Chicago to B’luru: A journey for justice

Bengaluru: Chetan Kumar aka Chetan Ahimsa is the talk of town after he was arrested by the Bengaluru city police on Tuesday night for his tweet on Karnataka High Court judge Justice Krishna Dixit. The young actor has done a few movies in Sandalwood and is quite popular for his pro-Dalit activism.

He was born in Chicago, USA and completed his education abroad before engaging in research studies. As a research student, he documented the dialectics of caste, class, and gender in various village/folk and urban forms of South Indian drama through a selfproposed project on Indian theatre.

Chetan claimed that while growing up in Chicago for the first 20 years of his life, he was a victim of racism on several fronts, and faced violent attacks and school discrimination. As a 15 year-old, he was dubbed ‘anti-American’ and ‘anti-national’ because of his anti-racism sentiments. This made him enter the domain of social activism and in 2005, when he came to India to work with grassroot groups, he saw for himself the glaring social and caste differences.

For nearly a decade, Chetan has been active on Karnataka’s Dalit platforms, fighting alongside anti-caste and Bahujan leaders for an equitable society. He has used theatre as a means to create awareness on various issues. Known for his speeches focusing on the principles of Gautam Buddha, Dr BR Ambedkar, and 12th century poetphilosopher Basava, Chetan believes that the imposition of Hindi, Hindutva and the idea of ‘Hindustan’ is responsible for polarisation in the country.

When it comes to films, Chetan debuted as the lead in a movie titled Aa Dinagalu directed by KM Chaitanya, which was a realistic film, set in Bengaluru in the 1985-86 period. Although his second movie Birugaali, which was released in 2009, was not a commercial hit he reportedly received rave reviews from critics for his performance. He continued doing movies and gained popularity in the industry.