I did the video documentation of U.R. Ananthamurthy at his home in Bangalore over 10 days between April 2012 and May 2013. In the mornings, he shared his reflections on major 20th century Kannada writers (in Kannada). In the evenings, I interviewed him — in English — on his personal experiences and on his views on Indian politics, language, Kannada society, among others. The lectures were telecast as eight 60-minute episodes on Bangalore Doordarshan two months ago. The interviews, excerpts from which appear below, will be published as a book and as a video programme soon.
How did your growing up in a Madhva household matter to you in later years?
It mattered greatly. Whenever I discuss Marxism philosophically, I can’t but remember our discussions whether the world was real or maya . For Shankara, the world was maya . But for Madhva, it was Satyam Jagat . I had learnt it by heart. Satyam Jagat meant that the world was real. I got attracted to Marxism because it believed that the world was real. There were certain things that I heard in my childhood, which could always be linked with some more sophisticated thought. But now I’m more an advaiti than a dvaiti . I have changed.
Any experiences from school that became important for you as a writer?
I edited a magazine in high school called, Tarangini , which means the waves in water. If you drop a stone, there are waves in a lake. I had written an essay in English for it. Two other students had written an essay each in Kannada and in Sanskrit. It was a magazine in three languages in an agrahara of Brahmins. We used to circulate this magazine from one house to another. Since we touched upon many local secrets, I began to write metaphorically to save myself from being discovered. So metaphor came to me to be able to hide myself in unmentionable truths.
A rationalist teacher at school argued that the Bhagavad Gita was all imagined, saying who could recite a whole philosophical lesson in a battle field. I would come home and worry about it. An Arya Samajist in Thirthahalli would visit the temple and argue that the world was round and not flat and that we were going around the sun, and not the other way around. I would listen to the pundits from the matha argue against it. I felt like I was a contemporary of Galileo in my village. Different times were there together. This kind of realisation has made me the kind of writer I am.
What were your early encounters with socialist thought in Shimoga?
Gopala Gowda (the socialist leader) became very close to me when I was in Shimoga.
When you were doing your intermediate (PUC)...?
Yes, the intermediate. I had known him earlier but not well. He started a Student Socialist Club (SSC) and wanted to get many people into this, organise study camps. In my enthusiasm, I went to a house where we knew prostitution was being practised and got the young girls there to join the SSC because we thought they should all come into the club. This was a time when I began to read Maxim Gorky, when I began to be active in socialism, when I began to read Jayaprakash Narayan’s Why Socialism? and M.N. Roy. Shimoga was one place where my mind expanded with Gopal Gowda’s friendship and my father’s enthusiasm. My father had given up his job in the matha and started a printing press in Shimoga. All the pamphlets for the Kagodu farmer’s Satyagraha were printed in our press for free. I used to make a page, put it in the treadle machine and take copies myself. I developed my writing and speaking skills while working for this farmers’ movement.
Prof. C.D. Narasimhaiah was your teacher when you did your BA and MA in English literature at Mysore University. What did he mean for you as a student?
Prof Narasimhaiah was a great teacher. He had just returned from Cambridge. He was a very handsome man and very accessible, very friendly, and treated all the students equally. He used to come in a car and was a very fashionable figure for us. In matters of regional literature, Prof. CDN was some kind of adversary. There was a contradiction in him. In English, he was for the new kind of poetry; in Kannada, he liked the older kind. Second, he was totally against Shelley, because Leavis was against him; but I was for Shelley and against Leavis so far as Shelley was concerned. (But later on, I was no longer as enthusiastic about Shelley and I began to admire the Leavisian attitude to poetic language.) And so we had problems of that kind and we used to discuss it in classes. But, you know, CDN liked my questions and my opposition. He never made me feel that I was being disobedient. He made me what I am in some aspects, not in my way of thinking, but in my approach to teaching and for recognising the seriousness required of teachers.
You worked as lecturer in Hassan and Mysore after your MA for a few years, and then went to England for your PhD in 1963.
I got a Commonwealth Scholarship. Looking at my interests, the scholarship committee decided that I should study in Birmingham, because the red brick universities were much more aligned to new ideas than the old universities like Oxford and Cambridge. So I went to Birmingham with my son Sharath, who was a little baby, and my wife (Esther).
What had you wanted to do your PhD research on?
First I wanted to work on DH Lawrence. But the novelist, Malcolm Bradbury, who was initially my PhD guide, said that a lot had already been written on him and suggested I find a subject nobody had worked on.
Your dissertation research was on the literature of the 1930s. Why the 1930s?
Because it was the most enigmatic period in European history, Hitler and Mussolini were rising to power. Democracy seemed to be not working. . . My dissertation was titled “Politics and Fiction in the 1930s: Studies in Edward Upward and Christopher Isherwood”. The theoretical question for me was: How did disenchantment with Communism lead Isherwood into Vedanta and Ramakrishna Paramahamsa whereas Upward gave up the Communist Party while remaining a Marxist? After I began my research, Malcolm Bradbury got transferred to another university. Richard Hoggart advised me to work with David Lodge, who was a novelist. He wrote on Catholic themes. It was great fun working with him.
Tell me more about your relation with Richard Hoggart.
I belonged to a group called Centre for Contemporary Cultural Studies, which was started by Richard Hoggart. Stuart Hall was his colleague. And since their discussions were open to all, I began to sit in on them. That meant I read a lot: the old English classics, social and political discussions on Mill, Bentham, that kind of thing. Richard Hoggart was a hero because of his book, The Uses of Literacy . He wore a working-class cap and also spoke working-class English at times. For him, nothing was irrelevant so far as the study of culture was concerned.
Raymond Williams was also associated with this Centre.
Yes, he used to come once in two weeks and lecture to us and share his concerns with us. And also the man who wrote the book on the history of the English working class …
E. P. Thompson.
He was a very important man in this group. His father was interested in Indian literature, you know. So they came and each time we were asked to read a text, some ancient text and come prepared. The discussions were text based. It was about learning how to think about culture.
What did you find intellectually exciting about this interest of theirs in studying culture?
I became the kind of literary critic I am because I was a member of that group. Literature didn’t mean just literature; it meant several other things. So I was not only there to get PhD, I was writing my own novels. There was no time in my life as those three years when I was as active as I was then.
Did it strike you as odd that Raymond Williams or E. P. Thompson or Richard Hoggart weren’t concerned to the extent you would expect them to be with the question of colonialism and its relationship with British literature, with the making of British culture?
People like Richard Hoggart were more worried about the dominance of the upper class in their own society, the dominance of the elite views of literature, culture, politics and so on. I never thought about colonialism because my worry was our treatment of peasants and Dalits. What was happening to you in your own land was more urgent. And it was so with the British intellectuals. They were having a perpetual quarrel with their own newspapers, with their own media.
You did not publish your PhD thesis.
I could have done it, but I didn’t want to be seen as an English professor. I also decided that I would not spend any more time on being an English writer. And when I write English with great concentration, I lose some Kannada. When I write in Kannada, I lose some English. It’s very difficult to be truly bilingual particularly when you use language at a high level of concentration of meaning.
Did you like living in Birmingham?
Oh yes! I don’t know about the present situation in England, but I liked that country. It had a certain sense of fairness. I liked going to pubs, talking to the working-class people, and they would wonder at me, because here was a Black man, a coloured man who knew Shakespeare.
(I am grateful to the support of Azim Premji University towards this project.)
Chandan Gowda is professor of social science, Azim Premji University, Bangalore.
