PORTRAIT OF A PURIST

The angry old man of Telugu literature Dr V. Satyanarayana is both a rebel and an institution in himself.

He is considered the angry old man of Telugu literature, because of his purism in literature and Puritanism in life. Both these traits, which distinguish him from other Telugu writers, are attributable to his fiercely orthodox Vaidiki ancestry and his scholarship in Sanskrit. He belongs to that fast vanishing elite who keep dreaming of the revival of India's old glory. He finds himself both emotionally and intellectually in rapport with Valmiki, Kalidasa, Bhavabhuti, Nannaya and Allasani Peddana. This does not mean that he is out of tune with the West. He confesses that the contemporary writers of the West have no appeal for him because of their nihilist conformity which leads one nowhere. He is solidly Victorian in his passions, prejudices and preferences. He believes in the uniqueness of the Indian genius which, he feels, needs rediscovering.

Advice to the traditionalist

I am reminded of Dr Ananda kumaraswamy's advice to the traditionalist which cannot be bettered : "Each race contributes something essential to the world's civilisation in the course of its own self-realisation. The character built up in solving its own problems, in the experience of its own misfortunes, is itself a gift which each offers to the world. The essential contribution of India is simply her Indianness; her great humiliation would be to substitute or to have substituted for its own character a cosmopolitan veneer, for then indeed she must come before the world empty-handed. "Few writers in Andhra Pradesh have demonstrated through their work the compulsive relevance of Dr kumaraswamy's argument more than Viswanatha who is a true representative of classicism at its purest. He comes of a very rich and orthodox Brahmin family belonging to a village near Vijayawada in Krishna district of Andhra Pradesh

by A.S. Raman