Bengaluru’s forever crusader: The man who likes a good protest

Vatal Nagaraj during the September 29 Karnataka bandh against the release of Cauvery water to Tamil Nadu.

“Different people say different things. My family would know better,” he says of his age, minutes before setting off for a Cauvery protest at the Hoskote highway on the eastern outskirts of Bengaluru. “I still have the enthusiasm to fight for Kannada and Karnataka… and that will continue for a few more decades. It is not going to subside.”

The “enthusiasm” was in full flow on September 29, during the recent state-wide bandh in Karnataka by pro-Kannada activists who were protesting against the release of Cauvery water to neighbouring Tamil Nadu. The sight of Nagaraj stepping out of his home, wearing a burqa and carrying an empty pot on his head, had drawn eyeballs and chuckles in good measure. Nagaraj, though, wouldn’t have had it any other way.

One Valentine’s day, Nagaraj once got a pair of goats married.

The black of burqa, he later said, was a mark of protest, and the empty water pot a metaphor for the struggle that women endure to access drinking water.

For over six decades, Nagaraj, leader of the Kannada Chalavali Vatal Paksha party and three-time MLA from Chamarajanagar in south Karnataka, has been fighting the cause of the Kannada language and as a self-anointed defender of the state’s water and farming resources.

An unmissable presence in his bucket cap and dark glasses, there is hardly a protest worth its salt that Nagaraj hasn’t lent his weight to.

Born in Vatalu village in T Narasipura taluk in Mysuru district, Nagaraj shifted base to Bengaluru at an early age. According to his election affidavit from 2019, Nagaraj studied up to Class 10, and owns agricultural land in Nanjangud in Mysuru, which he acquired in the 1980s and most of which is held in his wife Gyanambika’s name. The affidavit lists his profession as ‘social service’ with Nagaraj declaring a total wealth of Rs 6.43 crore that year. His two children – a son and a daughter – have never been in the public eye.

Nagaraj had once protested in support of police personnel who were threatening to go on mass leave. (PTI Photo)

The Kannada Chalavali Vatal Paksha that he runs is almost a one-man party with Nagaraj plunging headlong into innumerable protests, bandhs and movements. The Gokak Movement of 1982 – that led to Kannada being made the state’s official language – is among the highlights of his career as an activist.

One of the stories that Nagaraj likes to narrate of himself as a “crusader” is from September 7, 1962, when he and a few associates stormed Alankar Talkies, a movie hall in the Majestic area of old Bengaluru, to protest against the screening of a Hindi film and demanding that a Kannada film be shown instead. His supporters are reported to have hurled stones and bottles at the theatre.

Later, says Nagaraj, he was summoned by the police, allegedly beaten up by a senior police officer and arrested too.

“We were thrashed up for fighting for the Kannada cause. The Assembly was in progress at the time. I told the police that even if they beat me with their guns, I would still bleed Kannada,” Nagaraj often recalls.

As he speaks to The Indian Express about his early days of activism, as is his wont, he doesn’t hold back on the embellishments. “I used to make speeches as a 17- and 18-year-old, and more than 10,000 people would gather to listen. Those were historical protests… I became an activist at a very young age. I was around 19 years old in 1962 when I was arrested,” says Nagaraj, adding that he has been sent to jail on numerous occasions for violating prohibitory orders against protests.

The veteran activist offers chariot rides to young couples around Bengaluru’s Cubbon Park on Valentine’s Day.

Now, all these years later, as he prepares to leave for the Cauvery protest at Hoskote, Nagaraj sounds almost nostalgic for some of that action.

“In the past, when we staged agitations, we were put in the lock-up. Now they keep us outside and send us away. Earlier they kept us in the lock-up for several days. In the past, the protests involved marches with 10,000 to 15,000 participating and they invariably ended up in violence. Tear gas was fired,” he had recently said while talking of the pro-Kannada and Cauvery agitations that he was part of.

Speaking about the resolution passed by the Tamil Nadu legislature on October 9 seeking the Centre’s intervention on releasing Cauvery water from Karnataka, Nagaraj tells The Indian Express, “Tamil Nadu has passed a resolution. They have also called for a bandh. The water situation in the dams in Karnataka remains the same. There is no great improvement. There have been rains in Bengaluru but not in the Cauvery catchment area. We need rains in Kerala and in Kodagu for our dams to fill up.”

While Nagaraj’s domain expertise lies in all matters Kannada and the Cauvery issue, he has in recent years emerged as a voice in support of Valentine’s Day celebrations.

While many dismiss his protests as frivolous, for Nagaraj, they are serious business.

A huge advocate of Valentine’s Day celebrations in Bengaluru, Nagaraj offers roses to young couples.

To protest against rising fuel prices, he has in the past shown up on a donkey or a bullock cart. On Valentine’s Day, he often rides around Bengaluru’s Cubbon Park, offering roses and chariot rides to young couples. One such Valentine’s Day, he got two goats married off in a traditional Hindu-style wedding at Cubbon Park and demanded that February 14 be declared a national holiday.

On another occasion, he brought a set of toilet commodes to the Raj Bhavan, while the man himself rested on a cot in the middle, to push the state government to build more public toilets in Bengaluru.

For all his public protests, Nagaraj’s political career never quite took off. After a stint as an Independent MLA from Chamarajanagar and two terms as MLA of his own Kannada Chalavali Vatal Paksha, the latest between 2004 and 2008, he faded away from the political limelight. He, however, kept fighting, including the 2019 Lok Sabha polls from Bangalore South and a bypoll that year from Mahalakshmi Layout – and lost both.

Nagaraj, however, is considered to be friends with many politicians, including JD(S) chief H D Devegowda, BJP veteran B S Yediyurappa and Karnataka Chief Minister Siddaramaiah, who hails from Nagaraj’s Old Mysuru region and, like him, championed the Kannada language cause for many years. Siddaramaiah is believed to have been in favour of nominating Nagaraj to the legislative council in 2013-2018, but was reportedly forced to drop the move due to opposition in the Congress.

Although there has been speculation that Nagaraj’s services are often used by mainstream parties who cannot take up prickly issues such as language and rivers in a federal system, the veteran dismisses it, saying he is his own man.

Protests staged by Nagaraj, 80, are usually a photographer’s delight given the veteran leader’s inventiveness when it comes to protests.

“In the history of Karnataka, irrespective of what people may say, the fight for Kannada has been associated with me. I have to serve Kannada with dedication. This is not for politics,” he said recently.

Many, however, dismiss his protests as being gimmicky and frivolous.

“Vatal Nagaraj and other activists tend to make the Cauvery water sharing problem an emotional issue. They are not interested in the legal questions and the ground realities,” says a senior Congress leader associated with the Cauvery water issue.

“Many such activists capitalise on the situation of water shortage for their own benefit,” says a senior BJP leader.

The activist had donned the burqa earlier too, in protest over rapes and atrocity against women. (PTI Photo)

Nagaraj isn’t letting any of this slow him down. In fact, the latest round of Cauvery protests has given him a second wind.

“If Bengaluru’s water supply stops for a day or even half a day, have you thought of what effect it will have? If the water supply stops then the people themselves will come to the streets to protest,” he said ahead of the Karnataka bandh on September 29.