I must confess or admit that I was wrong! When Aravind Adiga got the Man Booker prize for his White Tiger, I was one of the millions of Kannadigas who felt extremely happy and proud about the remarkable achievement of a fellow 'KannAdiga' at the international literary scene. It was a very proud and emotional moment for the book lovers like me. Aravind Adiga is not the first international writer from Karnataka. In fact two of world's best English writers of the 20th century, Rajarao and R K Narayan are also from Karnataka. Later a literary genius A K Ramanujan held Kannada and Karnataka flag very high in the West. Adiga could be the fourth writer from Karnataka, who has made name in the west with his debut novel. Unlike these great writers from his home state, Adiga just plays to the Western gallery. In his desperation or eagerness to please the white people,...

In 1851, when white Americans persuaded the Red Indians to sell two million acres of land for 150,000 dollars, chief Seattle, who spoke on behalf of the Indians in Washington state, said, "We know that the white man does not understand our ways. One portion of land is the same to him as the next, for he is a stranger who comes in the night and takes from the land whatever he needs. The earth is not his brother, but his enemy, and when he has conquered it, he moves on. He leaves his father's grave behind, and he does not care. He kidnaps the earth from his children, and he does not care. His father's grave, and his children's birthright are forgotten. He treats his mother, the earth, and his brother, the sky, as things to be bought, plundered, sold like sheep or bright beads. His appetite will devour the earth and leave behind only a desert". That remains one of the most profound...

What is now happening in my home state Karnataka is quite disturbing. It was unthinkable before mid 90s. People like me who went to schools and colleges in the 1980s and 90s never imagined that one day our state would be divided on communal lines. BJP's PM in waiting L K Advani's Rath Yatra of 1990-91 first sowed the seeds of communal politics in Karnataka. It was a socialist state and socialism was an integral part of the public life till early 90s. Old socialists who always opposed the Congress died and many others went to BJP or retired from politics after the decimation of Janata Parivar. The BJP occupied that space and filled political vaccum with its politics of divide and hate. BJP, once a pariah became a favourite in Karnataka politics overnight. As our renowned writer and thinker Prof. U R Ananthamurthy says, "The Christians in the past had made contribution to the development of modern Kannada. Rev Kittel...

"A crucial qualification needs to be made while dealing with the star phenomenon. As far as the superstars of the Tamil, Telugu and Kannada films are concerned, all the superstars, with the lone exception of MGR, be it Sivaji Ganesan, N T Rama Rao, Nageshwara Rao or Rajkumar, have exhibited pronounced histrionic talents capturing the imagination of their respective communities. It is only MGR who, as a superstar, brought in an ideological element into the being of a hero. It cannot be said about the others that they were as shaped by a strong ideological consciousness as MGR was by the DMK movement. The epithet Vaadyar (teacher) given to MGR supports this". N Manu Chakravarthy, noted Kannada critic and writer in an article on Rajkumar. So where does Chiranjeevi stand? Is he just a hero or a hero and a leader like MGR, NTR and Rajkumar, the trinity of southern cinema? The fading away of NTR has paved the way...