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Dr. VINAYAK KRISHNA GOKAK
A Triple First in the Culture of Literature

[Professor Gokak was long associated with the Triveni quarterly, first as a valued contributor and later as a member of the Advisory Board till the time of his death on 28th April, 1992. –EDITIOR]

Among the Indian intelligentsia, educated in English, there are some who have a flair for the English language; others who are good in their own native languages. Some who have a talent for teaching and speaking, others who have the gift of writing. Among those with a gift of the gab, there are some who are able to make a mark as professors. Out of them, only a few are able to achieve success as educational administra­tors. It is only a very limited few who are able to manage that, without losing the talent for teaching and love of learning or the gift of writing.

Among those limited and lucky few was the late Professor Vinayak Krishna Gokak, who played many roles in his life of action and achievement. He was a teacher, university professor, vice-chancellor, writer, poet, critic, essayist, mystic, philosopher, scholar and savant and many other things besides. Of him it could justly be said that he touched nothing that he did not adorn. He was versatile without being a dilettantist, wide-ranging without being superficial. He always had a sense of purpose in everything that he undertook. He was ambitious without being a careerist or an opportunist. He occupied quite a few responsible positions, as they came to him because of his intellectual equipment, professional expertise and general experience.

Vinayak Krishna Gokak, who died on 28 April, 1992 (full of years and honours) was born on 9 August, 1909. Born into a family of lawyers, he chose to take the teaching line for his career. After taking his M. A. degree in English with distinction from Bombay University in 1931, he had a stint of teaching, before going up to Oxford, where he took his M. A. with a first class in 1938.

Gokak’s teaching career was a story or continuous ascent, with a climb through ascending spirals to dizzy heights. Starting as an Assistant Professor of English at the Fergusson College in Poona (1931 - 1936), he proceeded to Willingdon College, Sangli, as Professor (1938-40), becoming its Principal (1940 - 44).

The rest was again a story of brilliant success after success � Professor of English, Osmania University (1945-46); Princi­pal, M. N. College, Visanagar (1946-49); of Rajaram College, Kolhapur (1949-52). of Karnataka College, Dharwar (1952­-59). This was followed by a series of administrative assignments - not unconnected with his academic career –Director, Central Institute of English and Foreign Languages, Hyderabad (1959-66); Vice-Chancellor, Bangalore University ( 1966-69 ); Director, Indian Institute of Advanced Studies, Simla (1970 - 71) ; and Vice-­Chancellor, Sri Satya Sai Institute of Higher Learning, for a few years from 1981.

In the meantime, he was appointed Chairman of the Official Language Committee by the Karnataka Government, during the Chief Ministership of R. Gundu Rao. The report submitted by him in that capacity on the place of Kannada and English became the subject of bitter controversy among educationists, politicians, publicists and others. While he managed to remain in the good books of the Government, he could not retain the admiration and goodwill of intellectuals with no axe to grind.

As in the case of teaching so in that of writing, Gokak started his career quite early in life. His first collection of poems, Kalopaasaka, published in 1934, became an instant trail-blazer in Kannada poetry. He became a trend-setter, a herald of change, marking a departure from the Sanskritised classical tradition to the lyrical, evocative mysticism and the simple direct expression of modern romantic poetry. This won him speedy recognition, as could be seen in his being invited to preside over the Kavigoshti of the Kannada Sahitya Parishat at Raichur.

His next publication was titled Samudra Geetagalu (Songs of the Sea), a long poem, he started composing on board a ship during his journey to England in 1936. He was fond of describing it as “the most spontaneous work� of his life. He was also welcomed by the literary world of the day for its inherent beauty, refreshing simplicity and unconventional style. The new trend was indicated in his own introduction, in which he said:

“In unfetterd words,
In the rhythm of the dancing waves.
I write these lines,
Scorn me not for that, for
Who can arrest the sea in its wildness?�

Published in 1942, this collection of verses had an abiding influence on the younger generation of Kannada poets. Gokak himself looked up to an older generation of romantic lyricists, like D. R. Bendre, but he proceeded further and broke new ground. A sensitive student of English poetry, Gokak was not immune to the revolution in poetic credo and composition, set in motion by great English poets like W. B. Yeats and T. S. Eliot. On his own too, he was not unaware of the predicament of modern man, which was alienation, be it real, modish or imagined. His unequivocal ideas on this problem are vividly presented in his book Indilla, Nale (If not today, then tomorrow). Here he turns the searchlight on the erosion of human values under the impact of technological advance and industrial develop­ment. It was time that India heeded the lesson from the experience of more “Developed Countries,� as they were called.

Man has begun to fly in the rocket and in the space satellite and have a glance at the earth from that perch. But the poet has his own perceptions through his imagination. In Ilagita the poet soars into the sky to have a look at the earth. In Neerada he keeps his feet on the ground and gives us a symbolic picture of the clouds, as viewed from down below. A combination of these two took the shape of Divya Prithvi, an epic, comprising over thirty thousand lines, written in 1957, for which Gokak was awarded the Sahitya Akademi Prize for 1960.

As a poet, Gokak never looked . While his Kashmira revealed traces of the influence of modern English poets, like Eliot and Auden, according to some critics, Akasha Ganga and Balade Gula are seen to reflect his epic vision in a more indigenous setting.

The crowning glory of Gokak’s poetic achievement was, how­ever, to be found in Bharata Sindhu Rashmi, an epic of thirty-­five thousand lines in blank verse, which won him the Jnanpith Award in 1990. It reflects the poet’s grand vision of life and literature.

Gokak tried his expert hand in other genres of writing as well, though not with equal success, in terms of public recognition. His plays, Jananayaka, Vimarshaka Vaidya and Munidamaari, all experimental, did not earn the recognition they deserved.

Gokak had also a number of original works, in English, to his credit. They include: The Song of Life (1948), In Life’s Temple (1966) both in verse; Narahari � Prophet of New India (1972) novel; The Concept of Indian Literature, and Integral View of Poetry, both criticism; and A Golden Treasury of Indian Poetry in English. The last is a representative selection of English poetry by Indian writers from Michael Madhusudan Dutt and Toru Dutt to Nissim Ezekiel and P. Lal. A deep lover of Kannada poetry, he was a sensitive and sympathetic student of English poetry as well.

Not surprising that Gokak was elected Vice-President, and later President, of Sahitya Akademi. He had a balanced and integrated view of literature, as a whole. He was able to appreciate the wealth and variety of Indian literature, with so many streams entering it, to enrich its waters. The Sahitya Akademi which is the National Academy of Letters, to quote his own words, “is not merely concerned with a few distingui­shed writers. Less known writers, scattered over the length and breadth of the nation, are equally important to it.� Gokak was not unaware of Indian literature’s debt to Western thought and English and other foreign literatures. But they had to be properly assimilated to become an integral whole. His own precept and example were a brilliant illustration of this process of unseen alchemy.