India where the prime minister is Narendra Modi….”I would get phone calls asking me, ‘when are you leaving’?…I would like to visit Pakistan! I have friends there who love India”….“Modi wants India to be a lion but as a Gandhian I can tell you that
Gandhiji wanted India to be a porcupine”…..
….
As a metaphor it feels appropriate for now….a proud porcupine is any day better than a cowardly lion. Growing up in tiger-land, we know that even big cats are wary of the prickly little creatures. But why stop there? As India grows in strength and sheds its physical (and mental) shackles, she should aim to be an elephant– social, gentle (if you do not harm them), intelligent, and loving, welcoming of orphans (refugees) and quite capable of defending against vicious beasts.
Speaking of elephants and orphans, here is news (fairly typical) from the animal kingdom last week.
……
A six-months-old male baby elephant which had got separated from its
mother and was partially drowned in a river got its new mother in a
captive female elephant at Rajaji National Park (RNP). The female
elephant too accepted the calf by cuddling it.
According to
Nitishmani Tripathi, division forest officer of Lansdowne forest
division, the calf was found struggling to float in the Rawasan river at
5pm on Tuesday. The calf was rescued and was taken to a forest camp.
DVS Khati chief wildlife warden told TOI, “The elephants are social by
nature. In an elephant herd, when a calf is separated or its mother dies
then other female elephants accept and nurse the calf. In common
parlance, it is known as ‘auntie syndrome’ where other female elephants
become mother or aunts of the motherless calf. ”
…….
Now the lion of Gujarat has a (well deserved) reputation of crushing challengers without even bothering to shake his mane. However there are still a few porcupines who have no fear, who keep shooting thorns at the king (just like them Hamas rockets??). One example is the classical dance exponent Mallika Sarabhai, daughter of Mrinalini and Vikram Sarabhai (the father of the Indian space program).
Another one is the celebrated Kannada author Udupi Rajagopal-Acharya (UR) Anantha-Murthy (21 December 1932 – 22 August 2014). Please note below the excellent profiles by Sudheendra Kulkarni and Ramchandra Guha as well as a very special AIR Mysore interview with URA himself.
The reflections are mostly about Mysore – where bananas and giant pumpkins are abundant and people are generous, where oceans of knowledge are to be explored in the Maharaja’s college, and the bitter-sweet memories of marrying a Christian girl – as it was half a century ago.
………….
It is true that over time Indian politics has become more democratic (the Leader is a Shudra while the main opposition party is led in the Parliament by a Dalit – Mallikarjuna Kharge from Karanataka). Unfortunately it has also become more shrill and people seem to be losing their sense of propriety. Prof. Ananthamurthy is a national icon, and when he passed away it is reasonable to wish for a dignified send-off. But that was not to be. Even as the Prime Minister was quick to send his condolences, Hindutva-vadis were bursting crackers and celebrating. This is not a good thing and Sudheendra Kulkarni is right to condemn it.
Of course URA was a petty man at times, especially in the way he used to bad-mouth Santeshivara Lingannaiah (SL) Bhyrappa, the all-time popular Kannada novelist who writes from the right field. But that is just professional (and ideological) jealousy. Again in such match-ups it is the skill (and fore-sight) that counts- SLB in his recent, rousing novel Avarana has a shifty character who resembles URA!!! With time people will (may) forget the masters but not their creations. It will be a pity if future generations recognize URA only from a book composed by his rival in arts.
…………
Ananthamurthy, Girish Karnad, Gopalakrishna Adiga are all recognized as luminaries in the Marxist-Socialist universe that drove the glorious Navya (new) movement in Kannada literature. Now they are all fading away or gone, just when the left as a whole is dying in India and the right is on the ascendant. Again it is a pity that literature has become so politicized (primarily driven by the need for getting grants in India and acceptance in the West).
If some one wishes to enjoy an authentic Indian view (and viewpoint), our advise is to avoid the Indians-in-English “lions” and try instead the “vernacular porcupines” (best if read in the original, however excellent translations are now available). Samskara by UV Ananthamurthy (and Parva by SL Bhyarappa) are too good to be ignored by Indians who would like to know more about their history and culture, and to comprehend what needs to be preserved, and what needs to be thrown away.
……………………..
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.
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?”
………..
He was
always full of laughter and lived life intensely even when sick. For
the last 10 years he has been critical many times. Through it all he
kept going. Till his last breath he was engaged—intellectually and
politically — which is so admirable.
The biggest loss is that
of a genuine public intellectual. I wrote a piece for his 80th birthday.
I said at the end of it that when he dies, his death will be mourned in
every district of Karnataka. When an English writer like me dies,
maybe, India International Centre will have a memorial meeting. Full
stop. He has such deep roots in society. I don’t think any of the
current writers have that kind of organic connection.
Writer as
a public intellectual, as a moral conscience of society – that’s a
phenomenon that was once quite common in every linguistic group in
India. URA is almost the last representative of it. As society gets more
commercialized, as writing itself gets commercialized, this larger than
life role of the writers gets reduced. He’s the last of the kind.
Twenty years ago, 40 years ago, we had Shivaram Karanth here, PK Atre
in Maharashtra, Nirmal Verma in the Hindi-speaking world, Mahashweta
Devi in Bengal — novelists who took a stand on public issues; who were
seen as conscience-like figures. This tradition goes back to the 19th
century, to Bankim Chandra Chatterjee, later to Tagore. After print
arrived in India, novels, literary journals, newspapers began to appear
and from then onwards writers occupied an important position in moulding
public debate. They wrote essays and fiction on social reforms, women,
caste, India’s place in the world.
Today, as professions get
more specialized that tradition’s slowly eroding. As writers focus more
on their craft, career, books, advances and contracts, the larger role
is lost. I would say URA and Mahashweta Devi were the last of the those
who were also prominent public figures.
……….
do you carry of Mysore as you plan to return?
teacher, which is what I was in this City. That trait is very important to me.
And as I come here to AIR, I have very fond memories of being first recognised
and identified as a writer by Mysore Akashvani.
taking part in a farmers’ struggle, after missing classes…
more than half a century to the Mysore of the days when you arrived here?
run by D.R. Krishnamurthy or DRK as we knew him. As a socialist, I had a
passing acquaintance of DRK and he took me first to the house of Bharat Raj
Singh. Although I had fought on behalf of Kannada medium, I had wanted to
do BA honours in English.
Bharath Raj Singh giving me a list of books that had Jane Austen and T.S.
Eliot on them. I said I could him a different list, which had Gorky
and Shelley and others on them.
that I began growing in Mysore, and not just through teachers. When I went to K.V.
Subbanna’s room I learnt. When I went to the Coffee House I learnt. To tell
you the truth to tell, we rarely went to college. We spent a lot of time in harate.
Canteen where we had an account. That was the era of one-by-two in Mysore.
Whatever we had, whether it was dosa or coffee, we had them in fractions of
one-by-two. And we would do this several times a day. In the mid-50s, when the
formation of Karnataka was underway, a joke began doing the rounds that in
Mysore there was a demand for two Karnatakas because we even wanted Karnataka
one-by-two!
after the Navodaya movement, there is a certain shyness, a kind of digbhrame,
that a young writer from a smaller town or village brings when he steps into a
bigger city. As someone who came from a small village yourself, when did you
gain the courage, when did you find your feet in Mysore?
In the Mysore of those days, there was never the kind of wealth that you see,
say, now in Bangalore. If there were one or two cars on the roads, we knew
whose cars they were. If there were a couple of motorcycles, we knew whose they
were.
it was the knowledge and culture of the place.
every morning the word would go around, ‘Kuvempu barthidarante!’
(Kuvempu is coming), and sure enough he would come on a jataka gaadi. He
would get down, not look at anybody, not look this side or that, and then get
into the college. We would wait to see that.
(D.L. Narasimhaiah is coming), and sure enough DLN would come in a peta
with an umbrella, holding it like a stick, never ever aware that it had a hold!
Akashvani, M.V. Gopalaswamy. As I was coming into this interview, I
found a picture of his in the director’s office looking nice and regal in a zari
peta and coat. But that’s not the image I have from college where he
wore a jubba-pyjama.
There was great simplicity in the
Mysore of those days but there was an even greater ocean of knowledge in
Maharaja’s College. There were great speakers. If a good poet was to conduct a
reading, the Junior BA Hall would be overflowing to the aisles.
Shamanna, G.H. Nayak…
who had a little more money could afford to stay there. But yes, G.H. Nayak and
I stayed at Sarvajanika Hostel. For a few days, initially, I stayed at the
Suttur hostel because my father couldn’t afford to send me much.
But even so, we would manage to get
good food, free food at the Sarvajanika Hostel in Chamundipuram. It was run by
a Gandhian called Subbanna, who would go to the countryside each morning
and bring giant pumpkins and wonderful bananas every day for us boys.
I used to walk to College each day,
and I remember jumping up in the air and plucking twigs and leaves off the
avenue trees when I got a good idea or a nice thought passed through my mind!
how much we would talk. G.H. Nayak and I would talk endlessly in our hostel
room. Then we would come to Subbanna’s room in the Maharaja College hostel and
talk some more. A magazine called Varsity Times had been started by Raghavan
and we would contribute there…
be. What did you want to be when you were growing up.
youth. It’s like a trust from which I can keep drawing endlessly. I was born in
Melige but grew up in Kerekoppa. Ours was the only home in the whole forest,
and whoever came home would tell stories of tigers. I come from a time when
currency notes were still not around and the bearys (muslim merchants)
passing by would sell us paddy and my mother would give them betelnuts in
barter.
traveled around. A teacher came home to teach because I couldn’t go to school,
and even when I did so, it was to a Kannada school. From where I came, even
Tirthahalli, which was but a small village, seemed like a big town.
Tirthathalli was my world.
“Doctor”. I would take his medications to different people, one of whom was
a man called Srinivas Joshi who, even in those days, had shortened it to
‘Sinha’. He used to listen to the BBC on a dynamo he had cranked up. He used to
speak with an exaggerated accent he had picked up by listening to the radio. In
effect, when I was growing up, I could read a Bernard Shaw play, hear
about the Bhagwad Gita at school, and discuss dvaita/advaita
philosophies at the mutt. I became a writer because so many worlds commingled
in little Tirthahalli.
we met in Europe that occidental history is like a straight line; oriental
history is a curving one where centuries coexist. It was in Tirthahalli I
realised that, understood that. I met all kinds of people in a small place. It
is said Somerset Maugham traveled the world with a notebook to learn
the essence of life and Kafka sat in a room for the same objective. Yet
Kafka came out with a better world-view. Growing up in Tirthahalli was like
that.
notions of madi and all that. My grandfather was very insistent on some
of these rituals. The shirt I wore to school was kept far and away from the
madi clothes and I would hang it on a nail on the wall.
shirt, that I would come in touch with people of all castes—Muslims, Dalits,
Gowdas, everybody. I became a writer not by wearing madi clothes but by
wearing my school shirt. I was telling this to M.T. Vasudevan Nair, the
Malayalam writer, and he agreed. I became a writer by going to school, a common
school.
one kind of school and the children of poor people go to another kind of
school. The shared knowledge, the shared wisdom that was available to all of us
is no longer available to modern children. Our children are inhabiting
different Indias. I feel very much about this.
English. Yet, you veered back to Kannada. Just what is it about Kannada that
drew you back?
could write in English. In my middle-school, I had started a magazine called Taringini
which had pieces in Kannda, English and Sanskrit!
because we grew within it. We heard it night and day, at home, school, market,
everywhere we went. Those who know many languages accept the supremacy of one
of them and write in it. Those who know only one language—the niraksharavadigalu—they
are the one who have saved Kannada. I don’t mean to say we need more niraksharavadigalu,
I mean that it is they who have kept alive our art, dance, folk.
had the influences of Kannada, folk and the West. It is not possible to be so
rich in English. If I had started writing in English, I would have lost my
childhood. Writing in English takes you further away from your past, your
relatives, your friends, from your roots. That’s why you find such a strong
streak of socialism in Kuvempu, Bendre, Masti, Karanth. It’s because
they wrote in Kannada.
was difficult to get a house on rent. It was Tejaswi who found us accommodation
in Vontikoppal. It was a small house but a very beautiful house, which is where
my son (Sharat) was born.
come home and we talk on this, that and the other. Then we would cycle off to
Coffee House, he on his cycle and me on mine, with my pregnant wife on the
carrier behind. And there would talk some more.
Market and buy vegetables. Ah, the market, it was so beautiful, the fruits
stalls, the flower stalls, the sandige-happala stalls… There was only
one shop which had Nanjangud rasabaale, and the owner was such a stern
man that if we haggled over the price, he would refuse to sell us the bananas!
Mysore, back then, was a very special city.
…….
Link (1): the-modi-controversy-did-this-great-writer-a-disservice-by-sudheendra-kulkarni
Link (2): A-moral-voice-has-fallen-silent
Link (3): https://churumuri.wordpress.com/what-is-churumuri/ur-anantha-murthy/
……
regards