Satyagraha, socialism and storytellers

In the summer of 1951, even as the Nehru administration was moving the controversial First Amendment to the Constitution (a leading cause of which was the desire to dismantle the Zamindari system), a small hamlet named Kagodu (in Karnataka’s Malnad region) was witnessing a spirited Satyagraha, featuring beleaguered tenants rising up against a powerful landed elite. 

Socialist stalwarts like Ram Manohar Lohia and Jayaprakash Narayan visited Kagodu to issue their blessings to the Satyagraha and cheer up imprisoned protestors, but their hopeful slogan, “land to the tiller”, would stand unfulfilled. 

From the embers of the Satyagraha at Kagodu rose the fiery and idealistic socialist politician Shantaveri Gopala Gowda, whose blistering Assembly speeches would lead a fellow legislator to compare him to Edmund Burke, the 19th-century British parliamentarian. The great historian Edward Gibbon had once called Burke “the most eloquent and rational madman that I ever knew”, and many in post-independence Malnad would come to similar conclusions regarding Gopala Gowda. Quixotic to the bone, Gopala Gowda spent his entire political career in dire poverty, swatting away offers of land and property extended by successive state governments. 

Post-Kagodu, he directed his efforts towards transforming the region into a socialist bastion, vigorously articulating his vision for egalitarian social justice politics. The big changes that he envisioned would only begin to shape up in the decades following his early death, but Gopala Gowda’s colourful, embattled personality had already influenced and inspired a generation of Kannada writers.

The Satyagraha at Kagodu was also a transformative moment in the life of writer U R Ananthamurthy, whose father owned a printing press in Thirthahalli that also served as the de-facto den of the Socialist Party. This is where Ananthamurthy would encounter Gopala Gowda, his soon-to-be political guru. 

In the 1970s, after Gopala Gowda’s death, Ananthamurthy wrote a novel, Avasthe, loosely inspired by his idealistic preceptor, featuring a fiery protagonist named Krishnappa Gowda. Krishnappa dedicates his life to championing the rights of the disenfranchised, but grows weary over a lifetime of limited success: “When your rage has changed nothing around you, is it any wonder that it becomes a mere habit? For the pain caused by such indignation, for the venting of that passion,” Krishnappa tells himself, “the poetry of half-crazed men like Kabir and Allama is a much better means than politics.” 

Across his political career, Gopala Gowda too would mount scathing attacks on bigoted politicians drunk with power. Rational ‘madmen’ guided by romantic ideals, figures like him exemplified the fierce humanism championed by the Kannada literary renaissance of the 20th century. 

Critical lenses

Just a half-hour ride from Thirthahalli lies the village of Kuppali, birthplace of Kuvempu, one of the most revered writers in modern Kannada literature. In his mammoth autobiography, Nenapina Doniyalli, Kuvempu expresses gratitude to the colonial apparatus that brought modern education (and its emancipatory potential) to his doorstep. 

Indeed, he would begin writing verbose, romantic poems in English, until the Irish writer James Cousins urged him to write in Kannada instead, which would then become his lifelong muse. Through his vast corpus of writings and speeches, Kuvempu sought to articulate a universal humanism unfettered by sectarian prejudices, urging youth to cultivate reason and free thought above all else. When the socialist leader J H Patel tabled a speech in Kannada during a Lok Sabha session in the late ‘60s, Kuvempu grew elated that his mother tongue was echoing in Delhi and sentimentally declared Patel to be a veritable hero. 

Kuvempu’s son, the polymathic writer Poornachandra Tejaswi, would forge a more substantial (and personal) connection with Gopala Gowda and his particular brand of socialist idealism. Tejaswi once recalled fondly that the strange conflation of art and activism which the Lohiaites of Shivamogga taught him had created some of the most exciting moments of his youth. However, Tejaswi (just like his father) declined invitations to enter politics full-time, and always preserved his right to indiscriminately critique the establishment. 

Kuvempu might have been innocent of the nitty gritty of mobilisations and grassroots politics, but he admired Lohia’s call for decentralising knowledge traditions through rejuvenation of regional languages, and rallied for the anti-caste movement throughout his life. It was a similar impulse that led Ananthamurthy to decide that he would write in Kannada alone. What united these homebred socialisms was the desire to be critical insiders, to embrace modernity and still retain sympathy for indigenous cultural pasts. All these curious blends of art and activism produced a distinct socialist discourse geographically connected by two prominent epicentres — Shivamogga and Mysuru.

Over the years, in India, the word ‘socialism’ became associated with a strangulated bureaucracy and corruption, and its real potential was soon submerged by the neoliberal paradigm. We seem to have forgotten that there once existed this remarkably mature political culture, a niche desi socialism right in our backyard that abhorred financial greed, condemned dogmatism, and saw literature as an indispensable guide to ethical reckonings. In our present search for more sustainable and egalitarian political imaginations, these visions might yet prove to be helpful and timely allies.

(The writer is a researcher and author of ‘Rama Bhima Soma: Cultural Investigations into Modern Karnataka’)

U R Ananthamurthy

The cover of ‘Avasthe’.

Poornachandra Tejaswi

Kuvempu

Shantaveri Gopala Gowda

U R Ananthamurthy

Ram Manohar Lohia

Kuvempu