Better not think ‘tourism’ alone when you apply the tag “One State Many Worlds” to describe the state of Karnataka. The state, unique in many ways, is in every bit what the four words describe it to be, not just to attract tourists but to bask in its sheer diversity.
It is home to about 150 different language families, the most widely spoken being Kannada; Tulu, Konkani, Kodava, and Daccani spoken in specific regions; while Tamil, Marathi, Telugu and Malayalam spoken in areas bordering neighbouring states where these are their respective state languages — making Karnataka the second largest state in terms of the number of languages spoken within its borders, after Nagaland.
Diverse people, diverse cultures, diverse communities and castes, speaking diverse languages, most of them having dialects that make the language sound different from the same spoken in the neighbouring region from within the same state.
Let’s not limit it to diversity among people, but extend it to biodiversity as well. A much bigger and expansive world opens up with Karnataka estimated to have more than 1.2 lakh known species, which includes 600 bird species, 800 fish species, 160 reptilian species, 4,500 species of flowering plants, 1,493 species of medicinal plants, and 120 mammalian species (including humans).
Many of these are spread across the Western Ghats which runs parallel to the coast, south to north through Kerala, Tamil Nadu, Karnataka, Goa, Maharashtra and Gujarat, and off the 320-Km-long coastline of the state’s coast that is dotted with 29 marvellous beaches.
Away from the depths, and coming to the heights, the state has 1,416 named mountains, the highest and most prominent being the 1,930-metres-high Mullayyanagiri in the Chandra Drona Hill Ranges of Chikmagalur.
But diversity gains a higher and a more profound meaning through human perceptions. It is the human mind that interprets diversity, something that is different from something else. To have differences within the same species — the Homo Sapiens, in this case — is at once a bane and a boon. It’s a bane when the diversity is exploited for narrow political gains; a boon, when it is viewed as through an inclusive prism to enlist the best from different social wavelengths.
The latter has always worked wonders for the society, which incited Donald Cary Williams, American philosopher and a professor at both the University of California Los Angeles and Harvard University, to famously state, “The things that we share… are far more valuable than those which divide us.”
The divisive issues that Karnataka has gone through in the past few years come to mind. They teach us lessons about how baneful it is to nurture diversity on a platform of hate, and how much better it is to extract the best out of it to inclusively benefit the society.
As the 68th Rajyotsava Day dawns on November 1, we need to celebrate our state’s diversity (and biodiversity). We need to do that with a solemn promise to ourselves and to our fellow-citizens to filter out hate and allow only the refined social, political and personal values to rebuild an inclusive society in Karnataka — one that can benefit all, with no exceptions.
If India is hailed for its signature diversity (dented now and then over the years), then Karnataka is its microcosm, reflecting that very diversity — which eulogizes and stresses the priceless state anthem (Naada Geethe) penned by Rashtrakavi Kuvempu: “Jaya Bharata Jananiya Tanujate, Jaya he Karnataka Maate…” (“Victory to you Mother Karnataka, The Daughter of Mother India…”
The Kannadigara society has everything that it takes to reclaim that high ideal of inclusive secularism that the state was once known for, and that reclamation would be no Herculean task for the Kannadiga to achieve once again. The state — which is us the people of this state — has everything in its wherewithal to not just reclaim and sustain its glorious diversity but to set a shining example for other states to follow in its climb towards the high pedestal of inclusive social and economic progress. This Rajyotsava Day should be celebrated with that solemn promise for the future.