For generations of schoolchildren, Vatal Nagaraj was a familiar name — the man whose protests could unexpectedly give them a day off from school, be it over Cauvery water sharing issue or Kannada name boards. Few among them understood that behind the noise and spectacle lay a deeper history of Kannada identity and activism.
What was unfolding as “street drama” for the uninitatited was, in fact, just the latest chapter in a centuries-old struggle: one that began in poetry and evolved through various phases of politics.
Writers and activists view the Kannada movement as unfolding in four phases: the 1950s as a struggle for unification as a linguistic State, the 1960s as a period of celebration and asserti
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