Harohalli Srinivasaiah Doreswamy, it is fair to say, has never been inactive in all of his 102 years. And it’s been ethical, purposeful, goal-oriented action. Beginning with the Quit India movement, to the integration of Karnataka, to Bhoodan, to a very recent people’s initiative to clean up the lakes of Bengaluru, there have been few movements he has not taken part in.
From Indira Gandhi’s authoritarianism to the CAA, Doreswamy has not missed a chance to raise his voice against what he felt was against democracy and the interest of the people. A journalist par excellence in the prime of his life, he learnt Tamil so as to better perform his self-given role in the Madras Presidency days. Doreswamy even went underground to publish and circulate his paper when the ‘Mysore Chalo’ movement gained steam over the royal family’s reluctance to join the Indian Union.
Did he deserve to be called an anti-national and ‘Pakistani agent’ and worse, in a state where he was born and for whose well-being he fought all his life? No. How did we come to this pass that we cannot even honour a true eminence grise of Karnataka? That while some of us plumb the depths of moral violence, the rest of us look on and go about our own work in business-as-usual mode.
That we do not even find time to hang our heads in collective shame over the nonchalance with which anything can be said or done, any provocation can be mouthed and thrown without thought or fear of punitive action. Should the social debasement that forces a 102-year-old to scramble together a biodata to prove his credentials not worry us deeply about where we are? Even if Doreswamy was not the kind of personality that he is, do we not even have enough culture left in us to accord basic respect to a centenarian?