Kannada literary tradition always questioned the mainstream, says poet Mamta Sagar Premium

On her birthday, January 19, Mamta Sagar received a phone call. The call brought her news that she thinks of as “the biggest gift” she has received: she was informed that she had been nominated for the World Literary Prize from the World Organization of Writers (WOW). “That was beautiful,” says the Bengaluru-based Kannada poet and activist.

On her birthday, January 19, Mamta Sagar received a phone call. The call brought her news that she thinks of as “the biggest gift” she has received: she was informed that she had been nominated for the World Literary Prize from the World Organization of Writers (WOW). “That was beautiful,” says the Bengaluru-based Kannada poet and activist.

Yet another gift came her way a couple of months later when she found out that she had actually won the award.  She still sounds incredulous about having won it. “When my name was announced, it took me a few seconds to realise that it had been called,” admits Sagar, who received the award in Abuja, Nigeria on April 6.  

What makes the victory even sweeter, she says, is that the award was given in Nigeria, which shares a lot in common with India, particularly in the socio-political and gender realms. “The pain, happiness, belonging and community feeling…is so similar to what we go through,” says Sagar, who serves as the Head of Studies in the Creative Writing Programme, Media Arts and Sciences, at the Srishti Manipal Institute of Art, Design and Technology, Bengaluru.

She also admits to being thrilled that the Nigerian playwright and novelist, Wole Soyinka, winner of the 1986 Nobel Prize for Literature, was also honoured at the same event. “This has gone into history with Wole Soyinka,” she says, with a smile. “I am really proud and happy that as a Kannada writer, I was instrumental in bringing this big award to India and Karnataka.”

Sagar grew up in the city of Sagara in Karnataka’s Shivamogga district, over 350 km away from Bengaluru. As a young girl, she was somewhat dismissive of the Kannada language. “Like any privileged person, I studied in English medium and never considered Kannada as an important thing,” she says. “I was even a class leader who fined people ten paise when they spoke Kannada,” she recalls.

By high school, however, something changed in her. “I started relishing Kannada…fell in love with its musicality and politics,” says Sagar, who found herself being drawn to the work of writers like Vaidehi, U.R. Ananthamurthy, Shivaram Karanth and Kumvempu. There was one other aspect of Kannada writing that drew her to it. Like all Dravidian literature, it had always resisted Aryan influences, “which were always very patriarchal,” she says. 

This Kannada literary tradition, “which questioned the mainstream, whatever the mainstream was”, played a significant role in shaping her own political and literary leanings. According to her, Kannada poets like Pampa, Ranna and Kumara Vyasa had created versions of the epics in Kannada with bhakti as a motif.