Vinayaka Krishna
Gokak, the fifth person to win the Jnanpith award from Karnataka, was born on August 9,
1909. He had his primary and high school education in Savanur, got his B.A. in 1929 and
M.A. in 1931. In 1931, he began his professional career as an Assistant Professor in
Fergusson College, Pune and became the principal of D.E.Society's Willington College,
Sangli, after finishing his advanced studies with distinction, at Oxford, in 1936. But,
soon he gave up his principalship following an incident that hurt his self-esteem, and the
resultant unemployment set him on a path of serious introspection. In 1946, he went to
Rajasthan and set up a college in its desert region and in 1949, with the reorganisation
of Indian states, his services in Rajasthan got transferred to the Government of Bombay
and he became the principal of Karnataka College, Kolhapur, in 1952. He steadily grew in
his academic career there on, and attained a peak with his appointment as the
Vice-chancellor of the Bangalore University in 1966.
The main phase of his literary career and his life itself began in 1925 when he was swayed
by the magnetic force of the towering figure of Kannada poetry D.R.Bendre, like many other
young poets of his time. Seeing his knowledge of English literature, and his talents in
English poetry, Bendre prophesied "if Gokak allows his talents to blossom in Kannada,
his own poetry as well as Kannada will have a great future." Thus with Bendre as his
Kavya Guru, Gokak embarked upon a unique career in the world of Kannada letters, a career
in which he made unparallelled contributions to poetry (including composition of the epic
Bharatha Sindhurashmi), drama, criticism and various other forms of literature, apart from
producing many scholarly works in English.
The literary distinction of Gokak naturally attracted scores of awards and honours. Of
these, mention must be made of his Presidentship of the 40th Kannada Sahitya Sammelana in
1958, honorary doctorates from the Karnatak University and the Pacific University of the
USA, the 1961 Central Sahitya Akademi award for his 'Dyava Prithivi' and of course, the
highest award for literary excellence in India-the Jnanpith award-for his monumental
contributions to Kannada literature, in 1990.
Gokak saw not only peaks of glory but also a peculiar complexity of happiness and sorrow
at many turning points of his life, a complexity that became a characteristic mark of all
his works. He passed away on April 28, 1992. |
