The decision of the Karnataka government to notify a bungalow in Mysore and declare it as a heritage building under the Karnataka Town & Country Planning Act and its plans to convert it as a memorial and a museum have stirred a hornet’s nest with a clutch of Kannada writers, intellectuals and historians decrying the government’s moves and labelling the outlay to be expended as a waste of taxpayer’s money.
The building in question belonged to the celebrated novelist Rasipuram Krishnaswamy Narayan who had occupied it for two decades during which he had penned some of his most famous works. Protesters are also piqued that such a honour has not yet been extended to famous Kannada playwright T P Kailasam whose house in the city continues to be in a dilapidated state.
The grouse of those who are opposing the government’s plans is that Narayan was a Tamil and not a Kannadiga and that he wrote in English and not Kannada. There can of course be no disputing the fact that Narayan was neither a Kannadiga and that he wrote only in English, hailed as the country’s lingua franca but should that be a reason for denying him a memorial and a museum in a city that he adored?
Narayan is however not short of supporters either. Two distinguished leading lights in the literary firmament of Karnataka who are Jnanpith awardees to boot have rushed to the late writer’s defence and have put up a spirited argument in his favour. Author, playwright and actor, Girish Karnad, himself a Konkani, who writes in Kannada and English, has gone on record to say that some people saying that R K Narayan is not a Kannadiga is absurd. U R Ananthamurthy, the author of some of the greatest novels in Kannada, has opined that anyone who stays and works in Karnataka qualifies to be called a Kannadiga. The writers however are not very enthused when it comes to converting the building into a heritage site and constructing a memorial, especially Ananthamurthy who feels that memorials and museums really do not serve any worthwhile purpose.
The latest to join the chorus is Narayan’s brother and ace cartoonist R K Laxman’s wife Kamala who avers that Narayan was an international writer his heart was in Mysore. She goes on to add that he was very loyal to Malgudi, which formed the backdrop for many of his novels. Although the writer himself has not put it in so many words, the general feeling among his admirers and the literati is that Malgudi is an acronym of (Mal)leswaram and Basavana(gudi), both suburbs in Bangalore. It is also a fact that the milieu in many of his novels like Swami and Friends and Malgudi Days was the city of Mysore and places around it.
There are two angles to the issue: one is the identity of the writer and the other the need to declare his abode as a heritage building and turn it into a memorial. While the second part that involves an economic decision is best left to the fiscal wisdom of the state, it is the first part that of denying the writer a Kannada identity that is painful. A writer like Narayan had not just a pan India identity but an international identity as well.