A century-old anthem for a 70-year-old state

Never mind how fraught the world seems at the moment, come November and Kannadiga thoughts turn inevitably to Kannada Rajyotsava, the emotionally charged anniversary of the creation of a Kannada homeland carved out of the former Madras Presidency, Bombay Presidency and the princely state of Hyderabad, and incorporated, along with other smaller princely states, into the glorious Kingdom of Mysore, the custodian of Kannada culture since the 13th century. The ekikarana, which came to pass on November 1, 1956, was the culmination of a decades-long struggle for unification pioneered by Kannada litterateurs.

It is no wonder, then, that even as far back as the early 20th century, when the idea of a culturally and linguistically homogeneous land for Kannadigas was still incipient, Kannada writers, taking inspiration from Vande Mataram (the current political hot potato), which, after the Partition of Bengal in 1905, had served as the rallying cry of the Bengali resistance, began to write paeans to an as yet imaginary but much longed-for ‘motherland’. An early poem / song in this vein, extolling the glories of Kannada Nadu, was written in 1924 by a 20-year-old called KV Puttappa, then a student at Maharaja College, Mysore. In 1930, it appeared in print as part of Puttappa’s first collection of poetry, Kolalu (flute in Kannada).

Earlier the same year, the Indian freedom struggle had been taken to a new pitch with the spectacular success of Mahatma Gandhi’s Dandi March. Inspired by Gandhi’s ideals and his unique, creative and morally irreproachable forms of protest, young people then (as now) joined the good fight to reclaim their nation. Puttappa was no different. Perhaps that was why his poem, far from being parochial, began by very firmly locating the Kannada identity within the larger context of the Indian nation, with its opening lines reading – “Jaya Bharata Jananiya Tanujaate / Jaya He Karnataka Maate’’ (Hail to you, Mother Karnataka, O daughter of Mother India). It is also interesting, given that Mysore State was christened Karnataka only in 1973, 17 years after unification, that Puttappa used that name for her in his 1930 poem.

In 1956, Puttappa, then the Principal of Maharaja’s College, was appointed Vice Chancellor of Mysore University. By this time, he had won the Kendra Sahitya Akademi Award for his magnum opus, Sri Ramayana Darshanam, a radical take on the original poem, and had taken his place among the shining stars in the galaxy of Kannada writers and poets. A decade later, in 1967, he would become the first Kannada writer to win the Jnanpith Award for the same work. Even before that happened, Kannada music composers had begun setting written poetry to music, bringing great literature to common people. In 1960, acclaimed musician Mysore Ananthaswamy picked 23 lines of Kuvempu’s 44-line ‘Jaya He Karnataka Maate’ and set it to music, making both the truncated version of the poem, and the tune, wildly popular.

Kuvempu passed away on 11 November, 1994. In 2003, his birth centenary year, the Karnataka government designated Jaya He Karnataka Maate as Nadageethe, the official anthem of the state. Controversy broke out almost immediately after. The first wrangle was about which version of the poem should be sung (the 1930 original, which the government had adopted, did not mention the 13th c saint Madhwacharya and the 15th c poet Kumaravyasa, while the 1977 version, also published while Kuvempu was alive, did). The second was about which tune (the one by Mysore Ananthaswamy versus a later one by C Ashwath) should be deemed official. The first question was settled in 2003 itself (the 1977 version was picked), the second, only in 2024, the centenary year of the poem, when the High Court ruled in favour of Ananthaswamy’s version.

Meanwhile, each Rajyotsava Day, unperturbed by such supercharged goings-on, schoolchildren across Karnataka lustily sing whichever version of Kuvempu’s beloved song their teachers have taught them.

(Roopa Pai is a writer who has carried on a longtime love affair with her hometown Bengaluru)