Jan 21 2025 to Jan 21 2025 6:30 p.m.

Where

Bangalore International Centre

7 4th Main Rd, Stage 2, Domlur 560071

Event Description

A History of Political Activism, Social & Cultural Movement

Karnataka is one of India’s most diverse states, as rich in literary and cultural traditions as it is in democratic struggles and political churns. The twentieth century witnessed the birth of a modern Kannada renaissance, accompanied by the emergence of a powerful social conscience. One young man’s desire to explore this vibrant historical backyard, born out of a feeling of being linguistically unmoored, compounded by worries over an increasingly opaque political direction, leads to an ambitious—no, audacious—attempt to unpack the region’s social and cultural histories.

Rama Bhima Soma is an enterprise of translation and rediscovery, packed with stories and conversations. The life and times of legends like Kuvempu and Shivaram Karanth; the fall of Socialism and the rise of the Hindu Right; the intellectual ruminations of U.R. Ananthamurthy, D.R. Nagaraj and M.M. Kalburgi; the wildly popular television serials of T.N. Seetharam and the community-centred one-woman theatre shows of Du Saraswathi; a brief history of Naxalism in Karnataka and glimpses of other complicated legacies of the 1970s’ Left—the book explores a dizzyingly wide sweep of Karnataka’s contemporary history, seeking, above all, to forge new connections and begin fresh conversations.

Marshalling a diverse range of literary and scholarly resources, framed through biographical sketches and immersive reportage, this session will reanimate some pivotal moments in the making of modern Karnataka.

A Q&A session with the audience will follow.

Speaker
Srikar Raghavan
Author

Born in Bangalore and brought up in Mysore, Srikar wrote Rama Bhima Soma while living in a small village named Parkala in South Canara. Something of that inward trajectory has permeated the pages of his book, he believes. An inveterate bookworm, Srikar fancies himself more of a reader than a writer. He also loves to trek, travel and fiddle around on a guitar.
Anjum Hasan
Author

Anjum Hasan’s latest novel is History’s Angel. She is the author of The Cosmopolitans, Neti, Neti: Not This, Not This, Lunatic in my Head, Difficult Pleasures, and a book of poems, Street on the Hill. She has been a Homi Bhabha Fellow, a Charles Wallace Writer-in-Residence and is currently a New India Foundation Fellow.
Vikhar Ahmed Sayeed
Journalist

Vikhar Ahmed Sayeed is an award-winning journalist with Frontline newsmagazine and is based in Bengaluru.