‘What unites the Kannada world is an admiration for vachana literature’: Writer Srikar Raghavan

As may be expected, reviews of Rama Bhima Soma: Cultural Investigations into Modern Karnataka have focused on the vast and varied connections between life and literature, and state and society, that the book has aimed to chronicle. Karnataka, the home state of the author, is the playground for the ball game introduced to us through the title, which is also an extremely imaginative metaphor for democracy. For this interviewer, the tales of civil society and activism, their admirable struggles, and their latent possibilities are quite as important. The book is a personal narrative, without the pretence of being all-seeing or all-knowing. The narrative would not be possible without the several personalities who are its anchors, whether dead or living, obscure or celebrated.

The journalistic style may leave some feeling ignored, but this very mode signals an openness to engage with them in the future. Indeed, pluralism is the personal creed of the author, constituting both the ends and the means. It might seem as though certain movements and figures, such as socialism and Gandhi, respectively, receive inordinate attention or seem omnipresent.

But one must remember that the author has dealt with the 20th century and Karnataka on its own terms, and not through the polarised lens...

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