Why Devanoora Mahadeva’s New Kannada Book Has Left the Sangh Fuming
Yogendra Yadav: Devanoora Mahadeva fills the silence
An iconic Kannada literary figure, a towering public intellectual and a revered political activist in Karnataka. Shy and self-effacing to a point that you begin to wonder why he is in public life. He has a knack of disappearing from any public attention. As you suddenly notice his absence from the dais, someone helpfully explains: he may have stepped out for a smoke. Invariably and annoyingly late, even by my standards, Mahadeva is always a little out of sorts, a bit disheveled. His is not a carefully designed carelessness of a bohemian poet. It is just that his life has a different rhythm and radically different set of priorities than you would imagine a famous man to have.
Oh, I forgot to say, he is Dalit. But now don’t rush to call him a Dalit writer or a Dalit activist. That would be a serious misrecognition, a category mistake. We don’t describe Shekhar Gupta as a bania intellectual, notwithstanding his touching, unadulterated faith in the markets. I am not described (hopefully) as an OBC intellectual, despite my strident position on reservations or caste census. Similarly, calling Devanoora Mahadeva a Dalit intellectual won’t tell us much about him, except his social origins, the social milieu that he writes about, and the cultural resources he draws upon. Unlike many Dalit activists, he refuses to play the angry Dalit and limit his horizons to one section of humanity. He aims at nothing less than truth in its entirety.
In doing so, he refuses to accept the age-old division of intellectual labour that has continued seamlessly in our times. The outcastes, modern Dalits and OBCs can at best aspire to be their own advocates, in-charge of a slice of truth. Brahmins are meant to be non-partisan arbiters of truth, transcending their accident of birth, extending their empathy to everyone, including the Shudras. Mahadeva defies these roles and extends interpretative charity to everyone, including the upper caste characters in his fiction. His politics embraces entire humanity and beyond, including nature....
Rakshith S. Ponnathpur: Devanoora Mahadeva’s New Kannada Book Has Left the Sangh Fuming
Karnataka’s civil
society is abuzz with a newly released Kannada book, Devanoora Mahadeva’s RSS
– Aala Mattu Agala (RSS – Its Depth and Breadth). A critical
exploration of the RSS, the book has been flying off the shelves since its
release, prompting the state’s right-wing ecosystem to unleash all its arms to
discredit both the book and its author.
Vishweshwara Bhat,
senior journalist and chief-editor of the leading right-leaning Kannada
daily Vishwawani, took to Twitter to call it a “piece of trash.”
Rohit Chakratirtha, the erstwhile head of the controversial textbook revision
committee, wrote a slanderous op-ed in another right-leaning daily, Hosa
Digantha. Right-leaning news channels have been running prejudicial panels
on the book all week. One of the publishers informs me that more than 10,000
copies of the book have already been sold and around 70,000 copies are in print
based on placed orders and the ever-increasing demand.
Devanoora Mahadeva has
adopted a unique distribution strategy of allowing multiple publishers to
publish the book in different regions of Karnataka, without expecting any
royalty. As many as six Kannada publishers – big and small – are already
distributing these books across the state, with more joining the bandwagon
given the overwhelming demand for the book. Although only the Kannada original
is out for sale, Telugu, Tamil, Malayalam, Hindi, and English translations are
underway....
https://thewire.in/books/devanuru-mahadevas-new-kannada-book-rss-sangh
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