Nittoor Srinivasa Rao’s Independence Day Kannada speech had Kuvempu pen poem

BENGALURU: While freedom dawned on India on August 15, 1947, people of then Mysuru state had to wait for another 16 years to listen to their governor deliver the ceremonial Independence Day address commemorating the occasion in Kannada.
The first Kannada I-Day address in 1963 by the then acting governor, Nittoor Srinivasa Rao, drew cheer and even prompted eminent littérateur Kuvempu, who was to be coronated as Rashtrakavi a year later, to pen a 14-line poem applauding the development.

Every year since independence, official celebrations observing the big day at Parade Grounds had a customary address by the governor of the state. In 1962-63, then governor of Mysuru state, Maharaja Jayachamarajendra Wadiyar, was away on a tour of the United States and Justice Nittoor Srinivasa Rao, who was chief justice of Mysuru high court, was the acting governor.
On August 15, 1963, Rao was scheduled to give an Independence Day speech as the acting governor. However, the staunch Gandhian and Kannada language lover was in a bit of a shock to receive his speech copy in English.
In Nittoor Srinivasa Rayaru: Noorara Nenapu, a biographical sketch of the famed freedom fighter, writer and jurist published in 2003, the incidents of the day are well recorded with Rao urgently calling for a typist to translate the English speech and type it in Kannada. “Rao jovially recalls in the book how the word jawan meaning soldier was translated as jawana by the translator which means peon in Kannada,” says Vemagal Somashekar, senior historian and Kannada author.
With the speech translated into Kannada in an hour, Justice Rao took centre stage at Parade Grounds in Bengaluru on the morning of August 15, 1963 and delivered the governor’s speech for the first time in Kannada. The speech came as a pleasant surprise to many present at the venue and to lakhs of people of then Mysore state, who were tuned in to the radio.
It was considered a historic day by Kannada language lovers back then and even made it to newspaper headlines. Poet Kuvempu was so enthralled by Rao’s I-Day speech that he penned a 14-line poem titled Rajyapalarige Abhivandane (salute to governor).
Kuvempu lavishes poetic praise on the speech, saying Nanna Hottege Hande Haalu Hoydantaaitu (felt like having drank a huge vessel full of milk). The poem appeared in Kannada newspapers the next day and was much discussed in literary and political circles.