K.V. Subbanna (: ಕುಂತಗೋಡು ವಿಭೂತಿ ಸುಬ್ಬಣ್ಣ) (1932-16 July 2005)

Kuntagodu Vibhuthi Subbanna Subbanna's life and career are Evidence enough To hope that it has not been the end of Gandhi after all........

Subbanna says " He needs only that which he can recognise in the little community. Any claim beyond such recognition would only be intellectual arrogance."
He was constantly in search for methods by which harmony could be achieved.It was by no means compromise; 

K.V. Subbanna (: ಕುಂತಗೋಡು ವಿಭೂತಿ ಸುಬ್ಬಣ್ಣ) (1932-16 July 2005)

was an acclaimed dramatist and writer in Kannada.

 He was the founder of the world famous NINASAM (Neelanakantheshwara Natya Sangha)

drama instituteFounded in 1949 in Heggodu, Shimoga, Ninasam, under the guidance of

 K.V. Subbanna, made significant contribution to Kannada theatre and other performing arts.

He was awarded, in 1991, the Ramon Magsaysay Award for Journalism, Literature,

and Creative Communication Arts,]

 A PROFOUND sense of community distinguishes everything

 K.V. Subbanna has done. Heggodu, a tiny hamlet in Sagar taluk, No bigger than one's palm' has, in the quiet, Unassuming ways of Malnad achieved the impossible. My parents and teachers encouraged me to study: he was born in Mundigesara village. 
He would travel 12 kilometres every day to Sagar to complete my basic education at the Government High School.He had  learnt a lot from my parents and teachers. They encouraged him to pursue higher education and thus 
He joined Intermediate College at Shimoga with Chemistry,Botany and Zoology as my subjects. 
The foundation he  got then from people like Narasimhachar was very helpful and resourceful.
Narasimhachar helped me develop an interest in literature and arts.

He was a true Gandhian and a model teacher.

 As I was also interested in Yakshagana and theatre

 His  parents encouraged him to see company dramas and participate in social activities.His  father K.V. Ramappa and mother,

who were also interested in promoting rural arts and culture

, built Ninasam in the village.
He  did  B.A. (Hons) in Literature at Maharajah's College, Mysore.

 Narayana Rao, a Botany lecturer,influenced him through his simplicity and knowledge. Similarly, English lecturer Shama Rao taught me Shakespeare's works. 

There were stalwarts — Gopala Swami, founder of Mysore AIR as principal, D'Souza, Ranganna, Kuvempu —and a number of other teachers who taught him.Kuvempu taught him for three years.

They were only 12 students in the class we never missed any cultural programmes held at college.

Shivarama Karanth's writing fascinated me very much.
“To defy power where ever it is important'' —
attracted me to his socialistic thinking.

The concepts of community and democracy gave him

a great fillip in all my endeavours, especially Ninasam.
One incident he never forget: When he was a student at Sagar,

 one day a house near the school caught fire.

Classes were immediately called off and within minutes hundreds of people gathered (though there was no communication system)

with buckets of water and helped put out the fire.This incident taught him to utilise concepts of community effectively

. he had this firm belief that if the community is allowed

 to participate and is treated with honesty and dignity,

 members of the community will always respond with commitment.
he had not forced his  ideas on his family:

 Hiswife Shylaja has helped me in all of Ninasam's activities.

His  son Akshara, who studied at the National School of Drama,

has stood by him, so have my daughter in-law Vidya and grandson Shishira.Lot of volunteers are also showing keen interest in promoting the activities of Ninasam. he had not forced anybody to take up this work. 
He  don't preach anybody:
 He uses to  visit Ninasam regularly and enjoy the activities of the institution. He never   preaching or guiding anybody but spend time reading despite his eye problem.

 At the age of 70 ages, He  had  started to learn more from others.

 It has reversed the unidirectional flow of the cultural,  
Literary and intellectual energies, 
Which in post independence India has been from villages and little towns to the cosmologies.  
In short,It turned out to be not the end of the empire but the end of Gandhi, The author of an eccentric, anti-modern treatise called 
`Hind Swaraj'. It is in this brave new world that Subbanna decided to reconstruct his little community at Heggodu.  
Neenasam which began as an experiment in community theatre 
gradually evolved into a cultural space to which 
plays,

Films,

Books,

Music and ideas 
Subbanna's Akshara Prakashana has published some of the finest writings in Kannada. The Sahitya Shibiras (literary workshops) Of which over 100 have been conducted in all parts of Karnataka Have initiated hundreds into the art of literary appreciation. K. V. Subbanna himself doesn't see this impressive catalogue of achievements as extraordinary. For him, the living community in Heggodu is the final arbiter in all ethical and aesthetic matters. He admits that like Gandhi's ideal village, this community could also be an imagined community. But he is also keenly aware of how the history of post-independence India has impacted upon the community.His own literary-critical writings throw up very original insights because of his sensitivity to history. His introduction to Loka Shakuntala, a yakshagana adaptation of Kalidasa's Abijnana Shakuntalum interprets the play as a dramatic enactment of  
"palace culture" (monarchy) usurping the 
"ashrama culture" (tribal culture), 
something that Kalidasa had witnessed in his times.  
Writing long before Romila Thaper's scholarly book on the play was written, Subbanna emancipated it for readers like me from the "king jilts young ashrama girl" frame and relocated it into its real history of empires trampling upon tribal communitarian values. In his most recent work on Kavirajamarga, the ninth century Kannada treatise on poetics,  

Subbanna makes it a cultural text which is open to the post Foucault debates on language, discourse and history. His little monograph on Kuvempu revisits Kuvempu as a site of the cultural paradigms which have shaped modern India.  
Profound understanding When the late D.R. Nagaraj gave a talk about the 12th century mystic poet Allamaprabhu,Subbanna and became excited about this remarkable poet.
But later, this is what Subbanna had to say:
“Between Allama and Kalidasa, I choose Kalidasa.”

Subbanna was always slightly suspicious about things that sounded radical.It's probably because he had seen the danger of radical thought taken to an extreme.In Allama there is an element of such radicalism.Subbanna had said, “I don't like all this.”

When you say ‘don't like' you are exercising a personal choice.
However, in Subbanna's mind there was room for everything.

Else, it would have been impossible to build an institution like Ninasam.Subbanna had a classical mind and hence his personal choices were different.This is also why he had no faith in conflict.

He was constantly in search for methods by which harmony could be achieved.It was by no means compromise; 
he called it negotiation.When there is an intense conflict of ideas,
the negotiations that emerge in the heat of that moment are very important.”
Negotiation is the progress we make post conflict.
In a conflict prior to negotiation,
Creative energies of both sides open up.
Arguing like this I had further said threateningly,
“if you are indifferent to the creative powers that take birth during a conflict,
you will eventually lose interest in the creative process itself.”
Such an exchange was possible only with Subbanna, for, in him,
there was space for everything.
Subbanna had no  problems.
Bhartruhari, the great Sanskrit poet,
was someone he meditated upon every day.
He had his Kalidasa and Dhwanyaloka.
Pampa was his favourite in Kannada. 
 A classical mind can nurture desires of reconstructing the past.
This can be very dangerous. But
Subbanna's mind was not the conservative, classical mind.
It was a liberal one.

 He was always engaged in rejuvenating the dreams and hopes of the past, not reconstructing it.One can visit the Vedas,

Upanishads, Kalidasa, Bhasa, Quran, and any text in fact without being a revivalist.Subbanna was a great revisionist.

He was someone who showed us how one could go back to the past,

revisit Bhasa, Kalidasa and Pampa and rework them in to the present.What about the great poet Pu. Ti. Narasimhachar

whom we had forgotten in the fury of the Bandaya Movement?

 He unravelled the relevance of the poet in his reading of the poem,

 “Gokula Nirgamana”.Subbanna's attempt to understand the shifts urbanisation brought in rural life through Kalidasa is extremely significant.Kalidasa was not a writer of rural sensibilities;

 his creative world was replete with symbols of urban life.

This is how Subbanna's reading of Kalidasa has to be understood.

Subbanna believed in viewing with generosity the transformations

of the present and suppressing the arrogance that stemmed from an anxiety for the future. Hence many branded him as having a Brahminical mind.Subbanna knew this was not true.

Subbanna never said anything that he did not mean.

K.V. Subbanna, one of the finest thinkers of Karnataka
died five years ago on July 16.
 He was one of the finest classical minds,

It always seemed important to understand how
Subbanna's mind worked.
As long as he lived, 
He called friends at least once a week and it invariably ended in an argument.Subbanna the repository of all the knowledge and aesthetics he needs. Chewing betelnut, in his diminutive Malnad manners, 

Subbanna says he needs only that which he can recognise in the little community. Any claim beyond such recognition would only be intellectual arrogance. 
Subbanna himself refuses to be framed by 
intellectual categories and theatrical models, 
especially because he is suspicious of the colonial distortions they bring with them, 
his work has its significance within the nationalist paradigm. 
Of course, he avoids essentialist categories and refuses to fall back upon the notion of a pure,  
uncontaminated site called the native which
remains untouched by history. 
In his work on Kavirajamarga he constructs 
`Kannada' as a continuity shaped by geography, history and politics. Instead of making any claims about the tolerant, 
gas, Subbanna talks about the compulsions of cross-cultural contacts, multi-linguistic contexts and the heterogeneity of sub cultures, which have made `Kannada' basically pluralist. 
Subbanna's proposition that `Kannada' is a historically conditioned category. Subbanna's life and career are evidence enough  
To hope that it has not been the end of Gandhi after all. 
Awards and recognition 

Ramon Magsaysay Award in 1991  
Sangeet Natak Akademi Award in 1994  
Sahitya Akademi Award in 2003  
Padma Shree 
In 2004 Playing many parts in his time,  
SUBBANNA also crafts traditional Indian myths  
and tales into plays that probe modern issues. 
As a publisher, he brings out new works by regional writers 
as well as his own poems and translations of foreign movie scripts and books.
 With financial prudence and a gift for bringing others into leadership, 
SUBBANNA has built Ninasam to last. 
Its headquarters in Heggodu boasts a library,  
rehearsal hall, 
guesthouse,  
and office,
in addition to its famous theater. 
At fifty-nine, SUBBANNA says, 
he now leaves most of the real work to junior colleagues  
who include his son, Ashkara 
. But as one admirer has pointed out, self-effacing 
SUBBANNA still carries on multiple projects, 
"seemingly oblivious to the scale of his activities."
 In electing K. V. SUBBANNA to receive the 1991  
Ramon Magsaysay Award for Journalism, Literature, and Creative Communication 
Arts, the Board of Trustees recognizes his enriching rural  
Karnataka with the world's best films and the delight and wonder of the living stage.

Subbann gone beyond curtain on on 16^th July 2005.

along with betel nut in his mouth----Neelanjan