Bengaluru: Many writers at the just-concluded Bangalore Literature Festival (BLF) said the Covid pandemic allowed them time to dwell on aspects that they had wanted to write about in depth and come out with new books from their years of research.
Political scientist and writer Muzaffar Assadi on Sunday said the pandemic gave him uninterrupted time to linger over the concept of caste in the Muslim community.He then came out with a book. “When I started writing the book, it was Covid time. The pandemic provided me the time required to write it. I knew that it was the time no one would intervene in my daily life, except my wife and daughter and a few others. It was on my mind I should write about caste among Muslim for personal reasons.”
Earlier, on Saturday, writer and critic Purushottam Bilimale, who wrote on the 1834-37 uprising of the Amara-Sullia region, said that several writers, for some reason, started writing about this revolt during the pandemic. “During Covid, we had a surge in writings on the issue. I do not know the exact reason between sitting at home and writing something,” he said, pointing out to about six books that focussed on the different aspects of the 1834-37 movement. “I focused on peasants, another writer wrote on a local leader called Ramegowda, which has to do with the caste system of the place. Another wanted to combine Canara and Kodagu together and put across a geographical perspective of the uprising,” he explained.
Bilimale said the reason he chose to publish the book — Amara Sulliada Raitha Horata 1834-37 — based on the fieldwork he had done during 1980-82, was that the people of Sullia and Coorg had spoken a lot about the peasant uprising. “They were proud of it, and wanted to install statutes and construct buildings to celebrate that uprising. However, many of them were also against the farmers agitation in 2021. I was curious because these were the people who fought for freedom and against colonial rule that entered Karnataka in 1834. The basic structure was that it was an anti-tax movement,” he explained.
His book was dedicated to farmers who lost their lives during the recent agitation against farm laws in Delhi.
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