The Hindu : Front Page : A litterateur and an icon

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Sunday, Mar 27, 2005

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Front Page

A litterateur and an icon

By T. Ramakrishnan

Jayakanthan — Photo: S. Siva Saravanan.

CHENNAI, MARCH 26. After a gap of three decades, a Tamil writer has been chosen for the Jnanpith award. It is not just the passage of time but the personality involved that has made the Tamil community sit up and take note of the news that D. Jayakanthan has been given the Jnanpith award for 2002.

Popularity does not necessarily mean respectability. Jayakanthan is an exception. He has been one of the most popular Tamil writers and yet considered an important literary figure. Though his active literary career ceased in the early 1980s, he is a household name in Tamil Nadu.

Over the years, Jayakanthan's writings have witnessed changes. From being flashy and highly opinionated, in his later years, he exhibited a subtle sense of underplay. This transformation, so natural to any reflective person, has not left Jayakanthan untouched, but several of his fans are yet to come to terms with the change. They feel that they miss the "spark" that they found in his earlier writings. Jayakanthan's latest work, Hara Hara Sankara, written immediately after the arrest of the Kanchi Sankaracharya, Sri Jayendra Saraswathi, too got such a feedback.

However, Jayakanthan has no confusion and his remarkable quality is his clarity of mind.

For a person who began writing at 20, recognition came to him almost instantaneously. Jayakanthan became the most sought-after writer of leading Tamil journals within 10 years and in the 1960s, he was an icon of the middle class that was increasingly getting exposed to rapid changes in life.

The kind of debate and response generated by his works in those years, when viewed in retrospect, seem incredible.

When Jayakanthan received the Sahitya Akademi award, he was not even 40. Several other awards and titles including the Raja Rajan award and the Akademi Fellowship were given to him. When he received the Fellowship in August 1996, the then Akademi president, U.R. Ananthamurthy, himself a leading Kannada literary figure, said that Jayakanthan, speaking the oldest language of the land, was the youngest to get it. The Tamil writer was 62 then.

Jayakanthan is a multi-dimensional personality. He was inspired by the Communist leaders, Jeeva and Baladandayutham, but later, he became an ardent admirer of the Congress leader, Kamaraj. He has since then been a staunch nationalist and a bitter critic of the Dravidian parties.

In demonstration of his position that writers have social responsibilities, he contested as an Independent in the T. Nagar Assembly constituency in Chennai in 1977. He also edited a newspaper and a couple of magazines.

He has had his share of experiences in the Tamil film industry and some of his works were made into feature films. Sila Nerangalil Sila Manidhargal had put up a reasonable showing. With like-minded friends of modest means, he made a film himself titled Unnaipol Oruvan, based on a novel of his. The film almost vied for top national honours with Satyajit Ray's Charulata. It is to Jayakanthan's credit that he prayed that the jury would not choose his, a beginner's creation, just to spite a great master.

As a thinker, Jayakanthan, has always evoked strong reactions and feelings. But his writings undoubtedly stand testimony to his creativity.

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