The writer as a loner

SL Bhyrappa, a first timer at Zee-Jaipur Literature Festival this year, is one of the most popular novelists in Kannada. Widely sold and translated, the winner of several prestigious awards, Bhyrappa has also been a controversial figure who has been accused of pandering to Hindu sentiments in several of his novels. In this email interaction with Jiby J Kattakayam, he clarifies some charges.

Your novels are difficult to slot among prevalent trends in contemporary Kannada literature. You're also something of a loner in Kannada literary circles. Is this deliberate?

I am deeply engaged in the study of philosophy as an academic discipline. In contrast, other contemporary writers in Kannada are mostly activists or influenced by Marxism or social and political ideologies. They take sociological, economic and political theories for philosophy. I do not want my writing to be subservient to ideologies. My themes are of universal concern.

I do not associate with other literary groups. In the beginning, they ignored me; then they started calling me anti-progressive, anti-poor and pro-capitalist. But as my popularity grew among readers and my books were translated into Marathi, Hindi, Sanskrit and other Indian languages, they dubbed me "popular", not serious and literary. But I ignored them and concentrate on my writing. I believe literature is not a product of group thinking. It is purely individualistic.

You have been greatly influenced by Indian philosophical traditions. How did this come about?

Yes, I am influenced by Indian philosophy. Having taught both Indian and Western philosophy at the post-graduate level, I have come to the conclusion that Indian philosophy is more profound. As an Indian, it is also my intellectual legacy. Present day Western philosophy has been reduced to linguistics and psychological analysis. For me Indian philosophy is not merely the Vedas and Upanishads, but includes Buddhism and Jainism, which have much in common with the Vedic tradition. Indian leftists exaggerate the differences in rituals and ignore the common ethos.

Your interpretation of Tipu Sultan as a religious fanatic and his legacy in the best-selling Aavarana stoked a debate in Karnataka. What were your historical sources for this vastly differing interpretation of Tipu?

In 2006, there was a huge controversy when Shankaramutrhy, education minister in BS Yedyurappa's BJP government said in a speech that Tipu had changed the administrative language from Kannada to Persian and this had retarded the growth of Kannada. Leftist intellectuals created an issue over this, with Girish Karnad issuing a statement demanding Shankaramurthy to apologise for spreading a falsehood about "a great son of Karnataka".

At the time, I did thorough research on Tipu and wrote a long article in Vijaya Karnataka (newspaper). I proved with the help of incontrovertible data that Tipu was a rabid fanatic comparable with Aurangzeb, who killed more than one lakh in Malabar for refusing to convert to Islam and destroyed many Hindu temples. He wrote to Zaman Shah of Afghanistan and the Khalif, inviting them to invade India from the north, assuring them that he would invade from the South so that they could together convert India into Islam. On Deepavali, he perpetrated a massacre of Vaishnava devotees in Melukote. Vote bank politics has meant most parties dismiss these as unsubstantiated; the present Congress government in Karnataka has even started to officially celebrate Tipu Jayanti.

What made you take up writing as a profession?

After my MA, I became a lecturer in philosophy at Sardar Patel University, Gujarat. Later, I did my PhD, a comparative study of truth and beauty, and wrote a book on the subject. In the meantime, I wrote my first significant novel Vamshavriksha. When I read the manuscript, I realised that I could be creative only in literature, not in academic research. So I continued as a teacher for a living but devoted all my leisure to study and write literature.

Your critically-acclaimed novel Parva retold the Mahabharata stripped of mythological elements, in a realistic, socio-economic context for a modern audience. What made you do this?

Ramayana and Mahabharata are soaked in mythology, as a result of which their characters appear distant to us. Since I brought these two epics down to earth, so to speak, I could analyse them from different angles. Incidentally, my new book, which tells the story of Ramayana in a realistic mode, from Sita's point of view, was released last week.