Indian · 1938–2019
Girish Karnad was born in Matheran, Maharashtra, studied mathematics at Karnatak University, and went to Oxford as a Rhodes Scholar intending to become an English poet. He wrote his first play instead, in Kannada, on the boat home. Karnad rebuilt Indian theatre by taking its oldest material—the Mahabharata, the Kathasaritsagara, medieval chronicles, Yakshagana folk performance—and using it to argue about power, identity, and religion in the present. Tughlaq, written at twenty-six, became the defining political play of Nehru's disillusioned successors. He also acted in and directed some of the landmark films of Indian parallel cinema, ran the Film and Television Institute of India, and headed the Nehru Centre in London. He won the Jnanpith Award, four National Film Awards, and the Padma Bhushan. In his last years he appeared at protests against Hindu nationalist violence wearing a placard and a nasal tube.