I joined Mangalore University in 1984, and Raghavendra Rao had joined the same university a few months earlier, as professor and chairman of the Political Science department. By virtue of his professorship, he was on the Syndicate also. Once, after a syndicate meeting, I asked him what the highlights were, and he said nonchalantly that he didn’t remember. Piqued, I retorted that I could keep confidences; he replied calmly that he really didn’t know what transpired as he was reading a fascinating work. Then he showed me a critical work on Marx that had just come out and added that I should read it. I didn’t know how to respond.
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Dr. K. Raghavendra Rao (1928-2018), an acclaimed academician- poet-translator, was born into a poor Brahmin family in Bellary. After his early education in and around Bellary, he joined the honours programme in English, in Madras Christian College, Chennai. After obtaining his degree (1948), he changed his field of interest and obtained the Master’s degree in Political Science from Madras University (1954). It was here that he developed a keen interest in Marxism which he nourished throughout his life. He taught political science in many Universities such as Guwahati University (1955- 1959), Karnatak University, Dharwad (1959-1983), and Mangalore University (1984-89 till his retirement. While he was in Dharwad, he came in contact with such illustrious scholars like Da. Ra. Bendre and Dr. A. B. Shah who greatly influenced him. He left for Canada in 1967 to join the Toronto University for his doctoral studies in Political Science. The topic he chose for research was ‘the Unification of Karnataka’ and he got the doctoral degree in 1975. After he retired from Mangalore University, he served there for two more years as Professor Emeritus. During his illustrious career, he received many awards including ‘Bendre National Award’ and ‘Carl Marx Award’, Fellowship of I.I. A.S., Simla, and Visiting Professorship, Mysore University. He was the President of Indian Academy of Social Sciences from 1993 to 96.
Rao began writing poetry in English in the 1950s and got associated with P. Lal, who was then pioneering the kind of modernist poetry which sharply reacted against the Romantic tradition of Toro Dutt and Sarojini Naidu. Rao and Lal together brought out a collection of modernist poetry in English by Indian writers, The Modern Indo-Anglian Poetry, in 1959. The critical introduction to this volume by Lal and Rao, a sort of Manifesto of modernist poetry in English by Indians, turned out to be very influential and paved the path for the path-breaking publishing house, ‘The Writers Workshop,’ run by Lal. The first poetry collection by Rao, Poems, published in 1968, was followed by 25 varied works in English including poetry ( Poems, 1968, and The Road Taken, 1991), collections of discursive essays ( Contradictions, 1974, Population Policy: Society And Culture, 1988), political biographies ( Aluru Vekata Rao, 1980, and Rashtrabandhu S. Nijalingappa: Man And Statesman, 1999), and an auto-biographical novel, The Cockroach Man (2007). He also translated several major Kannada works to English including Bendre’s Naaku Tanti ( Four Strings, 1976), and Bhairappa’s novel, Vamshavruksha ( The Uprooted, 1992) .
Since Rao belonged to the Modernist School, his poetry, shorn of poetic diction and metrical patterns, is characterized by sharp imagery, intellectual reflections, and a striking juxtaposition of the real and mystic elements. For instance, the poem “The Journey of Golgotha” deals with crucifixion of Christ and examines the concept of ‘innocence’ (of Christ and of children) throughout. It begins with these startling lines: “ Children are frightening, / complex beyond all adult illusions / paradoxical in their calculated innocence. ” The poem moves on with references to Herod’s massacre of children, Kamsa’s similar act through Putani, and the varied shades of ‘Judas betrayal.’
In a long poem called “The Road Taken,” the narrator describes his birth in these words: “ There is no puzzling this out, / this eruption into alien flesh,/ the accidental stepping into a mother’s street.” These lines registering the mystery of birth echo Heidegger’s branch of Existential philosophy. In fact, the whole poem echoes, alternately, Heidegger’s Being And Becoming and Eliot’s Four Quartets. Rao’s autobiographical novel, The Cockroach Man, mixes, again, reality and fantasy, and brilliantly parodies political ideologies (excepting Marxism) and academic scholars and institutions. The quixotic title refers to both the narrator and the nation – both unbelievably survive fatal disasters. It is in this work that the narrator (standing for the author) describes himself as ‘an incorrigible Marxist-Humanist.’ It is a pity that Rao’s works aren’t seriously taken by readers and critics.
Remembering him fondly, if I say, ‘May his soul rest in peace’, the incorrigible Marxist might protest from wherever he is.
