By Roona Uthappa Ballachanda
The accusation by Facebook page ‘Connecting Kodavas’ that the article “Actress Nidhi: Intolerance To Coorg Women Marrying Non-Coorgs” is written with the aim of increasing TRP for www.coorgnews.in, is both baseless and meaningless.
The website does not focus on advertising revenue except for hosting Google AdSense, which just pays a nominal amount that helps keep the site going.
Moreover, the writer was not paid anything for writing this article. Nor did ‘greed’ for fame play any role in the writing or publishing of this article.
The intention was to question certain assumptions that are essentially hurting the community. Along with economic and environmental issues, Kodavas are also facing some acute cultural problems.
Addressing cultural beliefs that are negatively impacting the community does not automatically translate to ‘creating a fire’ that ‘cannot be put out.’ It is unfortunate that such an article had to be written in the first place.
However, when one ‘perspective’ rules over another, both sides need to be heard. It is irrational to say that talking about the prevalence of some negative attitudes in our community will ‘hurt’ the community. If there is no room for debate, for tough questions and hard analyses within society, there is no room for growth and development either.
The above caricature reveals that whoever created it, was greatly impacted by the article, for what particular reason remains unknown.
To be frank, I am unaware of this article so much to say that I don’t know who Nidhi is. Nonetheless, I wish to say candidly that Coorgs (Kodavas) are the most tolerant of all communities among Mysoreans (I mean people of Karnataka) and the resourceful among them happen to be the most polished ones in terms of etiquette as compared to many others in the rest of the state, particularly all those who are public figures as politicians becoming overnight rich after selling their landed assets for development projects or through wheeler-dealer manipulations.