PRITHVI DATTA CHANDRA SHOBHI writes: The 77th Kannada sahitya sammelana ended in Bangalore on Sunday. Everything—the speeches, the controversies, the complaints, the compliments, the arrangements—has been seen, heard and watched. …
Nearly three years ago, Bombay-based film-maker M. GONZOLA had posted this “weekend item” on churumuri, a chain-mail really that had been doing the round for months. One Tam-Brahm = priest …
Editorial in Deccan Herald, Bangalore: “If women have been at the receiving end of moral policing by Hindutva elements till now, it is now the turn of the Karnataka police …
ALOK PRASANNA, in Oxford (no less), forwards a list (slightly edited) of western band-names as they might appear if and, it’s a dodd-if, the Karnataka Rakshana Vedike (Narayana Gowda bana) …
E.R. RAMACHANDRAN writes: That Karnataka is rapidly sliding up the totempole of corruption is no more a surprise to anybody who follows the raids conducted by Lok Ayukta Santosh Hegde …
ALOK PRASANNA writes from Bangalore: The relentless march of humanity has resulted in the extinction of several species of flora and fauna from this world, and now threatens to swallow …
ARVIND SWAMINATHAN writes from Madras: Ernest Hemingway said early to bed and early to rise and somebody else has all the fun. John Ciardi said early to bed and early …
D.P. SATISH writes from New Delhi: Former Indian all-rounder Roger Binny was a nominated MLA in the Karnataka Assembly under the Anglo-Indian quota. He never opened his mouth during his …
S.R. RAMAKRISHNA writes from Bangalore: What’s in a name? Oh, everything. On Monday, the crew of an FM radio station in Bangalore got beaten up because someone didn’t like the …
Kumar Ketkar, editor of the Marathi newspaper Lok Satta, writes in the Indian Express on Raj Thackeray‘s specious claim that his only aim (in targetting Biharis, etc) is to protect …
[odeo=http://studio.odeo.com/audio/19156643/] Kannada, Kannadigas, Karnataka. Land, language, water, resources, jobs. Those were the buzzwords on the street before the election process began. How come all those issues disappeared along with those …
ALOK PRASANNA writes from Hyderabad: Indian politicians and activists have mastered the art of The Utterly Meaningless Gesture. Doing things that have no impact on the issue at hand, but …
Despite the frowns and whines, they uncomplainingly work as unskilled or semi-skilled labour, as security guards and as auto/taxi drivers; they sell vegetables, betel leaves, and tea; they run farm …
In what is either a display of misplaced bravado, or a Freudian slip, the chief of the Karnataka Rakshana Vedike, T.A. Narayana Gowda, has admitted that “money power” had to …
BANGALORE: A group of North Indian prisoners, most of them undertrials lodged in the central jail in Bangalore, have approached the High Court and demanded that they be served North …
After nonchalantly watching, when not silently applauding, the audacious assault on the very soul of Kannada, Kannadiga and Karnataka, the mainstream media seems to be waking up to the pregnant …
What is the Karnataka Rakshana Vedike? How has a motley group of self-appointed soldiers come to dominate the political discourse so quickly and so often? Who in the organisation decides …
The outrage of Kannada organisations at a poem written by a Canadian employee of the IT company Sasken that reportedly abuses and makes fun of Kannadigas, has taken a familiar …
The media has been a key player in Raj Thackeray‘s hate campaign against “outsiders” in Bombay. In giving him the oxygen of publicity, in editorialising news, in fanning the flames …
Raj Thackeray, the Posterboy of Parochialism (West), has responded to an open letter in The Indian Express from Sudheendra Kulkarni, the Belgaum-born media advisor to Atal Behari Vajpayee and L.K. …
BHAMY V. SHENOY writes: As Raj Thackeray follows his uncle Bal Thackeray‘s footsteps in trying to tap revanchist linguistic and regional sentiments, we need to take a look at …
Pratap Bhanu Mehta in The Indian Express: “The most disturbing thing about the political fallout from Raj Thackeray‘s demagogic revival of crass nativism in politics may not be his own …
An obnoxious feature of the competitive chauvinism on either side of the border is the naked contempt for public and private property; the advertised inability of the “local” police in …
As Raj Thackeray fans the embers of exclusionism that his uncle Bal Thackeray had expertly lit 40 years ago, the prospect of the spark becoming a fullblown fire that could …
As the loose-tongues of the mother tongue flap around like cracked canines, with scarcely any debate on what such vigilante justice could be doing to Kannada, Kannadigas and Karnataka, one …