THE CRITICAL INSIDER
U.R. Ananthamurthy never stopped arguing with tradition
There are some writers who will be remembered as great masters of the word. Then there are others who will be celebrated not only as literary personalities but also as public intellectuals whose impact is felt across language, culture, education and politics. U.R. Ananthamurthy belonged to that latter, rare, tribe of luminaries.
He never forgot his roots during his travel from the Karnataka village of Melige in Shimoga to the University of Birmingham and then back to the country where he became one of its tallest literary giants, winning the Jnanpith and Padma Bhushan, heading the Sahitya Akademi, the National Book Trust and the Film and Television Institute.
He was meshtru (master) to his thousands of admirers and students. To me, he was like an unconventional elder in the family with whom I could argue, a superior colleague at the Sahitya Akademi whom I could take into confidence, a writer whose fictional world ever held me in thrall, a “rooted cosmopolitan”—to borrow a term from Benedict Anderson—who never stopped arguing with tradition as a “critical insider”, a term he often used to qualify his tenuous relationship with India’s mixed cultural heritage.
Anantha, as I called him, drank “life to the lees”. He was passionately involved in whatever he did: a good argument, a little magazine, an environment movement, an organisation like dramatist K.V. Subbanna’s Ninasam, a Bergman movie, the Kannada vachana poetry, an evening drink, the company of women he cared for. He loved to walk the thin line between the sacred and the profane, as did many of his fictional characters.
Anantha, above all, was a great storyteller. His six novels and eight collections of stories are testaments to his narrative skill as well as conceptual strength. Even his poetry dealt with the concrete: events, places and people; they seldom revelled in the abstract. His fictional magnum opus, Samskara, will remain a unique civilisational document. He knew his milieu intimately, with its myths, legends, customs and conventions, and through that he could gauge the whole society. He identified himself with the fallen and the outcast.
Praneshacharya, the revered priest seduced by Chandri, Naranappa’s voluptuous mistress, embodies a moral dilemma, the battle between the laws of the book and the rules of life. Praneshacharya is unable to solve the problem of Naranappa’s funeral—that bohemian Brahmin who ate meat and lived with Chandri had not been excommunicated and hence Brahmins alone could perform his funeral rites but Brahmins are scared to touch the body as that might pollute them. Naranappa’s body symbolises the moral, intellectual and spiritual paralysis of a community. Jagannatha of Bharatipura too has similar conflicts.
One of Ananthamurthy’s central themes was the relationship between tradition and modernity. He was neither a blind traditionalist nor an unthinking modernist. This is what distinguishes the Navya literary movement in Kannada that he spearheaded along with Gopalakrishna Adiga and others. They discovered the tools to critique tradition within the tradition itself—call it counter-tradition, if you will—as many Indian thinkers like Gandhi did.
He was a compulsive innovator. The Sahitya Akademi has never had a president like him. He celebrated mother tongues and marginalised languages and recognised and published the best in oral traditions. He had no patience for any particular language’s claim to be called ‘national’; he would say all languages spoken by Indians are national languages and the Eighth Schedule should be scrapped. Ananthamurthy never shied from public debates. His battles are well known, be it to compulsorily teach in the mother tongue in schools or against the rise of the right wing.
His last work, which he discussed with me just a few weeks ago, is a treatise that contrasts Hindutva ideology with Gandhi’s idea of Hind Swaraj. Our last conversation was also about launching a writers’ forum to defend the plurality of Indian literature and culture. He never ceased to fight those who upheld an artificial and standardised notion of national unity. Without Anantha, my world has become smaller, less colourful.