Karthik's musings

Ananthamurthy: Will he or wont he get elected?

An interesting situation has arised in Karnataka with Jnanapith award winner UR Ananthamurthy entering the race for the Rajya Sabha elections contesting against Rajeev Chandrashekhar, ex-CEO of the BPL group. While Ananthamurthy is trying to play the Kannada flag, and backmailing people who vote against him that they will be branded anti-Kannada, his innumerable enemies in the Kannada literary circles are pinching him hard.

I'm not too knowledgeable of Kannada literature. However, from whatever news I have read, I had some respect for Ananthamurthy - irrespective of the fact that he is an active propagator of reservation in private sector. The main reason for the respect was the kind of enemies he had - the likes of DeJaGau and ChamPa - two publicity and power hungry Kannada litterateurs. Also, Ananthamurthy's condemnation of the act of manhandling the Mayor of Belgaum increased my respect towards him, simply because it takes some courage to go against the populist sentiments, especially on such sensitive issues.

However, all the respect waned today when I read news reports of Ananthmurthy meeting Deve Gowda to ask for support for his candidature. What repels me was the that among those who accompanied Ananthamurthy was Agni Sridhar, one of the ex-underworld criminal in Mumbai, now masquerading as a Kannada activist. Read a typical journalist's interview of Sridhar here. Of course, dont take all the words written in the article at the face value - I know for sure that this Sridhar's brother, who is so romantically put as a police officer in this report - is another big crook and one of the most corrupt and criminal police officers in Bangalore.

The same Anathamurthy once had to sit in dharna in front of this Sridhar's silly tabloid office protesting against some article that Sridhar had written against him. I guess the reason Anathamurthy and Agni Sridhar are cosying up to each other is that both of them are now part of the "secular" camp - I know that this Sridhar is part of Teesta Setalvad's coterie, and this Asha web page tells me he is also close to this secular chariry organization. Agni Sridhar was also prominent in the Babubudangiri protests. Looks like it was in one of these secular protests that Ananthamurthy and Agni Sridhar got close to each other. (Itz a different issue that the Ganesha festivities mayhem that this web page tries to protray hardly happened!)

Anywayz, Mr.Anathamurthy, I would not mind a non-Kannadiga in the Upper House (Itz a different matter that Rajeev Chandrashekhar is not a non-Kannadiga) instead of having a rowdy-supported Kannadiga. I would not mind a lobbying indutrialist instead of a litterateur-gone-bonks. Here'z wishing that you loose the election. Amen!

Let all your nerves vibrate through the backbone of your religion.
-Swami Vivekananda