Political turbulence or cleaning up?
Karnataka in contrast to Kerala and TN, have not been a host to radical social movements. But, the people of Karnataka have risen up time and again; when the question of existence of Kannada and survival of Kannadiga are questioned. One instance is the Gokak Chaluvali where Dr. Rajkumar and others made a mass uprising to force the Govt. to go back-foot w.r.t status accorded to Kannada language in academics. The Gundu rao government’s policy to favor the linguistic minority was met with fierce opposition and such incidents have happened after his regime too. The opposition to introduction of Urdu news cutting into Kannada news air time is still lingering in memory even though it happened a good 10 years ago. If we take a look at the recent elections in Karnataka, there are some interesting insights. List of parties which stood election in Karnataka: 32 excluding independents (1) 65% voting was witnessed in Karnataka state elections. (2) Even though Congress secured more votes than BJP