Battle for Belagavi

KARNATAKA/ MAHARASHTRA

- Ajay Sukumaran

As disputes between states go, the row over Belagavi (formerly Belgaum) has a life of its own. Simmering for decades, it periodically froths over—like it did last December and the year before, with many iterations going back in time to India’s state reorganisation on linguistic grounds beginning in the mid-1950s. On all occasions, tensions had risen temporarily in the border district that belongs to Karnataka but which Maharashtra has, for decades, claimed as its territory—on the emotive grounds that it has a significant population of Marathi speakers. It has resurfaced this year too, amid an explosion of rhetoric that had the biggest political players on both sides weighing in, with everyone girding up ahead of Supreme Court proceedings.