Kadidal Manjappa was the Chief Minister of Karnataka for a brief period in 1956. All through his political career, he must have faced several protests, but the one he faced in his native village ahead of the marriage of his two nieces was unique.
Among those who exhibited black flags and raised slogans against him were Poornachandra Tejaswi, a noted writer himself and son of Kannada’s acclaimed poet Kuvempu, N.D. Sundaresh and Kadidal Shamanna, both of whom are founders of Raitha Sangha. And the issue of protest was simple marriage. Manjappa had planned the marriage of his two nieces as per the conventional customs that involved rituals conducted under the guidance of a Brahmin priest. The members of the Samajavadi Yuvajana Sabha (to which the three belonged) were against grand ceremonies involving large gatherings and rituals.
The former Chief Minister, even after holding one simple marriage in the family earlier, had gone back to the conventional system, probably to meet the expectations of the grooms’ families. Hence, he had to face the protest in front of his house by the youths, a majority of whom were his relatives. In this case, the two brides were in favour of a simple marriage but hesitant to express their wish before the elders of the family. That warranted the intervention of the young socialists.
