The voice of reason and dissent is silent

Bindu Menon
Senior reporter

Among the many images that Girish Karnad evokes, in his real and real life, one distinguishes himself. It was him at a public meeting in Bengaluru last September to protest the arrest of human rights defenders across the country. Karnad carried a sign reading "Me Too Urban Naxal". The least important, but also telling, of the man was the tube going from his nose to the small oxygen cylinder unit on his lap. It was Karnad, playwright, scholar, filmmaker, actor and man who left nothing, not even a failing health, to stifle his voice of reason and dissent.

Karnad, who died Monday at the age of 81 from a prolonged respiratory illness, was a man who connected many worlds, art forms, genres, and cultures.

He opened the literary world Kannada with his first play Yayati. Karnad was then only 22 years old and his work had been published before going to Oxford as a Rhodes Scholar and becoming President of the Oxford Union, where his oratorical skills are still known to many. His work as a playwright grows with Tughlaq, a criticism of nehruvian India and still relevant as a torch to the perils of authoritarianism. Then came Hayavadana, adapted from Thomas Mann's new Transposed Heads, inspired by a Kathasaritsagara story, where he used the Kannada dance form Yakshagana as a theatrical instrument. Nagamandala was an inspired work written after listening to a folk tale of his mentor, the late poet AK Ramanujam. And more recently, Rakshasa Tangadi, based on the life of Aliya Rama Raya, the last unstated ruler of the Vijayanagar empire.

After working for Oxford University Press in Chennai for a few years, he stopped working for theater and writing full time.

In the world of Kannada theater, his contribution is parallel to that of Vijay Tendulkar in Marathi, Mohan Rakesh in Hindi and Badal Sircar in Bengali.

In the narrative of myths, folklore and history, he has imbued his works with a contemporary idiom. This has contributed to his formative years at Sirsi and Dharwad and his exposure to Yakshagana's itinerant natalis mandalis and artistic form ground his artistic vision.

In his homage to Karnad, his friend and historian Ramachandra Guha tweeted: "Girish Karnad has beautifully and harmoniously blended North and South, folk and classical, demotic and scholarly."

In the years that followed, Karnad's literary prowess may have been eclipsed by his achievements in the Indian film world.

Samskara, the highly acclaimed 1970 film, announced Karnad's foray into the world of cinema. Adapted from the eponymous novel by the author UR Ananthamurthy, she marks the debut of Karnad as an actor and screenwriter. The film won the gold medal of the president. He donned the Vamsha Vriksha director's hat, based on a Kannada novel by SL Bhyrappa (who will later criticize Karnad for his defense of Tipu Sultan).

During his acting career, spreading over more than five decades, he has appeared in more than 100 films, including Kannada, Hindi, Marathi and other regional films, in addition to filming movies. He has excellently crossed art and experimental cinema and mainstream cinema. He was at ease in the role of the impotent village teacher whose wife is raped by zamindars in Nishant of Shyam Benegal, as a fictional Kurian Verghese in Manthan or as a husband Comprehensive in Swami de Basu Chatterji. Or, incredulously, embody the ugly governor of Kadhalan, the Tamil boiler, or that of RAW leader in the franchises of Salman Khan, Tiger, Ek Tha Tiger and Tiger Zinda Hai. He directed the film Utsav in 1984, starring Rekha and Shekhar Suman, which was not a commercial success.

However, he was successful on television, hosting the popular show Turning Point and playing the father of young Swami at Malgudi Days.

The winner of the Jnanpith Award and the Fulbright Fellow were also institution builders, after being director of the Indian Institute of Film and Television, chairman of the Sangeet Natak Akademi and director of the Nehru Center in London.

Karnad's strong political and social messages in his plays and films have also spilled over into public discourse, often fueling controversy. Whether it's calling VS Naipaul as a religious bigot at a literary event or calling Rabindranath Tagore an over-rated playwright, Karnad often found himself waving feathers.

However, his statements were often accompanied by a strong rational defense of his beliefs. When he praised Tipu Sultan and even suggested that Bengaluru Airport be named after the Mysore Warlord, Karnad received death threats. But Karnad firmly believed that seeing Tipu through the prism of religion or ideology hurt his memory, as shown in his 1997 play, Tipu Sultan Kanda Kanasu (Tipu Sultan's Dreams).

It was not surprising, then, that during the Karnataka police investigation into the murder of journalist Gauri Lankesh, the authorities learned that Karnad was the first blacklisted name of a right-wing group. This did not prevent him from attending protest meetings against incidents of lynching and banning of beef or expressing his concerns about the rise of nationalism and majorityism.

In one of his plays, Agni Matthu Male (Fire and Rain), one of the characters says, "The past is not gone. He is in me. Karnad also carried the past in him, not in a narrow sense, but as a vector of liberal human values.