Nothing but the ire of the mediocre

Artistically, any neutral observer would say there have been very few high points in Kannada film history. Karnad, Kasaravalli and the two Nag brothers are the only artistes of stature who are native to the state. The marquee names from Karnataka—Rajkumar, Vishnuvardhan, Ambarish and Rajkumar’s sons—are mediocre actors who have had their moments. These latter are the men leading the agitation against exogenous cinema.

To say they and the producers and directors who cast and re-cast them are responsible for the state of Kannada cinema is to state the obvious. If the movie-going public, especially in Bangalore, wants to see Hindi, English and Tamil films, if income from Kannada film ticket sales has fallen despite prices being higher than ever before, if there are fewer jubilee hits, the fault must lie with these men. It is up to them to change things. Hard work is needed, and a complete transformation of standards. It is not too much to say that the Kannada film industry requires a paradigm shift. Its doyens have, in Kipling’s words, power without responsibility: the prerogative of the harlot through the ages.

No one who even pretends to good taste and is not paid for it can comment on Kannada cinema, because he or she is not likely to have watched much of it. I can vouch for this, having witnessed the process at first hand. Occasionally on a Sunday my wife, who is a native of Karnataka, will announce she is going to watch a Kannada movie and oust me from my front row seat at the Premiership match. But half an hour later she invariably says, ‘‘I can’t take any more.’’ The producers and directors seem to take their cues from the very worst of Hindi, Malayalam, Tamil and Telugu cinema—which is pretty low. The acting is atrocious (unless Karnad or Anant Nag is playing a ‘character’ part, or an outsider such as Suhasini has a role). The themes usually represent the most reprehensible aspects of our medievalistic feudal system. Or else they have jeans- and shades-clad youths pretending to be Americans. But the endings here are just as feudal and medievalist.

The thing to do is to make better films. Agitating for a three-week suspension of non-Kannada films is like asking for a protective tariff. The joke going around Bangalore is that e-mails in English will be delivered three hours late, English-language newspapers three days late, and English-language software three years late, plus whatever Bill Gates sees fit to add on. Since S M Krishna demitted office as chief minister, the IT industry has lost its clout, but the software trade still has a presence in Bangalore. It is a cosmopolitan city with strivings towards a cosmopolitan culture.

And that is what the Kannada chauvinists object to. Look where you will in Bangalore—which is not Karnataka by any means—and the names that catch your eye are foreign. Foreign, that is, by the definition of people like Vatal Nagaraj, the head of the Kannada Chaluvaliga Sangha, which is the group that goes around tarring signboards in English and running riot in Kentucky Fried Chicken outlets. They don’t like the fact that Bangalore’s wealth—and Bangalore is incomparably the richest city in the state—is controlled by non-Kannadigas.

Surely then they should be promoting Kannadiga entrepreneurs. Narayana Murthy, head of the biggest Kannadiga-owned company, tries to do that. Precious few else do. It’s not the fault of outsiders that they find a fallow field to exploit. Bangalore is not Karnataka. But everywhere in the south of the state you find the same attitude. I live in Kodagu (Coorg) district, one of the richest in India despite the slump in coffee prices. The roads are in an execrable condition. The power supply often fails without the excuse of a monsoon. The rich Kodavas, though they revere their martial traditions, do nothing but whine about it. (They have enough financial power to upset governments, but they cannot get together. Instead they complain about the Malayalis who run the district’s commerce, because they themselves cannot sully their hands with over-the-counter business.)

The film actors now agitating for a three-week moratorium on non-Kannada films are asking for what, in essence, is cultural legislation. This is something which has come into fashion in the last 15 years, ever since the BJP got a foothold in national politics. Anyone who loves language for its own sake, or the language of cinema, dance, painting and sculpture, must oppose it.

Why? Because there is no end to it. Legislate against films from outside, and next you will be legislating against software from outside, as the joke goes. And painting, and books, and sculpture. This year is the birth centenary of a giant of Kannada literature, Kuvempu. It is an insult to his memory to mark the year by agitating for ‘‘Kannada, only Kannada’’ and by definition against all ‘outsiders’. The indigenous chevaliers themselves tilt against the Nehruvian model of the national economy. But that is what they tilt towards, to adapt a pun.

It is a refusal to face reality. The fact is that Kannada cinema cannot plumb greater depths. It is up to Rajkumar & Co., those who want films from outside the state put off for three weeks, to change the situation.

Vijay Nambisan is a writer and journalist