Jnanpith award winner UR Ananthamurthy passed away on Friday after being hospitalised with an infection and fever. The Kannada writer had been on dialysis to treat a kidney disease for a few years. He was 81.
Ananthamurthy was a towering influence on Kannada literature and one of the key architects of its Navya or “new” movement. Born in 1932 into a conservative Brahmin household in a village in Karnataka’s Shimoga district, Ananthamurthy later became a Gandhian socialist. In one of his first and most famous literary works Samskara, he questioned the straitjacketed cultural atmosphere he grew up in. He continued to dismantle biases of caste and social hierarchy in all his works. Even though he studied and was eloquent in English he chose to write in Kannada since he believed it rooted his thinking.
The celebrated writer was never one to shy away from controversy. Ananthamurthy incurred the wrath of the BJP and its supporters in the run up to the during the 2014 Lok Sabha elections by calling Narendra Modi a “political bully” and declaring that he wouldn’t want to live in and India under Modi.
Apart from the Jnanpith, Ananthamurthy won the Rajyothsava award in 1984, the Padma Bhushan in 1998, the Hindu Literary Prize in 2011 and was on the Man Booker shortlist in 2013. Here is a speech by Ananthamurthy where he argues that the most spiritual aspiration of man is the aspiration of equality.
Ananthamurthy was a towering influence on Kannada literature and one of the key architects of its Navya or “new” movement. Born in 1932 into a conservative Brahmin household in a village in Karnataka’s Shimoga district, Ananthamurthy later became a Gandhian socialist. In one of his first and most famous literary works Samskara, he questioned the straitjacketed cultural atmosphere he grew up in. He continued to dismantle biases of caste and social hierarchy in all his works. Even though he studied and was eloquent in English he chose to write in Kannada since he believed it rooted his thinking.
The celebrated writer was never one to shy away from controversy. Ananthamurthy incurred the wrath of the BJP and its supporters in the run up to the during the 2014 Lok Sabha elections by calling Narendra Modi a “political bully” and declaring that he wouldn’t want to live in and India under Modi.
Apart from the Jnanpith, Ananthamurthy won the Rajyothsava award in 1984, the Padma Bhushan in 1998, the Hindu Literary Prize in 2011 and was on the Man Booker shortlist in 2013. Here is a speech by Ananthamurthy where he argues that the most spiritual aspiration of man is the aspiration of equality.
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