H S Shivaprakash | |
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| Born | Hulkuntemath Shivamurthy Sastri Shivaprakash 1954 (age 70–71) |
| Occupation | Writer, editor, translator, professor, former Director-Tagore Centre, Berlin |
| Nationality | Indian |
| Genre | Poetry, play, criticism |
| Subject | Indian theatre,Kannada literature,Vachanas,Oral traditions,Mythology |
| Literary movement | Navya andBandaya movement |
Hulkuntemath Shivamurthy Sastri Shivaprakash (born 1954) is a leading poet and playwright writing inKannada. He is professor at the School of Arts and Aesthetics,Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi. He heads the Cultural Centre at Berlin, known as the Tagore Centre, as Director run by Indian Council for Cultural Relations (ICCR). He has seven anthologies of poems, twelve plays, and several other books to his credit. His works have been widely translated into English, French, Italian, Spanish, German, Polish,Hindi,Malayalam,Marathi,Tamil andTelugu. His plays have been performed inKannada, Hindi,Meitei, Rabha, Assamese, Bodo, Tamil and Malayalam. Shivaprakash is also a well-known authority onvachana literature,Bhakti movements of India, andSufi and other mystic traditions.[1]
Shivaprakash was born inBangalore in June 1954. His father Shivamurthy Shastri was an eminentVeerashaiva scholar and served under the erstwhileMaharaja of Mysore. After obtaining his MA inEnglish literature fromBangalore University, Shivaprakash joined theKarnataka government service as an English lecturer and taught for over two decades at various colleges inBangalore andTumkur. In 1996, he was appointed the editor ofIndian Literature, the bimonthly journal ofSahitya Akademi in New Delhi. Shivaprakash joined the School of Arts and Aesthetics inJawaharlal Nehru University asassociate professor in 2001, where he is professor ofAesthetics andPerformance studies. In 2000, he was selected for the International Writing Program of the School of Letters,University of Iowa, and is honorary fellow of the school. Professor H. S. Shiva Prakash served as Director of Tagore Centre in Berlin (2011-2014). He retired from JNU in 2019 and has been living in Bangalore since 2021.
Shivaprakash published his first anthology of poemsMilarepa in 1977, when he was still 23. It was immediately recognized as a fresh voice inKannada poetry.[2] But Shivaprakash gained popularity and acclaim only with his second anthology,Malebidda Neladalli in 1983. The poem "Samagara Bhimavva" became an instant hit, which brought him to the centre-stage of post-Bandaya Kannada poetry.[3] Since then Shivaprakash has published four collections of poetry,Anukshana Charite,Suryajala,Maleye Mantapa andMatte Matte and two anthologies of poems in translation,Maruroopagalu andNanna Mainagara, and edited the translation of contemporaryGujarati poetry,Samakaleena Gujarati Kavitegalu andMalayalam poetryManasantara. Shivaprakash's poems make use ofmysticsymbolism, dream-images,archetypes and motifs from everyday life to portray the nature of power and the contradictions of modern life.
Shivaprakash published his first playMahachaitra in 1986. The stage-adaptation of the play by C.G.Krishnaswamy for the troopSamudaya became a major hit. The play was based on the life and times of the 12th centuryVeerashaiva saintBasavanna and narrated the struggles of the artisan saints of the city of Kalyana (nowBasavakalyan) through aMarxist analytic. The play received rave reviews and was acknowledged as a landmark inKannada literature.[4]Mahachaitra is recognized as one among the three greatest plays out of the 25-odd plays onBasavanna written in Kannada, the other two beingP. Lankesh'sSankranti andGirish Karnad'sTaledanda.
Shivaprakash won theKarnatakaSahitya Akademi award for this play. His other plays includeSultan Tipu,Shakespeare Swapnanauke,Manteswamy Kathaprasanga,Madari Madayya,Madurekanda,Madhavi,Matrika,Makarachandra,Sati,Cassandra andMaduvehennu. He has also translatedShakespeare'sKing Lear and adaptedFederico García Lorca'sThe Shoemaker's Prodigious Wife into Kannada under the titleMallammana Mane Hotlu andShakespeare'sMacbeth under the nameMaranayakana Drishtanta.Manteswamy Kathaprasanga, a play about a 16th-century Dalit saint was made into a successful stage adaptation by director Suresh Anagalli and produced over 300 shows. It kindled interest in this obscure saint and the life of Manteswamy has since been a major area of research in Kannada academia. Most of Shivaprakash's plays are inspired by Marxism andShaivamysticism, particularly Veerashaivism andKashmir Shavism. The plays also employ motifs fromSufism and other forms of mysticism likeMahayana andZenBuddhism. Structurally, the plays are inspired by JapaneseNoh theatre andBrecht'sepic theatre.
Mahachaitra was prescribed as a textbook for undergraduate courses in three universities of Karnataka. In 1995, nearly a decade after its publication, when it was prescribed as a textbook inGulbarga University, it caused a heated controversy. A section ofLingayats under the leadership of the nunShri Shri Jagadguru Mate Mahadevi accused the work of portrayingBasavanna in poor light and urged theGovernment of Karnataka to ban the play. It led to a legal battle and the play was eventually withdrawn from the university syllabus.[5] TheMahachaitra controversy seems to have inspiredGitha Hariharan's English novelIn Times of Siege (2003), which narrates the story of a professor in anopen university inDelhi, who finds himself in the midst of a controversy over a chapter onBasavanna which he wrote for an undergraduate textbook.
In English:
A research paper on Shivaprakash's plays
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