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| Vol. 4, Issue 5 May 2012 |
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Arts & Reviews |
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Feature |
Meanings of the City
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| Kannada cinema has always had an ambivalent relationship with Bangalore—until today, when it views the city with unconcealed loathing |
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Published : 1 October 2011 |
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JON HICKS / CORBIS |
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| Bright lights along Brigade Road, a busy commercial area of Bengaluru dotted with shops, restaurants and pubs.
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N A TYPICAL CONTEMPORARY KANNADA FILM, a Kannada-speaking migrant in Bengaluru tries to find employment, only to encounter difficulties at every step. Forced into the underworld, he becomes a dreaded don, cutting his enemies to bits with a cleaver until the law catches up with him and he dies. Bengaluru, here, is not the glamorous cosmopolis as perceived |
from afar, but a decidedly seedy city festering with crime and injustice. Why the most prosperous city in South India is portrayed as such in local-language cinema can perhaps only be understood through an enquiry into several connected factors—one which begins with the meaning of the city in Indian popular cinema.
The city has been a crucial motif in Indian popular cinema from 1947 onwards, but its meaning has changed with each significant event in this nation’s history. Bombay, for instance, used by Hindi films to represent ‘The City’, came into great cinematic prominence in the 1950s as a metaphor for the promise of the modern in Nehru’s India.
That uncomplicated optimism, however, did not last very long. By the late 1960s, Indira Gandhi’s brand of populism had unleashed a wave of aspiration across socioeconomic classes that imposed a new cinematic meaning on the city: it became a symbol of opportunity. In films like Yash Chopra’s Deewaar (1975), in which the iconic Angry Young Man first appeared, a dockyard worker ascends to wealth and power in the city—albeit through unlawful means. While films like Deewaar nominally uphold the law, material advancement by any means is shown as hugely attractive.
The early 1990s saw the end of Nehruvian socialism—after decades of interventionism, the PV Narasimha Rao government liberalised the economy and opened up India to global market forces. Hindi cinema began to reflect this development: the state was shown as withdrawing from its own institutions, with the police therefore behaving like private agencies—most notably in Ram Gopal Varma’s Satya (1998).
One would expect regional cinemas in India to use their major metropolitan centre to represent ‘The City’ in their respective narratives, and for these cities to be portrayed as variants of Bollywood’s Mumbai. One purpose of regional cinema has traditionally been to endorse a strong regional identity, as seen in representations of Chennai in Tamil cinema or Kolkata in Bengali cinema. Yet somehow this is not true for Kannada cinema. It has always had an ambivalent relationship with Bangalore—until today, when it views the city with unconcealed loathing.
Each strain of popular cinema has its own constituency, the expanse of audiences it chooses to address. Mainstream Hindi cinema has traditionally addressed people across India and has therefore given voice to the concerns of a wide population. Kannada cinema defies the expectation of a pan-Kannada reach: earlier, it restricted its vision to princely Mysore (made up of Bangalore, Mysore and the remainder of southern Karnataka) and it continues to exclude Kannada-speaking regions beyond.
Mysore, during its rule by the Wodeyar dynasty, was regarded as a ‘nation within a nation’ and, to a large degree, has retained its exclusive culture ever since the time of British India. Vestiges of this sentiment lingered on in Kannada cinema, which was born in 1930s Mysore, even after linguistic reorganisation. Following the States Reorganisation Act of 1956, which redrew the boundaries of India’s states along linguistic lines, Mysore was enlarged by the addition of Coorg state and the Kannada-speaking districts of southern Bombay and western Hyderabad. The initiative for linguistic reorganisation of the Kannada-speaking areas did not come from Mysore but from other Kannada-speaking locales like Dharwad and Belgaum, whose residents had suffered considerably from speaking a minority language. People from the former Mysore retained memories of the princely state which did not fade, and so they never fully embraced the expanded region. Indeed, they lamented the changing of the name of the enlarged state from Mysore to Karnataka in 1973.
| DINODIA PHOTO LIBRARY |
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Jay Chamaraja Wodeyar rides the royal horse in Mysore during the festival of Dasara in 1956. |
Linguistic reorganisation did not create unity in the way it was anticipated. While Bangalore was part of Old Mysore, it was also seen as the site from where the British governed. And it historically attracted migrants—both during the colonial period, and then later, after it became a hub for public-sector industries.
Bengaluru, or Bangalore, is an unlikely spot for a prosperous metropolis. Emerging from rather modest origins, it gained importance in 1807 when the British arranged with the government of Mysore for a regiment of European cavalry, and another of infantry, to be based northeast of the town, with administrative offices in the fort to the south. The importance of the Cantonment increased when the British, claiming corruption in administration, intervened to wrest power from the king and his advisors in 1831. The state then came under the purview of British commissioners, and government offices were relocated to Bangalore while the king was relegated to a strictly ritual position in Mysore. The relocation of government offices and the presence of the garrison meant that there was an influx of service providers—especially Urdu-speaking Muslims and Tamil speakers—from all over southern India. The migrant populace was concentrated around the Cantonment area, while the City area remained mostly Kannada-speaking, like the majority of people in Mysore state. A linguistic gulf separated the two since the area housing the garrison was deliberately kept apart from the City by the British.
Following linguistic reorganisation, Bangalore became the capital of Kannada-speaking Karnataka, though it was only a few hours away from Tamil-speaking Tamil Nadu, Telugu-speaking Andhra Pradesh and Malayalam-speaking Kerala. As the two sections of Bangalore grew into each other, the city came to exhibit an unusual degree of cosmopolitanism.
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Kittur Chennamma (1962) was a historical ἀlm about the eponymous queen who fought the British. |
In the Cantonment area, the British built sprawling bungalows and wide boulevards—along with a glamorous upper-class lifestyle—to distinguish it from the cramped City outside. The first lot of English-medium schools in the state opened in the Cantonment—though over a period of time English-medium private schools mushroomed in the City as well, while classes in government schools were conducted in Kannada. As the older City developed a culture dominated by Kannada, a balance between various languages was achieved in the Cantonment under the dominance of English. As may be expected, Bangalore was and remains deeply divided on the language issue.
In the late 1990s, when the IT industry and IT-enabled services accounted for 60,000 jobs in the city, language became the key to opportunity; the new economy favoured those with an English-medium education. These companies started to recruit from all over India and estimates show that presently only 10 percent of the jobs in the new economy are held by Kannada speakers. Since these companies pay their employees substantially higher wages, the spending power of non-Kannada workers—increasingly visible in new consumption trends—has become a talking point in Bengaluru.
Another reason for the disaffection of Kannada speakers is perhaps the endless expansion of Bengaluru, marked by the entry of private builders. Families that originally owned bungalows, as well as farmers on the periphery, succumbed to the needs of the ever-expanding city. Those now occupying the apartments in the city are new entrants to Bengaluru, with visibly greater purchasing power. Farmers who gave up their land in exchange for the compensation available to them have realised its soaring value too late. Given this troubled history, Bengaluru may be expected to represent more than simply an archetypal ‘city’ for Kannada cinema.
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ANNADA CINEMA TOOK ROOTS in the 1930s, but even after Independence, the films kept to mythological themes. Mysore, under indirect rule at the time, experienced Independence less viscerally than did the rest of the country and so the motifs that marked Hindi cinema after 1947 emerged in Kannada films much later. An event possibly more |
important than Independence was the creation of Karnataka, and the attempt to build a pan-Kannada identity.
One of the first authentic ‘socials’—a domestic melodrama without any mythological motifs—in Kannada cinema was BR Panthulu’s School Master (1958). It marked the first time Bangalore was crucial to a Kannada film’s plot.
School Master introduced the idea of the love marriage to Kannada films at a time when it was a significant subversion of the cultural idiom. Unlike in Hindi cinema, where love is shown to be integral to marriage, Kannada cinema—until fairly recently—favoured endogamy and the arranged marriage. Mysore society was virtually constituted by marriage networks forged by those of the same caste who lived within 20–30 km of each other. With the expansion of the state, Kannada cinema tried to accommodate wider audience sensibilities: in School Master, lovers of different castes and from places separated by as much as 300 km meet in Bangalore.
Kannada cinema associated Bangalore with the Indian nation and Nehruvian modernity in the 1960s, possibly because of the Central government’s investment in the city. The region that fell under Old Mysore took some time to become culturally integrated into the Indian nation. It was only in the 1960s that the process picked up (the belated patriotism finds expression in Panthulu’s Kittur Chennamma (1962), a historical film about the eponymous queen who fought the British).
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Readers' Comments |
Total Comments
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SN
28 December 2011
05:27 PM
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The facts mentioned above are not reliable.
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Hemant
7 November 2011
10:30 PM
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Since when did citizens of India become "immigrants" when they moved to Bangalore or any other place in India. I have actually seen kannada speaking people increase over the last 15 years. So many non kannadigas speak kannada as well. It is still the best place in India for an old bangalorean like me.
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Kaushal
14 October 2011
02:16 PM
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@ Devaraj urs: I am not sure whether having local population as the minority is something to be proud of.
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Devaraj urs
14 October 2011
09:14 AM
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Bangalore has one unique feature which we kannadigas should feel proud that this is the only city in the world which has local population as minority and i have not come across any other city or metropolitan centre which can claim for that unique distinction! I am happy that speaks volumes about our culture , tradition,conviction of diversity and truly cosmopolitan nature . Let us nurture that as that help in creativity
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Vikram
7 October 2011
04:14 PM
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I think the author is taking some stereotypic conclusions and going about finding evidence for them. Before this he has taken some stereotypes and mistaken them for statistics. Statistics show that in malls in Bangalore, highest purchasing power is with the Kannada speakers. The new economy doesn't have only 10% Kannada people as the author makes it seem. I don't know where he gets his statistics from but UNITES seems to say differently. What about all the recent Ramesh movies? What about "Milana" (Puneet Rajkumar starrer which ran for several months) and all the Diganth movies where the hero is a yuppie in Bangalore. Hell there are even Darshan movies where he is based in Bangalore but roams around the world wooing his chick in Amsterdam.
Even the links that the author draws between politics and Kannada cinema is very tenuous. Was there then a great upsurge in Regional-National linkage when H D Devegowda became prime minister?
What is the nature of the loathing that people from the rest of Karnataka have for Bangalore? In conversations with people in towns like Mysore, Dharwad, Sirsi and villages around mine the common refrain I hear about Bangalore is not "can't find jobs" but rather on the lines of "traffic, prices, pollution etc." which is a problem they see that Bangalore has in common with any other big city in India.
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Aparajith Sundaram
4 October 2011
06:05 PM
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Errate : The photograph of "Mungaru Male was a big hit in South Indian cinema and made the lead actor, Ganesh, a household name in Karnataka' is actually that of "Jogi" a popular movie starring Shiv Rajkumar, son of the biggest star of Kannada industry Dr. Rajkumar.
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Swami
2 October 2011
08:49 PM
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The IT industry has benefitted lots of poor and middle class families in Bangalore. This is best illustrated by the so called "PG" and "rented" house business, which has boomed after the mid-90s. Now, hundreds of 3-4 storeyed houses were built and rented out to the so-called "outsiders" by taking 10 months rent in advance. This business was the best and the safest investment for many as the demand was very high and supply less. Nobody questioned the lack of clean municipal water or adequate parking space, as getting a house on rent was very difficult. The food and restaurant, retail, malls all have benefitted from the IT boom. And the percentage of Kannada speakers working in IT companies are much much higher than the 10% mentioned in this article. From my experience, i have seen Kannada speakers as the majority and not the other way around.
It is not the IT boom that has made people loathe Bangalore. It is the adminstrative ennui, corruption, inefficiency, lack of vision and ideas that have destroyed Bangalore. No outsider should be blamed if he or she feels that the city exploits and loots them for its own benefits and for the greed of a few.
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AK
29 September 2011
10:39 PM
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Having lived in Bangalore for sometime, I've always wondered on how its Kannada residents viewed and dealt with the sudden influx of immigrants from all over India. This article is throws some light on this question.
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