Girish Karnad, who has died aged 81, was India’s foremost playwright, as well as a successful film director and popular actor, appearing in arthouse films as well as hit Bollywood movies such as Ek Tha Tiger.
India’s obsession with cinema means Karnad was best known for his acting roles, but it is for his plays, in which he often used myths, folklore and historical events to examine the cultural, economic and social changes in post-independence India, that he will be remembered. Strongly influenced by the philosopher Krishnamurti, who questioned traditional Indian devotion to caste, religion and duty, Karnad worked from the position that the individual was the maker of his own existence – rather than subject to Hindu notions of fate and karma.
Written in the south Indian language of Kannada, many of his plays were translated into English by Oxford University Press as well as into several other Indian languages.
The first three were an immediate success. Yayati (1961), written while Karnad was a student at Oxford, dealt with the expectations of the Indian family against personal freedom. Tughlaq (1964) captured the disappointment of early independent India; and Hayavadana (1971) looked at issues around personal identity and female emancipation.
In these works, radical for their time, Karnad captured the feelings of a disillusioned middle-class, who so recently had been united in their fight for freedom from the British but were questioning what independence meant for India now.
In perhaps his best-known work, Agni Mattu Male (The Fire and the Rain, 1995), Karnad took a tale from the Mahabharata and placed it as a play within the play to explore the very Indian clash between individualism and the common good. Also well known is Nagamandala (1988), written during the year Karnad spent at the University of Chicago as visiting professor. It is based on two folk-tales that Karnad had heard from his mentor AK Ramanujan, and again mixes myth with modern-day rural India reality in a tale of the exploitation of an unloved dutiful wife, Rani, married off to a rich man to satisfy a patriarchal institution. It was made into an award-winning film.
Other notable plays, set firmly in modern India, include A Heap of Broken Images (2006), a cynical look at the Indian literary establishment; Wedding Album (2009), about Hindu marriage and issues of sex, obedience and commerce; and Boiled Beans on Toast (2014), about modern Bengaluru (Bangalore).
Early on, Karnad knew that to express his vision to a wider audience he had to move into cinema. His screenwriting and acting debut, Samskara (1970), based on his friend UR Ananthamurthy’s novel about the limitations of caste, won the first Golden Lotus award, the national prize for Kannada cinema. His directoral debut (with the theatre director BV Karanth), the award-winning Vamsha Vriksha (1971), took his fascination with tradition versus modernity deeper by following the trials of an educated family for 20 years .
Many of the films he made in a 35-year career as a director won national awards. Among them are Kaadu (1973), Tabbaliyu Neenade Magane (titled Godhuli in Hindi, 1977), about an American woman newly married to an Indian, Utsav (1984), in which a courtesan’s relationship with a poor Brahmin man causes chaos, and Kanooru Heggadithi (1999), on the limited position of women in rural India.
A versatile actor, too, Karnad learnt his craft in plays directed by Karanth in the Kannada theatre world. He eventually appeared in almost 100 movies, including art films such as Shyam Benegal’s Nishant (1975) – one of Karnad’s most enduring roles, as a schoolteacher whose wife is kidnapped – and Manthan (1976), and Nagesh Kukunoor’s Iqbal (2005), in which he won critical claim as an opportunist cricket coach who chooses to favour a rich boy over a brilliant but poor protege, as well as blockbuster movies such as the Salman Khan vehicles Ek Tha Tiger (2012) and Tiger Zinda Hai (2017).
On television he appeared in the first series of Malgudi Days (1987), based on the RK Narayan short stories, and the children’s science fiction series Indradhanush (1989), playing the protagonist’s father.
Born in Matheran, east of Mumbai, Girish was the son of middle-class parents, Raghunath Karnad, a doctor, and Krishnabhai (nee Mankikar), a nurse; he had three siblings and a step-brother. When Girish was 14, the family moved to Dharwad in Karnataka, south India, where he became fascinated by the ancient traditions of Yakshagana theatre.
He graduated with a BA in maths and statistics from Karnatak University, then went to Oxford University as a Rhodes scholar to study for an MA in philosophy, politics and economics. He was elected president of the Oxford Union in 1962.
After his return to India in 1963 and the success of his first plays, he was offered a job at the Oxford University Press in Madras (now Chennai), where he met Saraswathy Ganapathy, a doctor and director of healthcare projects, at a party. They married in 1980.
Karnad remained at the OUP until 1970, when he quit to join the amateur theatre group the Madras Players. In 1989 he and his family settled in Bengaluru (the capital of Karnataka, formerly Bangalore).
As well as his creative work, Karnad served as director of the Film and Television Institute of India (1974-75), and chair of Sangeet Natak Akademi, the national academy of performing arts (1988-93). From 2000 to 2003, he was director of the Nehru Centre, the cultural wing of the high commission of India, in London. In 2002 his play Bali – the Sacrifice was staged at the Leicester Haymarket theatre.
A secularist who condemned the rise of nationalism in India, he took advantage of his position to campaign for the rights of the LGBT community, women, the Dalit caste and religious minorities.
He was critical of the 2002 Gujarat riots, which saw the murder of many Muslims by Hindus when the current prime minister, Narendra Modi, was chief minister of Gujarat. Karnad continued to be critical of Modi after his election and in recent years had spoken out against the house arrests of activists by the government across the country, and of the murders of prominent journalists.
His final work, Rakshasa-Tangadi, was published last year, and he is due to appear in four films this year. He was awarded the Padma Shri, one of India’s top civilian honours, in 1974, and the Padma Bhushan in 1992. In 1998 he was the recipient of the Jnanpith award, India’s highest literary prize.
Karnad is survived by Saraswathy, their daughter, Shalmali Radha, and son, Raghu.
• Girish Raghunath Karnad, playwright, actor and director, born 19 May 1938; died 10 June 2019
• This article was amended on 26 June 2019. Mention of the play Nagamandala, the years of Karnad’s marriage and move to Bengaluru, and some other personal details have been added. He joined the Madras Players rather than the Mysore Players.
