Murdering Scholarship
FRONTLINE|September 29, 2017

Why was M.M. Kalburgi, a top-notch scholar who doggedly pursued the path of truthful research, assassinated two years ago? What, in his research, moved Hindutva bigots to mow him down? 

Rajendra Chenni
Murdering Scholarship

PROFESSOR M.M. KALBURGI WAS AN extraordinary scholar who dedicated himself to research and writing for over 50 years. His writings collected in several volumes under the title Marga (the path) run into nearly 5,000 pages. His first scholarly article on Shabdamanidarpana, an early work on Kannada grammar, was published when he was 25 and, until the morning of his brutal murder on August 30, 2015, at the age of 77, Professor Kalburgi had literally spent all his life in scholarly pursuits.

The outstanding feature of Kalburgi’s scholarship is the mind-boggling heterogeneity of the subjects and the plurality of approaches and methodologies he employed. The subjects ranged from proverbs used in his village to the linguistic loyalties of the Vijayanagara empire; from names of places in Karnataka to the real history of the Lingayat religion. Like his research agenda, the sources of evidence he employed were just as diverse. He employed literary-textual interpretations, epigraphic studies, archaeology, popular culture, analysis of socio-religious practices, linguistics, interpretation of written records (especially the kaifiyats) and oral traditions in his research. His research also involved a vast amount of fieldwork. From these details one would probably construct the image of Professor Kalburgi as a typical traditional scholar covered in the dust of old epigraphs and manuscripts, with an otherworldly outlook, totally unconnected to the mire of cultural politics so dear to activists.

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