(Sudheendra Kulkarni is a socio-political activist and columnist.)Journalism, especially of the 'breaking news' variety, often does great disservice to literature, a field of creative writing it understands only superficially, if at all. It highlights only those aspects of a writer - especially controversial aspects because journalism loves nothing more than a controversy - and in the process edits out the person's essential creative self which indeed makes him a novelist or a poet or a playwright, someone who is worthy of gaining entry in the exclusive portals of literature.
UR Ananthamurthy, the great Jnanpith laureate Kannada writer who passed away in Bangalore on August 22 at the age of 82, will long be remembered for his controversial remarks on Narendra Modi (before he became the prime minister) in the run-up to the last parliamentary elections. "I'll leave India if Narendra Modi ever became India's PM," he had said, a statement that he later withdrew. It was an utterly wrong statement, one that badly damaged his reputation because this is what the media caught on and made him famous or infamous all over the country. I had tweeted at the time that, even though I held Ananthamurthy in very high regard, I disagreed with him on this matter. I had my own differences with Modi, but I felt that Ananthamurthy should not have reacted in such extreme manner.
In a bizarre reaction to his death, some fringe Hindu groups in Karnataka celebrated it with crackers. His passing was also greeted with celebratory posts on Twitter. These uncultured pests pose a threat to the image of the Modi government which they claim to support.
Nevertheless, there is far more to Ananthamurthy as a writer than the controversy over a non-literary matter that he invited upon himself. A person from literature should be judged, and remembered, primarily on the basis of his or her creative writing. Literature is a product of solitude. It is also read and experienced in solitude. Best fiction illuminates human condition immensely more than either journalism or political discourse. If this is true, then there is no doubt that all those who have read Ananthamurthy's novels or short stories, both in original Kannada and in translation, will forever cherish him - and his characters such as Praneshacharya in his most acclaimed novel
Samskara (1965) - in their hearts.
I read
Samskara when I was studying in the seventh or eighth standard, in my little home town Athani in Karnataka. I have re-read it several times thereafter. It left a haunting effect on me.
Praneshacharya, its protagonist, is a pious and scholarly priest living in a Brahmin village where moral corruption and hypocrisy abound beneath the veneer of religiosity. A peculiar set of circumstances, unleashed by the outbreak of plague in the village and culminating in him getting attracted to a noble-hearted prostitute, push him into a vortex of moral dilemmas. He finds himself compelled to question Brahmin orthodoxy's many verities about untouchability, sex and bookish knowledge.
Samskara is not an overtly political novel. However, its story of how Praneshacharya confronts his own socially inherited convictions about the meaning and purpose of life contributed in some way to the awakening of the rebel in me early in my own life. That rebellious attitude shaped my response to the Emergency Rule (1975-77) imposed by former Prime Minister Indira Gandhi. I was a student at IIT Bombay those days and got involved in Left-wing anti-Emergency activities both on and off campus. When Snehalata Reddy, a committed Bangalore-based socialist and a close associate of Ananthamurthy died during the Emergency, a victim of torture in prison, I wrote a letter (in Kannada) to Ananthamurthy expressing my anguish over the death of democracy in India and the need to strengthen our collective voice against it. Ananthamurthy, whose own allegiance lay with non-Marxist socialism espoused by Mahatma Gandhi and Dr Rammanohar Lohia, wrote back to me with words of encouragement and solidarity.
Incidentally, Snehalata Reddy was the heroine who played the role of Chandri, the prostitute, in the cinematic rendition of
Samskara. Girish Karnad acted as Praneshacharya in this gem of a black-and-white movie, produced in 1970 by Snehalata's husband and fellow-socialist Pattabhi Rama Reddy. It became a trailblazer in Kannada cinema and went on to win many national and international awards. Ananthamurthy's short story
Ghatashraddha was made into another widely acclaimed film by Girish Kasaravalli in 1977.
Ananthamurthy's other novels
Bharathipura,
Avasthe and
Divya did not reach the story-telling excellence of
Samskara. I often felt that his literary creation was hampered by his activism. Yet, as an activist and a public intellectual, he was always very original and incisive in his thinking and in the way he responded to the world around him. He stuck his neck out for the causes he believed in, as is evident from his close association with the environmental movement, his deep sympathy for the empowerment of Dalits, and his spirited struggle for the protection of mother tongues in India. He felt, rightly, that the great literary creations in Bharatiya languages were overshadowed by several mediocre, but commercially successful and globally more recognised works of Indian writers in English. He was a patron of progressive theatre, especially Neenasam, a legendary cultural institution in rural Karnataka founded by his friend KV Subbanna.
Ananthamurthy was a strong critic of the RSS and the BJP throughout his life. Promotion of Hindu-Muslim amity was a cause very dear to him. Yet, he was a great admirer of Atal Bihari Vajpayee, and the admiration was mutual. When the former Prime Minister went to Bangladesh on a pathbreaking visit in 1999, he had taken Ananthamurthy (and also the late Ghazal maestro Jagjit Singh) as a member of his delegation. I met him for the first time on that trip and we spent a lot of time on the flight and in Dhaka conversing in Kannada.
Ananthamurthy was non-traditionalist and yet he had almost a reverential admiration for the good aspects of India's cultural and spiritual heritage. I remember one essay in which he posed an important question, which I am paraphrasing here: "Why is it that even the best of political, governance, educational and business institutions get weakened, corroded, eroded and extinct with the passage of time, whereas several religion-inspired institutions such as maths and seminaries remain alive and vibrant for centuries? Is it because the former have their foundation in the transient material world, in contrast to the eternal certainties that the latter believe in? Is this the reason why people's allegiance to the former is always fickle, and to the latter fixed?"
Ananthamurthy is today a part of eternity, the door to which, is the certainty called death. But, the recent controversy over Narendra Modi apart, he deserves to be remembered for his rich and enduring contribution to Indian literature.
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