“May the State of Karnataka, which has been wrongly named Mysore State, live long, be robust and prosper.”
This was what Alur Venkatarao, revered as ‘Karnataka Kulapurohita’ (high priest of the unification movement) said during the celebration held at Hampi to mark the birth of the new State on November 1, 1956, under the provisions of State Reorganisation Act. It sums up the disappointment of all non-Mysoreans over naming the new state as “Mysore.”
A little less than a century earlier, the seeds of unification of the Kannada speaking areas into a state were sown in the region which is now referred to as North Karnataka and Dharwad was the epicentre of the movement.
