Kerala - Kochi   

On society and `critical insiders'

Staff Reporter

I want all regions to retain theirdesicultures to resist the American concept of popular culture, says U.R. Ananthamoorthy

KOCHI: It was a confluence of great minds at the Orthic Creative Centre on Wednesday. Writer U.R. Ananthamoorthy spoke about poet K. Ayyappa Panicker and inaugurated an exhibition of paintings by T. Kaladharan. Artist M.V. Devan was present.

The function was jointly organised by the Orthic Creative Centre, M. Govindan Foundation and the Kerala Kalapeetom.

Dr. Ananthamoorthy began with his appreciation of the venue - the top floor of Kaladharan's residence, which has been converted into a studio.

He said he was pleased to find such a place in Kochi, which is fast becoming a metropolitan city.

"The danger of being a metropolitan is that the city loses its character. I want all regions to retain their desi cultures to resist the American concept of popular culture," Dr. Ananthamoorthy said.

This, Dr. Ananthamoorthy told the gathering, would give the energy to be "critical insiders" or the "7 per cent villains" as Kannada poet and scholar Gopalakrishna Adiga noted in his poem.

This minority served to check decay in society.

Like Arnold Toynbee's "internal proletariat," there would always be a minority which would fight the rot in society. Jesus Christ belonged to this minority. So was Mahatma Gandhi.

Dr. Ananthamoorthy warned that those fuelled by the energy provided by the group, which included M. Govindan "who was to us what Ezra Pound was to British and American literature in spotting talents," Adiga and Ayyappa Panicker, often found more enemies than friends.

He recalled his tour to China when the Tiananmen Square massacre occurred.

There was no mention about the incident in the media, while there was blood in the streets. Back home, he wrote about it and the Left parties were not happy about it.

Dr. Ananthamoorthy was then the Vice-Chancellor of Mahatma Gandhi University.

The church invited him for a lecture.

He told the gathering that Catholicism was another centrist ideology, like Communism, created by Europe. "So I have no friends," he said.

The intellectual honesty which groups of yesteryear had was able to fight mass hysteria.

`Vulgarisation'

Now, a sort of vulgarisation was creeping into public debates. Like a television channel using a commercial Hindi film to discuss about the relevance of marriage as an institution.

"We used to discuss about the marital institution on the basis of `Anna Karenina," he said.

Today, a book could become a classic even before it was published through media hype generated by the hefty advance paid by the publisher.

Writers like Kafka had to wait long to get recognised. The struggle was not to end up making kitsch, Dr. Ananthamoorthy said.

Forty-five works by Kaladharan, done in the eight months since Orthic Creative Centre was established, are on display. The exhibition will be on till Wednesday.

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