All through his eventful life, a youthful rebelliousness characterised the Kannada writer Chandrashekar Patil, or Champa, who died at 83 in Bengaluru on Tuesday. Perhaps no other writer was as consistently critical of the establishment as Champa. His biting wit and sarcasm spared none, and it had the power to wound those in power. During the Emergency, he wrote a street play satirising Indira Gandhi and her yes-men. It landed him in jail, where he spent close to a month.
Champa wrote lyrical poetry, absurd plays, and literary criticism, and was closely associated with the Navya (modernist) and Bandaya (protest) movements in Kannada literature. Born in 1939 in Hattimattur, near Dharwad, he went to school in Haveri and college in Dharwad, where he switched from science to economics, and finally veered towards language and literature. Back in Dharwad after studying in Hyderabad and Leeds, armed with an MA in linguistics, he found his true calling in teaching. He became a popular professor, teaching not just English literature but also the art of irreverence and laughter. Indeed, Champa could direct the humour inwards and laugh as much at himself as he could at vain writers whose works he would rip apart in his magazine. He would tell people who came visiting, “Look there, that’s Dharwad jail. And on this side is the mental hospital. What you see in the middle is my house.” As an activist championing the cause of Kannada, he took to the streets often, and made his point forcefully, getting governments to pay heed to the challenges of school education in the language. As president of the Kannada Sahitya Parishat, Karnataka’s biggest literary organisation, he stood up admirably to political pressures that could have stifled voices of dissent. The literary magazine Champa edited, Sankramana, had an unbroken run for 50 years, no mean achievement for a little magazine with a niche readership.
Champa was the recipient of many awards, including the Pampa Prashasti, Karnataka’s highest literary honour. He returned it in protest when his scholar-friend M M Kalburgi was shot dead in 2015 by assailants yet to be brought to book. For about six decades, Champa shared the limelight with such other greats from the region as Girish Karnad and Chandrashekhar Kambar. He was a voice that neither the literary world nor the government could ignore. He often spoke about the inspiration he derived from Shalmala, the mythical river believed to flow under the hills in the Dharwad region. His voice will similarly remain a subterranean inspiration to all those who rebel against authoritarianism and literary hogwash.
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