SHINING BHARAT, DARKENING INDIA

IKSIT

- GR GOPINATH

Bharat rings loudly in our public discourse today. Yet, step a little away from the slogans and one encounters another India—older, quieter and fraying at the edges. Nowhere is this contradiction more arresting than in the shadow of some of our greatest monuments, where civilisational brilliance coexists with everyday decay.The glory of Chalukyan temples, for one, stands in stark juxtaposition to the decline of the towns and villages around them. And yet, amid the ruin, hope persists—kept alive by those working patiently to restore our art, traditions and cultural memory.

Many Indias coexist in a baffling time warp—the glorious and the gross, the beautiful and the ugly, the sublime and the lowly, the sacred and the profane, the opulent and the poor. This contrast revealed itself with startling clarity during a recent visit to the awe-inspiring Badami rock-cut cave temples in North Karnataka.

The occasion was an evening of folk songs dedicated to Yellamma Devi, also known as Renuka Yellamma—a powerful folk goddess worshipped across Karnataka and parts of Telangana and Maharashtra. Interwoven with Hindu mythology and regional folklore, Yellamma is revered as a protector of the marginalised, a fertility goddess and a fierce-yet-compassionate force associated with healing. Her story is one of injustice and endurance: wronged and humiliated by her husband Jamadagni, a revered sage, she suffers indignity and gendered cruelty, yet rises in divine anger—wounded but never broken.