Tell it Again: An honest attempt to preserve Girish Karnad's legacy

The Hindu

08-07-2025

It has been six years since Girish Karnad, a prominent Indian playwright, filmmaker and public intellectual, passed away. However, he is still remembered for his contribution to Indian literature, cinema and theatre, especially Kannada and English. His legacy as a playwright and filmmaker is intertwined with his role as a public intellectual who fearlessly voiced his opinions, even when it put him at personal risk.
The World of Girish Karnad, a one-and-half-year-old project, attempts to shine a spotlight on some of the lesser–known aspects of this polymath, and includes a weekly newsletter that explores themes and topics that were close to his heart. The Tell it Again newsletter, which commenced publication on January 2, 2024, aims to preserve and promote the legacy of Girish Karnad and engage a new generation with his works.
According to Raghu Karnad, Girish's son, a journalist and writer, many of Girish's friends and associates advocated the need to keep his legacy alive.
Fount of productivity
Raghu and KM Chaitanya, one of Girish's filmmaking protégés, kept looking for ways to preserve Karnad's works for posterity. It was while sorting through his father's study that Raghu realised Girish was at his most productive in the mid '80s.
'That was when he was working on the film Utsav and completed his best-known play, Nagamandala. Going through his material — production drawings, images, notes and more, from that period inspired me to share them with the public,' says Raghu.
Chaitanya, now a filmmaker in the Kannada film industry, says, 'I not only identify with a generation that grew up seeing and performing Karnad's plays, but I also listened to him hold forth on various issues including literature, culture and politics since the late 80s. Having associated with Girish on various projects, I had a lot of material that could be shared on social media, a platform where the present generation consumes information.'
Chaitanya does not intend to post material alone, but hopes to create an organic connection with the new generation to make him more relevant. 'The idea is to present them with the multifaceted personality and genius that Girish was.'
Harismita Vaideswaran, a research scholar at the University of Delhi, has explored themes and topics that Girish was interested in, wrote about or had an intimate connection with. 'Anything from plays and films, to a creative, academic or scholarly association, has the potential to be a theme for the newsletter.'
The project aims to make use of extensive archival material to spotlight lesser-known aspects of the artiste. Harismita says, she admired Girish deeply and was moved by how he made sense of the world through history and mythology. 'His writings made me braver. It was love and admiration for his work and legacy that brought me into this project.'
Abundant material
Talking about the project, Harismita says, 'We reached out to friends and colleagues based on the specific aspects and timeframes of Girish's career and we received some wonderful photos from Mohan Agashe. Raghu and Chaitanya are encyclopaedic sources of archival material, footage and photographs. We also worked with the Ashoka Archive of Contemporary India, where a collection of his papers is housed.'
The Instagram page and its accompanying newsletter Harismita says, is seen as an eclectic archival collage almost like a tapestry, alongside everyone who has been a part of Girish's life and those whose lives he has touched.
Harismita adds that their aim was to collate material under one digital roof, in order to reach a new generation of people. 'Whenever I post interactive stories, it is wonderful to see young people, students, film enthusiasts and others, respond with their thoughts and comments.'
Why Utsav?
Utsav was chosen as the theme for the introductory newsletter simply because its material surfaced first. 'The material we gathered was widespread and often eclectic; it was mixed media in the form of papers, photographs, drawings, video footage, and even some correspondence. We felt a newsletter allowed us to incorporate all these disparate elements into a single, cohesive story. Since we began with Utsav, we have gone on to release 10 iterations of the newsletter,' says Harismita, adding the newsletters come out as and when the team gathers enough material for an edition.
'We looked at Nagamandala's literary and performance history, Girish's long-standing friendship with A K Ramanujan, and his relationships with Shyam Benegal and Satyadev Dubey,' she says, adding, 'But the newsletter closest to my heart is #10 'After Life,' a translation of one of Girish's writings that hadn't been published before.'
Log on to worldofgirishkarnad.substack.com to subscribe to the newsletter or follow @worldofgirishkarnad on instagram