kept wondering for all my life-time: why do
people carry Gurazada Apparao on their shoulders, showering the man bygone with
the choicest epithets ever coined ? Why do they force us to accept him as a
larger-than-life figure, some sort of a divine redeemer that has mercifully
descended down on the Earth to lift us up from our dark hellhole of ignorance
and depravity, a messenger direct from God ? What is humanly so special and
noble about him, at least by judging him from the perspective of his own times
? What is that active part of his life that should make this grand Telugu
nation indebted to him forever ? What is the particular instance of social
change which we can not help squarely attributing to him ? A serious perusal of
his literature and biography offered me no satisfactory answers, but presented
me with more of questions.
It is important to understand that the ghost of
Gurazada did not command this pontifical status before independence though he
breathed his last way back in 1915. It was only after independence, during the
haydays of Progressivism that this Gurazada cult came to be sponsored by
successive anti-Hindu governments through language text books.
I am yet to discover what additional idea or
ideal he preached differently from the essence of the standard smear campaigns
carried out on India
and Hinduism by the British, the Christian evangelists and more importantly,
their pointman Macaulay. At every step, Gurazada sided with them in rejecting India’s wisdom.
కన్ను గానని వస్తుతత్త్వము
కాంచ నేర్పరులింగిరీజులు
కల్లనొల్లరు వారి విద్యల
కఱచి సత్యము నరసితిన్.
He went on to ridicule India’s traditional
education in Kanyasulkam where a Brahmin student was depicted as
dropping his Pancha kaavya learning in favour of joining an English school. “...కింపురుషశ్చుచుంబ.
ముద్దెట్టుకున్నాడట, ముక్కట్టుకున్నాడు కాదూ ?”
These derisive lines inserted by the playwright there actually reflect his own
contempt for Indian system of schooling. Every country has and should have this
sort of parellel or twin system of education. You need not insult one of them
in support of another. But Gurazada woefully lacked the requisite commonsense,
polish and culture to appreciate this fact. This bad culture is because “వారి విద్యల కఱచి....”
Also, as for matters of patriotism, I curiously
find that people tend to instal him on a high pedestal on par with the likes of
Alluri Sitarama Raju who gave away his life for the nation. By his own
hypocritical proclamation, “దేశమంటే మట్టి కాదోయ్, దేశమంటే
మనుషులోయ్” But
how come on earth a man like Gurazada so much filled with deep-seated contempt,
hatred and negative bias against the fellow natives, their history, culture and
traditional wisdom can become a patriot ? He set standards for the art of making fun of
everything Indian. He apparently never missed an opportunity to indulge in this
unpatriotic vocation. Ever thought what good will come out of such
persons for the nation ? Hypocrisy or contradictions in this man remain to be
understood before anointing him as a star patriot notwithstanding a few
sporadically appearing positive lines of his like : “దేశమును
ప్రేమించుమన్నా, మంచి అన్నది పెంచుమన్నా” Like
every other Telugu schoolboy, I too grew up listening to these lines over and
again and, like every other schoolboy, I too was given to carrying an
impression that the poet who wrote these lines must be a hardcore patriot. But I feel, lines such as these were blown out of
proportion to elevate him in the public, while actually a corresponding depth
of nationalistic spirit is conspicuous by its absence in his other writings.
The fact remains that he was hypersensitive to
even the mildest criticism of the British empire,
which he deemed to be an unpardonable crime. Note one particular instance of
his intolerence of the patriots of the day and how he chose to threaten them in
one of his English poems:
Lives of moderates all remind us
We should wisely keep from crime
Open sedition only finds us
Shelter in a far off clime
Let us then line up and speaking
Speaking at a furious rate
Not always some benefit seeking
Learn to be loyal and to
wait.
Even now, we will be living under the British,
had we taken this masterpiece of advice seriously.
Another thing I find very funny is - many in our country
were tricked into identifying Gurazada with the movement of colloquial writing.
It only shows how far the devotees of Gurazada went in desperately deifying
that man and crediting him with pioneering a thing for which he was not at all
responsible. In doing this, they did not hesitate to cover up a vast
corpus of literary evidence available to the contrary. For example, Kaasi
majilee kathalu which was originally written in the colloquial Telugu by
Sri Madhira Subbanna Deekshitulu was contemporaneous to Kanyasulkam. Even Sri
Kandukuri Veeresalingam employed colloquial Telugu in many of his plays. In
fact, we find a number of South Indian Telugu works using colloquial speech for
writing long before the afore-mentioned works appeared.
Gurazada is also very much useful as a convenient and
potential weapon for every hue of Brahmin-haters to beat the soft community of
Brahmins with, while the same discre-pencies abound in all castes. His writings
provided the much-needed fodder for the fire of anti-Brahminism in the society.
His thoroughly one-sided negative depiction blocked all our sympathetic and
insightful understanding of his contemporary Brahmin society. The Brahmin
characters he wrote about were all confirmed rogues, scoundrels and rascals, or
at times, absolute stupids, idiots and charlatans with the exception of a
negligible few probably in whom he visualized himself. The man who did this is
no more, but his witness remains the Gospel for all anti-Brahmin elements. His
mediocrity would have been long forgotten behind the dusty rusty rickety book
shelves but for the perceived merits of his anti-Brahminism.
The Brahmins in those times were no villains, They had just wanted to
continue as Nitya agnihotris (daily fire-worshippers). Huge age difference
existed between husbands and wives in all castes in those days, not just among
Brahmins. For the purpose of Nitya agnihotram (daily fire-worship),
Brahmins compulsorily needed wives as per the vedic injunctions. But the
consequences can not be blamed on them, as life-span
was indeterminate in those days. Generally people assumed that they would
live longer by the example of their forefathers, which, at times, proved
otherwise.
For all the villainy portrayed of the Brahmins, people
tend to conveniently forget the conditions of abject poverty in which the
community lived in those days which actually compelled them to send their
littles ones away with over-age grooms. This poverty was actually imposed on
them by the policies of the East India Company which used to confiscate the
properties of Hindu monasteries and temples by an Act. Gurazada would
have done well to go into the actual causes of bride price instead of glossing
over these economic facts by wrongfully painting such parents as fairly well-to-do
and greedy so that no one would have any sympathetic understanding of the real
situation prevailing.
Blatant falsehoods laced with gigantic exaggerations appear to have been spread
to justify this unfair and unrealistic portrayal of the-then Brahmin community,
thereby highlighting Gurazada’s contribution to tackling an essentially
non-issue. In the film version of Kanya sulkam for instance, a 90-year
old Brahmin was shown as the bridegroom for 14-year old Poornamma, in total
oblivion of the fact that Nitya agnihotris were not such idiotic
numskulls to indulge such things. They were in fact, highly learned men in
positions of public responsibility to teach good and bad to the people in their
respective villages. Besides, unlike in the present times, they used to live in
very big joint families and therefore, one could indulge in such a practice
only at peril to one’s own moral authority.
Bride price too existed in all communities, not just among Brahmins in
those times, but with different nomenclatures. It was known with a Sanskrit
term 'kanyaa sulkam' among Brahmins and with a Telugu term oli among
other communities. Then, why single out one particular community for his
campaign of black painting ?
Note that he was the first native in the history of Andhra to don the
mantle of the Christian missionaries in disparaging the Hindus in general and
Brahmins in particular. You can understand clearly why he is celebrated with so
much fanfare by all anti-Hindu and anti-Brahmin elements in this State. He had
accomplished for them what they were unable to do themselves. The social
devastation and disintegration wrought by his writings are permanent. The
society he depicted no longer exists. But the anti-Brahmi-nism and anti-Hindu
sentiments and the consequent in-fighting among castes - all bred by him do
still live on as vibrant forces. He was no reformer and not on record reforming
anyone.
Someone can not be great just because he entertained you. Gurazada did
really never bother to understand the top or bottom of anything or fight for
anything in reality like Veeresalingam or Alluri Sitarama Raju. Fighters are
known to incur the wrath of their detractors and suffer their inquisitions. But
whose wrath did Gurazada actually suffer in his life ? Given his own deeply
ingrained fanatical sub-sectarianism, it was actually him who was in dire need
of reform. Most of his sarcasm apparently stemmed from this personality trait,
I believe. It makes his so-called self-identification with the underdog a plain
eyewash as well as a hilarity. He just sat pretty in a corner busily blackening
pieces of white paper. Caricaturing, lampooning, badmouthing and black-painting
an entire community for years. Even genuine social reformers like Veeresalingam
are laudable for their noble intentions. But, I believe nothing had happened on
account of their efforts, Change in the society would have come anyway with or
without them. Such was the force of the times.
Evidently, style can not vouch for someone's depth or nobility of his
intentions. Fervently hope for the day when people stop worshipping and
lionizing these false prophets and hate-mongers like Gurazada. Also, I pray for
the day when people come to realize that society lies high above individuals,
and that the genre of writings prejudicial to the long-term interests of
national pride, social harmony and communal peace deserve to be discarded
forthwith, notwithstanding thier explicitly stated lofty objectives or crafty
style component. Making people like Gurazada a part of our curriculam, as
is done at present, does untold harm to the cause of patriotism.
