OURS is a time of transition. The modern Indian community is looking back and evaluating the path it has taken. Various art forms, including literature, are being reviewed and re-evaluated; and this is a curious, decisive time. It is true that texts of art are always engaged in a dialogue and a confrontation with the established value system. Such texts perform the social and ethical duty of keeping alive the space to confront the establishment, and serve as conscience keepers.

Besides aesthetics and poetics, factors such as caste, class and gender play a big role in such a re-evaluation. They enable new ways of reading and help foreground hitherto neglected aspects in art and literature. Attributing the change solely to fresh research and op-ed articles on ‘social justice’ and ‘gender’ would be to ignore the persistent efforts of the social struggles of the past few decades.

U.R. Ananthamurthy (URA) produced a major part of his literary corpus when a self-proclaimed modernity (navya) was in vogue. I use the term ‘self-proclaimed’ because the modernist’ attempt to differ from the pre-modernists (navodaya) was over-emphasized. As Edgar Alan Poe says: ‘Let the poet be modern / Modern from head to toe’.

 

This was what navya writers believed in. I say this keeping in mind the immense contributions navya writers made to aesthetics and poetics. The navya movement began as an ambitious protest against pretentiousness and self-deception, but often fell into its own trap. Because the navya writers believed in socialist humanism and considered liberalism as the myth of the weak, they often created literary texts that were anti-life.

Elsewhere I have observed that URA’s oeuvre can be identified with the theoretical phrase, ‘This is mine, yet not mine’ (William Blake), and I endorsed it as a life-evolving process. The protagonists of his ‘trilogy’ (writer K.V. Subbanna named it as such) represent the three stages of evolution. If Naranappa and Jagannatha of the novels Samskara and Bharathipura represent the larva and the caterpillar, Krishnappa of the novel Avasthe (Predicament) evolves into a butterfly. It is an evolutionary process from Naranappa to Krishnappa (from vyashti to samashti).

URA began his confrontation with the value system in a limited way through Naranappa and prepared the ground to convert it into a bigger narrative through Jagannatha. The process reached completion when Krishnappa, by going beyond his own concerns, yielded to the well-being of the community. I wish to clarify that URA’s narrative, for me, includes not merely his stories and novels but his cultural criticism, public talks, and even his dreams of a common school system.

URA was committed to the role of a Kannada and pan-Indian intellectual, fulfilling all functions expected of such a personality. The fundamental question is whether his female protagonists derive from this position. There is little dispute that URA consistently confronted the question of class and caste. As for the feminine sensibility – in his own words – he was interested in it but did not really confront it. This aspect can be discussed by comparing URA’s perspective with two of his contemporaries – writers who focused on women as an inevitable part of their writing – Lankesh and Shanthinath Desai.

Lankesh’s writing is invested with both an attraction to and restlessness towards women as he traces different paths of liberation for women. In an anthology of stories, Kallu Karaguva Samaya (When Stones Melt), the women protagonists Shyamale, Devi and Subhadra, like Anebaddi Rangavva of ‘Mussanjeya Katha Prasanga’, are all travellers in the great gender journey.

 

The question here is whether the credit should go to Lankesh, the story writer, or Lankesh, the person who threw himself into Karantaka’s public life with a deep passion for changing the sensibility of a whole community. It cannot be denied that Lankesh’s sensibility strengthened women’s discourses in Kannada like never before; it also catalyzed the emergence of genuine women writers through his weekly, Lankesh Patrike, whose writings inspired women to seek liberation on their own.

Shanthinatha Desai is one of the very few writers with a genuine modernist sensibility. He treats women as equal to men. He succeeds in portraying the shifting perspectives and sensibilities of urban women. He grasps the turmoil of women in the institution of marriage. The difficulties and sexual aspects of a women’s life are all grasped without prejudice.

 

Women occupy a prime place in many of URA’s prominent stories and novels. How are they represented there? Let us look at some of his popular characters who are most debated. Chandri of Samskara is very well known. As Naranappa’s low caste mistress, she plays a crucial role in helping cultivate the inner rebel in his personality. However, her character becomes significant for showing Praneshacharya a way of liberation. She treats Praneshacharya, devastated in the face of life and death questions, with a deep sense of empathy (jeevakarunya), and thus leads him to a very primordial experience.

Scholars have viewed this situation in curious ways. The new world that she ‘reveals’ to him and the unique experiences she provides, transforms him into a new personality. Praneshacharya’s very view of life turns upside down. Much before this incident, Naranappa invites Praneshacharya to sleep with a woman like Chandri. Praneshacharya, undergoing this experience in new circumstances, is one of the most successful parts of the novel.

Praneshacharya, who has experienced life only through theoretic profundity, ‘lives’ it intensely by fulfilling his carnal desires with Chandri. How would this look from Chandri’s perspective? Or, how is Chandri’s character represented in this situation? Doesn’t it seem that she is merely a tool to provide enlightenment for Praneshacharya? Not even a small portion of the legitimacy of his renewed experience of life is granted to her. Her experience is of no relevance at all. It looks like it was her destiny or duty to provide an intense experience to him. There is no hint of anything to her beyond her erotic personality. She is at best a mere sensuous body and not a person in her own right. Now juxtapose this with Praneshacharya’s deep scholarly and intellectual personality. URA’s modernism had not adequately acknowledged the question of gender.

Let me make my theoretical premise clearer. It is possible to perceive a woman’s personality in all its sophistication only by those who have experienced ‘inner awareness and conflict’ about women. This is evident in the two writers discussed earlier: Lankesh and Desai.

 

Let us consider another woman character of URA’s. Yamunakka of Ghatashraddha is construed as one with an erotic premise who buries herself in mundane chores. The patriarchal violence is documented in detail. Towards the end, she sacrifices herself to the mundane demands of life. It is a true portrayal of the mundane realities of life. But what do we see when we compare the sexual experience of Praneshacharya with those of Yamunakka? For Praneshacharya, the experience provides a ‘divine’ moment, but Yamunakka appears as one who cannot restrain her sensual demands. She is haunted by a primordial physical need, but the author fails to subject the patriarchy of her situation to inquiry. This clearly indicates that URA does not subject a patriarchal system to the necessary introspection or protest the values that subject Yamunakka to unbearable turmoil.

One may recall another important Kannada story, ‘Naa Konda Hudugi’ (The Girl I Killed) by Ananda. The protagonist, though not directly responsible for the death of a woman, decides that he will be unable to free himself of this guilt. What is considered primordial and natural for men and women are treated very differently here.

It is easy to argue that Yamunakka is portrayed as a victim of the social system. But representational tactics decide what a fact suggests in creative terms. Naranappa of Samskara, for instance, attempts to overcome his existential reality through liquor, meat and women, while Jagannatha of ‘Bharathipura’ does the same by holding the holy saligrama in his hand. However, this manner of perception is specifically missing in the representation of Yamunakka.

That URA can represent women with sympathy but not with insight is evident in his portrayal of Gouri in the novel Avasthe. On her return from America, she meets Krishnappa who is already bedridden with paralysis. She approaches him out of the spontaneous love that she holds for him. Interpreting it to mean only an interest in sex, he says that he is in no position to reciprocate. Krishnappa cannot even imagine that a woman could approach him in a maternal way. He fails to acknowledge a womanly warmth and intimacy that transcends mere carnal engagement.

 

Why does this happen? URA believes that the ability of the human mind to deceive and cheat is immense. This propels much of his writing and thinking. There is a proximate relation between this belief and his views about women. He is a writer whose stories are self-consciously modernist. He believes his stories liberate women because of the manner in which they are portrayed. This is the kind of self-deception the stories are sub-consciously suffused with. Starting from Krishnappa of Avasthe, through the protagonist of Bara (Drought), all the way to the hero of his important last story ‘Pacche Resort’, it is the same.

Consider Rekha, the female lead of ‘Bara’. This is the story of an IAS officer who, despite believing that he can usher in change as a bureaucrat, fails. Though more sensitive than her husband, she is confined to following the experiments of her husband. ‘Pacche Resort’ is an acclaimed story that URA wrote in the last phase of his career. Here too, the female protagonist Bhagirathi faces a similar fate. Starting her career as an IAS officer, she gives up her job. But where does she find meaning in life? It is in the adoration of her mature body by her childhood friend, who utters her name, ‘Rathi, Rathi’ (Rathi, the wife of Kama).

 

Without critically engaging with and interrogating a value system that consumes and discards woman, an author indirectly endorses the system. URA’s stories are fraught with such danger. It is sad to see that a great writer, who practised a healthy socialism throughout his life and held Mahashweta Devi, Medha Patkar and Aruna Roy as the heroes of contemporary India, failed to adequately address the question of women. Yet, while lamenting such a loss, we need to take into account another social truth as well. It is relevant to us for various reasons.

How we choose to confront gender and other challenges posed by Indian society matters. The objectivity, openness and self-criticism required to address caste, particularly Dalit issues, is not easy to come by. Addressing the feminist question is equally difficult. Hence the changing evaluative criteria in art and literature have become an ordeal by fire for all writers, male or female.

I am aware of presenting my views in a slightly exaggerated manner, but I believe this is necessary to address a deep-rooted problem.

 

* Translated by S.R. Ramakrishna.