Varun Nagesh launched a digital archive featuring 220 documentaries to mark 70 years since the formation of Mysore State. The website captures 117 places across 94 hours of viewing. "Unity in diversity can endure only when the diversity is recognised," he said. The project highlights Karnataka’s many evolving cultural forms.
Varun Nagesh, a Bengaluru-based marketer who hails from Shivamogga, calls himself a documentary freak. So, when he decided to make a contribution to mark 70 years since the formation of the Mysore State, renamed Karnataka in 1973, the choice was pretty obvious: a dedicated website which brings together 220 documentaries on Karnataka, capturing the land that is "one State, many worlds".
The documentaries, spanning 1982 to 2026, capture 117 places across 94 hours of viewing and have been catalogued by regions and themes such as communities, music and art, livelihoods, politics and protest, and so on.
Understanding the diversities
For Mr. Nagesh, the idea of the project originated from "a sense of being South Indian and a Kannadiga".
"As you grow older, you begin to understand why certain things are important to maintain social harmony and structures," he said. According to him, the idea was to create awareness that Kannada and Karnataka exist in many forms.
There is no single, fixed version of Kannada. The language has evolved into different dialects, with influences from other languages, he pointed out, citing the example of 'Aravu Kannada', a dialect spoken in parts of Bengaluru, which has influences from Telugu, Tamil and Kannada.
"That is the beauty of this diversity. Unity in diversity can endure only when the diversity is recognised. Otherwise, it becomes a struggle over who gets to define that unity," he said.
Portals to layers of history
But why documentaries?
"Because documentaries involve going to a place, capturing footage and building a story around what has actually happened. You cannot change the scene simply because you want to as a director," explained Mr. Nagesh.
A staunch believer that people should explore different perspectives and understand the social context rather than use history to prove how knowledgeable they are or to attack someone else, he pointed out that Karnataka's history has several layers.
For him, documentaries are the perfect portals to discover these layers.
"I built it because I enjoy watching these documentaries. It is almost like a time machine that takes you back to another era," he said.
The roots of the idea stemmed on a Saturday when he sought documentary recommendations from a Kannada movie community. Despite the number of community members being in thousands, the number of Kannada documentary recommendations he got was just 10-15. Most documentaries were scattered across the internet and difficult to discover.
"That made me realise that there could be others who wanted to discover such content but didn't know where to look. So, I built the website for myself and for them," he stated.
Mr. Nagesh plans to make the website an open-source platform where people can contribute.
"I don't want the website to reflect only my perspective. I'd like people to have healthy discussions and debates about history, without them turning toxic," he said, adding, "I feel people should learn about their history not to feel superior to others or use it to attack them, but to feel humbled. We should draw confidence, not rage, from that pride."