Casting the first stone

Eighteen years after it was first installed,it looks like Bangalore might finally get to glimpse Tamil poet-saint Thiruvalluvar’s graven image. So much Tamil pride is bound up with the sainted Thiruvalluvar; and much Kannada pride hinges on countering Tamil grandiosity. Naturally,the statue has been shrouded in controversy. But given that corporation polls are right round the corner,and many wards are heavily populated with Tamil speakers,this move makes electoral sense for the Yeduriyappa government. Bangalore was not prepared to unveil the statue without “reciprocation” — a statue of the Kannada poet Sarvajna in Chennai. And so the statue sat there for years,heavily guarded and wrapped in gunny sacks,on a plinth in the middle of a traffic circle. Now that political consensus has been hammered out,the Valluvar statue is set to be unveiled on August 9 and the Sarvajna statue goes up on August 13. Except,it’s not that easy. Kannada Chaluvali Vatal Paksha and other regionalist cultural and political organisations have announced that they will not let the statue go up without raising hell,and have called for a city-wide bandh on that day. The state government will want to ensure that Karnataka’s newfound association with vigilantism isn’t extended then.

Troubles between Karnataka and Tamil Nadu run deeper than Cauvery waters. Their long-simmering linguistic rivalry recently manifested itself in a war for classical status (Team Kannada is aggrieved at Team Tamil’s claim of greater antiquity,claiming that the richness of Kannada literary achievements merits that it be declared classical. In fact,both derive from a proto-Dravidian language.) Resource disputes like Hogenakkal only sharpen the competition. After the Rajkumar kidnapping,Veerappan’s ransom demands included three major things: that Cauvery water be immediately released to Tamil Nadu and Tamils affected by the 1991 water riots be compensated,and that the Thiruvalluvar statue finally be uncovered.

Statues make powerful statements about their time and context. They can be abiding symbols of civic pride or relics of a long-ago past .The toppling of statues is the Kodak moment for historical change. The Karnataka-Tamil Nadu statue saga though is something else altogether. It is a monument to intransigent identity politics,the squabbles that can erupt out of apparent nothings and feed into a vast and pointless animus.