Reading U. R. Ananthamurthy: A Review of Critical Scholarship on Samskara, Bharathipura, Bhava and Avasthe
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.29070/316k7843Keywords:
U. R. Ananthamurthy, Kannada Navya movement, Samskara, Bharathipura, Bhava, Avasthe, caste, tradition and modernity, existentialism, literature reviewAbstract
U. R. Ananthamurthy (1932–2014) is among the most widely read and translated writers of the Kannada Navya (modernist) movement, and his novels have generated a large body of criticism in English. This review surveys that scholarship across four novels available in English translation: Samskara (Kannada 1965; English 1976), Bharathipura (1973; 2010), Avasthe (1978; 2020) and Bhava (1994; 1998). The review is organised thematically and textually. It maps six recurrent lines of inquiry: caste and ritual purity, religious orthodoxy and ethical authority, tradition and modernity, individual consciousness and existential crisis, political ideology and agency, and narrative technique. It then examines the theoretical frameworks that critics have brought to the novels, including Dumont's structural account of hierarchy, Ambedkar's critique of graded inequality, Gramscian hegemony, Foucauldian discipline, existentialism, narratology and postcolonial hybridity. The review finds that criticism is heavily concentrated on Samskara, that Bharathipura is read chiefly through caste and reform, and that Bhava and Avasthe remain comparatively under-studied. Most studies treat one novel or one framework at a time. The review closes by identifying five gaps: the absence of comparative, career-spanning readings; limited attention to how social structures become internal psychological experience; under-examined gender relations beyond Samskara; little work on translation as a mediating factor; and scarce pedagogical or applied research. These gaps define an agenda for interdisciplinary study of Ananthamurthy's fiction.
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References
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