Girish Karnad

Famous literature and Bollywood actor Girish Karnad, who gave Bollywood many great films, passed away today. Girish died at his Bangalore home on June 10 at 6.30 am. Girish was 81 years old. Apart from being an actor, he was also an author, award-winning play writer, director. He was seen in the superhit films Ek Tha Tiger and Tiger Zinda Hai opposite Dabangg star Salman Khan.

Karnad was very famous for his style of writing, he is also known for seeing that Karnad saw historical characters in today's context and made society aware of it. He has written many such plays which are proof of this, including his Tughlaq, Yayati and other plays.

Karnad has written many such plays and stories but his famous story has been seen in films like Meri Jung, Apne Paraye, Bhumika, Dor Swamy, Ek Tha Tiger and Tiger Zinda Hai.

Girish Karnad has been awarded several awards. He was honored with Sahitya Akademi Award in 1994, Jnanpith Award in 1998, Padma Shri in 1974, Padma Bhushan in 1992, Sangeet Natak Akademi Award in 1972, Kannada Sahitya Akademi Award in 1992, Jnanpith Award in 1998 and Kalidas Award in 1998. is.

Let me tell you that he was born on 19 May 1938 in Matheran, Maharashtra. He was interested in plays since childhood. Started working in the theater since school. He started his career as a script from the Kannada film Sanskar in 1970.

Even in contemporary theatre, Mr. Karnad has continued to find favour with both his recent works as well as his classics. Some of these revivals have been cutting-edge in their presentation. Pushan Kripalani and Arghya Lahiri’s Hayavadana was a crisply millennial take on the legend, that was performed ‘in the round’. Jyoti Dogra’s Toye harnessed the elemental passions and darker themes of Mr. Karnad’s The Fire and the Rain for a Grotowskian exploration. Mohit Takalkar’s Uney Purey Shahar Ek, the Marathi adaptation of Benda Kaalu on Toast, set up an effective microcosm of a city in flux. Most recently, Sunil Shanbag’s Rakt Kalyan, based on Ram Gopal Bajaj’s Hindi translation of Taledanda, showed us how a medieval-era play written in the backdrop of the mandir-mandal conflict, is still disturbingly relevant to today’s fractious times. It is unlikely that Mr. Karnad’s legacy will be obscured any time so

It is said that thou shalt not speaketh ill of the dead. So I shall refrain from speaking ill of Girish Raghunath Karnad but I shall speak only the truth and nothing but the truth. About eighteen years ago, I wrote a six-part series analyzing Girish Karnad’s most acclaimed plays on my defunct blog, The Rediscovery of India. I began the series declaring that “Girish Karnad is a fine actor, a mediocre director and a terrible playwright. In that order.” I’ll spare the details of what happened in its aftermath.

Suffice to say that after 2014, Karnad’s amorphous durbaris continue to feverishly employ their theatrical skills to out-Bhaktify the real, selfless, and true Narendra Modi’s bhakts.    

In the hindsight these eighteen years have afforded, let me modify that declaration: Girish Karnad is an outstanding political pamphleteer, artful dodger, fine actor, a mediocre director and a terrible playwright.

Three major instances come to mind vis a vis his political pamphleteering. First, his so-called anti-communal campaign against the Datta Peeta, which he abandoned, dumping scores of his blind followers who trusted him to lead from the front. Second, his role as a member of former Chief Minister Siddaramaiah’s Communist Kitchen Cabinet, peddling pure anti-Hindu hate. Three, his political pamphlet named Tipuvina Kanasugalu (The Dreams of Tipu Sultan) masquerading as a play, which was useful for Siddaramaiah’s communal agenda of pushing the cruel “Tipu Jayanti” down the throats of Hindus in Karnataka. On a related note, Tipuvina Kanasugalu is Karnad’s second attempt at glorifying Islamic barbarians and mass-murderers of Hindus as freedom fighters and misunderstood geniuses. The first was his “play,” Tughlaq, which bestowed sainthood upon the genocidal Muslim bigot, the madman Mohammad Bin Tughlaq. Outwardly, the “play” was supposedly based on this historical character but it is evident that Karnad drew a parallel between Tughlaq and Jawaharlal Nehru by characterizing both as misunderstood geniuses who were denied their rightful place in history by the fascist forces of orthodox and regressive Brahmanism.