Theatre artiste Master Hirannaiah, who passed away on Thursday, is described as someone who played the role of the “leader of Opposition” through his art in the 60s and 70s. This was at a time when the Congress was the only dominant party in the State and the Opposition was weak.
“Politicians used to fear his play Lanchaavatara . The play and Mr. Hirannaiah were in a way the real Opposition of the day. He was vehemently anti-Congress, but spared none,” said senior politician B.L. Shankar. “I remember once a Minister was the chief guest at a play. Mr. Hirannaiah strongly criticised him on the stage as part of the play. The Minister later said he learnt a lot and would correct himself,” said theatre personality and director T.N. Seetaram.
What made Mr. Hirannaiah the phenomenon he was? In an interview to Karnataka Nataka Academy, he said he gave voice to what people thought of politics but had feared expressing.
Theatre personality B. Suresha described him as “the tabloid of his age”. In fact, his aura seemed to decline with the advent of tabloids in Kannada, he observed. Mr. Hirannaiah once advertised his plays as “tomorrow’s newspaper”. “He was a product of his times,” said Mr. Seetaram.
However, his political views also often came under criticism for being myopic, right wing and even Brahminical. “He had a middle-class understanding of politics. Corruption was the only issue he engaged with and did not go beyond that when social justice movements defined the age. In his later years, he became brazen with his right-wing Hindutva views,” observed senior journalist Vijayamma.
But, he was an open book. “What people saw of him on stage as an artiste was also what we saw as his children. He never bowed before any government and taught us also to preserve our integrity,” his son Gurunath told The Hindu on Thursday.
Just as his acerbic tongue won him thousands of fans, the style of his plays were once also panned by critics for “lack of theatre art”, being “too speechy” and “personality oriented around himself”. But the popularity of the plays eventually made critics come around to acknowledge it as a new genre. The dialogues of his plays were such a hit that its audio cassettes were much sought after in the 1980s and 1990s.
He retired from the stage after a spinal surgery in 2012. His last act was in 2015, when he made an exception to stage Lanchaavatara one last time for a benefit show.
