians” – including and especially the Udupi restaurants which were visible symbols – to drive home the point that “outsiders” were taking jobs in the city that Maharashtrians should have had.
Historians of the time have noted that the Sena’s cause, eventually articulated as the “sons of the soil” ideology, was pushed by the Sthaniya Lokadhikar Samiti (SLS) which expanded it to include Marathi-speakers on interview panels in government offices, Marathi used in communication in government and private workplaces, and even arguing that a certain percentage of jobs be kept “reserved” for Marathi speakers. The SLS was equally or more powerful than the party’s trade union, Bharatiya Kamgar Sena. In later years, the philosophy has reflected in demands such as shop display boards to have Marathi and taxi-rickshaw drivers to know Marathi.
Bangalore or Bengaluru has had its share of parochial sentiment too – largely against Tamil speakers and migrants from the northeast – but a political party did not emerge to articulate the sentiment. In Bengaluru as in Mumbai, people speak multiple tongues often switching from one to another in the space of one conversation. This multilingualism, flowing from multiculturalism, stands starkly different from say Paris where French dominates or London where English is absolutely the language of currency and culture; both the international cities have communities of different nationalities and languages, yet the cities run on a dominant language.
As Mumbai and Bengaluru, the border regions between Maharashtra and Karnataka too have their share of multiculturalism and multilingualism. It’s a dynamic ever-changing mix with some sensitivities and a few grudges. Genuine grievances that exist of communities and groups should be aired and addressed, but for politicians to pick the grudges, amplify them and fan the flames is nothing short of political cynicism and manipulation at its lowest. Can we stop this tit-for-tat: Karnataka saying it “will not give an inch of soil” and Maharashtra’s ministers retorting that “we will have to rethink releasing water from Koyna and Krishna rivers”?
Smruti Koppikar, journalist and urban chronicler, writes extensively on cities, development, gender, and media. She is the founder editor of ‘Question of Cities.’
