Srikar Raghavan’s Rama Bhima Soma is an ambitious and deeply immersive project – a roving inquiry into the tumultuous and electrifying decades that shaped modern Karnataka. An intellectual history, a travelogue, a work of literary excavation, Rama Bhima Soma resists easy categorisation, much like the very cultural landscape it seeks to map. It is, at once, a historiographical intervention, a reckoning with ideological inheritances, an elegy for vanished political possibilities, and a chronicle of literary ferment in a state that, across the 1970s and 1980s, emerged as a site of intense intellectual and political upheaval.Raghavan’s engagement with Kannada literature is neither distant nor merely academic; rather, it is animated by the many voices – poets and activists. The book moves fluidly between biographical sketches, historiographical analysis, literary criticism and social commentary, creating a richly textured portrait of a state whose cultural life has been as intellectually vibrant as it has been politically tumultuous. It is an ambitious, unrelenting inquiry into the dialectical forces – of resistance and co-optation, transformation and stagnation, radicalism and recuperation – that defined Karnataka’s emergence as a site of intense ideological and artistic experimentation in the decades following independence.Srikar RaghavanRama Bhima SomaContext/Westland, 2025At the heart of Rama Bhima Soma is Raghavan’s unrelenting inquiry into the intersections of literature and politics, memory and history, nostalgia and critique. In reconstructing these “enormously interesting times”, as he calls them, Raghavan refuses to succumb to either hagiography or lamentation; instead, he unspools a narrative that is simultaneously erudite and restless, unflinchingly aware of the ideological betrayals, unfulfilled promises and contradictions that marked these decades. Raghavan’s method is polyphonic: drawing on a staggering breadth of sources – archival material, Kannada literary movements, first-hand interviews with activists and writers, and deep textual analysis, piecing together a narrative that is as fragmentary and dynamic as the period it seeks to capture. It resists the twin temptations of nostalgia and hagiography, choosing instead to navigate the messiness of history.Raghavan meticulously unpacks how literature became a contested space where the meanings of justice, identity and resistance were constantly renegotiated. His readings are deeply attuned to the political stakes of literary production. Among the many illuminating threads that Raghavan weaves, there are deeply evocative vignettes that lend the book an almost archival intimacy. His affectionate account of the Marxist Library of Mysore, and the dedicated individuals who sustained it, is a case in point.Rama Bhima Soma derives its title from a traditional children’s game played across Karnataka – and indeed, much of India – though its name and rules shift subtly across regions. A game in which the ball is constantly in motion, passed between players with no single entity able to claim permanent possession, is, as Raghavan himself notes, an apt representation of democracy – an ever-shifting, contested space where dominance is transient and where the vitality of the whole depends on the ceaseless movement of ideas and power. It also encapsulates the very ethos of the period Raghavan investigates – the 1970s and 1980s – a time of intellectual ferment and cultural upheaval.If Rama Bhima Soma defies easy classification, it is because Raghavan embraces the genre-bending nature of his intellectual enterprise with deliberate intent. One of his most compelling thematic preoccupations is the dialectic between mārga and deśi – the elite, Sanskritic, cosmopolitan literary tradition versus the local, indigenous expressions of resistance. He mentions the “painful irony” that Kannada, often celebrated as a feminine entity, has historically been a space of exclusion for women. While the 12th-century vachana poets included formidable female voices – Akkamahadevi being the most renowned – the subsequent erasure of women from literary production is glaring. It was not until the 17th century that we began to see their reappearance in recorded literary discourse, and even then, their presence remains fragile and embattled.Srikar RaghavanWhat happened to the radical ferment that once defined Karnataka’s intellectual and political life? Raghavan charts the many trajectories of socialist engagement in the state, from the influence of Lohia to the trade unions, and more nebulous strands. By the 1990s, the decline of the Left was no longer a matter of speculation; it was a historical reality. Socialist politician Gopala Gowda’s life and career serve as an emblem of the broader failure of Kannada socialism. Through such portraits, Raghavan paints a larger picture of an intellectual movement that, despite its promise, was ultimately politically outmanoeuvred and ideologically exhausted. The grand socialist visions of the mid-20th century, filled with utopian aspirations and radical potential, found themselves weakened by internal schisms, external pressures and an inability to construct a compelling counter-narrative against the rising forces of right-wing nationalism. In the vacuum left behind, the Hindu Right moved in with ruthless efficiency. The Kannada identity was appropriated and weaponised. The transformation of Yakshagana from a rich performative tradition into an ideological instrument is an example; it has increasingly been co-opted into a vehicle for right-wing narratives, reinforcing majoritarian anxieties and communal divisions.But Rama Bhima Soma is not just about what has been lost; it is also about what remains, often in unexpected places. Consider his treatment of the Kannada word bayilu, which stretches across meanings, denoting everything from an open, expansive field to a metaphysical state of merging with the formless. Raghavan puts bayilu to work as a conceptual tool, using it to illustrate not only the richness of the Kannada lexicon but also the cultural and philosophical expansiveness that is at risk of being lost in the present political climate. Perhaps it is this quality: the ability to capture both the ideological struggles and the imperceptible shifts in cultural consciousness, that makes Rama Bhima Soma such a necessary intervention. It is a staggering intellectual achievement – provocative, meticulous and necessary.Ananya Singh is a writer. She tweets @priyadarshi_12.
