U R Ananthamurthy: 1932-2014, a political writer or a literary politician?
The news of death spread like a fire to the other ten houses of the
agrahara. Doors and windows were shut, with children inside. By god's
grace, no Brahmin had yet eaten. Not a human soul there felt a pang at
Naranappa's death, not even women and children. Still in everyone's
heart an obscure fear, an unclean anxiety. Alive, Naranappa was an
enemy; dead, a preventer of meals, as a corpse, a problem, a nuisance.
- from U R Ananthamurthy's debut novel Samskara, 1971, translated by A K Ramanujan.
Such irreverent prose that mocks even at death and at the revolutionary
ideology of a dead Brahmin is called the URA 'chaap' (stamp) by his
admirers as well as enemies. Udupi Rajagopalacharya Ananthamurthy, 82,
who passed away due to a heart attack after aconstant and courageous
battle over failed kidneys, took on any and every known tenet that went
against his Ram Manohar Lohia-inspired socialist philosophy, constantly
refined through interaction with Lohiaites across the country, including
Shantaveri Gopala Gowda, George Fernandes, Ramakrishna Hegde, J H Patel
and Madhu Dandavate.
Was he a political writer or a literary politician? This is a question that has often haunted all those who knew him.
All everyone agreed, however was: he was a warm, gracious person, friendly to all, whether low or mighty.
A man who called three chief ministers of Karnataka as his personal
friends -- Hegde, J H Patel and Siddaramaiah -- he interacted even with
those CMs with whom he had differences, mild and serious, like S
Bangarappa and B S Yeddyurappa. Everyone took note of what he thought
and what he felt. His suggestion that Bangalore should be renamed as
Bengaluru to make even foreigners familiar with the Kannada consonant
'u' grabbed the attention of then CM Dharam Singh, who promptly took it
up with the Centre.
Ananthamurthy publicly commented that he
"can't live in a country where Modi is PM" -- inviting jeers and threats
from Modi followers from all over the world, and even a ticket to
Pakistan. In private, he expressed his distress over the circumstances
that led to Modi's elevation to all and sundry. He even told Bangalore
Mirror on a couple of occasions that he feared India would go the
Israel-way under Modi and that he was very unhappy that the country had
not even chosen to elect an Opposition strong enough to take Modi and
the philosophy he represented, head on.
Still Modi and his
philosophy were just the latest of the issues Ananthamurthy fought
fearlessly -- both through his writing and his activism --right from his
student and teaching days. His Ph.D from the University of Birmingham
was on 'Politics and Fiction in the 1930s'. For him politics was life
itself, and an inseparable part of literature. Result: He equally
respected in both political and literary circles.
One of the
biggest issues he took on with verve in recent times was the
introduction of Kannada as the medium of instruction in primary schools.
His fight was not parochial, as alleged by all those who wanted English
as the medium of instruction. He even took on IT icon N R
Narayanamurthy and explained that English should be taught as a subject,
right from Std I in all schools, but Kannada should be given primacy.
Coming as it did from a professor of English, former vice-chancellor of
Mahatma Gandhi University in Kottayam, Kerala and a life-long liberal,
this support to the cause of Kannada raised it from being a mere
parochial fight to the level of a serious ideological debate on the
importance of the mother tongue Vs the need for a globalised English
that earns big bucks in today's world. Ananthamurthy taught English, but
always wrote in Kannada, reflecting the roots of his ideological stand.
Born in a remote village called Malige in Thirthahalli,
Shimoga, in 1932, to a Madhwa Brahmin family, he began his schooling in a
Sanskrit paatashaala, but did a Master of Arts in English from Mysore
University. He went on a Commonwealth scholarship to Birmingham, but
later insisted that a 'foreign degree' no longer had value and Indian
universities and colleges were as proficient as their foreign
counterparts to award degrees.
Awards -- including the Jnanpith
-- have rained upon Ananthamurthy who had the good fortune to get heady
fame and adulation as early as his 30s and 40s. He was a leader of a
fascinating movement in Kannada literature called 'Navya', which,
besides him, had poet Gopalakrishna Adiga in the forefront. This
movement mixed lyricism with social thought and created a new
intellectual debate on the conditions of the oppressed.
Ananthamurthy was married to Esther, who was his student in Mysore. He
had two children, Sharath and Anuradha. But he leaves behind a legion of
fans -- including a large number of women who could never resist his
charm -- generations of litterateurs and academics whom he patiently
taught, and a vast sea of common folk who read his prose, listened to
his speeches and remained in awe of a man who was referred to as one of
the giants of Karnataka's intelligensia.(मुंबई मिरर )
