Merch
News
Panchangam
Apps
Downloads
For Teachers
Resources
About
PEOPLE
IDEAS
PLACES
CULTURE
CREATE
STORIES
GAMES
Shivaram Karanth
ಶಿವರಾಮ ಕಾರಂತ
The renaissance man of Karnataka — novelist, scientist, and artist
Years
1902 – 1997
Known as
Kota Shivaram Karanth — the novelist and polymath
Birthplace
Kota, near Udupi, Karnataka
Field
Poets & Writers
“The writer must also be a scientist — for truth is the only foundation of art.”
— Shivaram Karanth
The Story
Born in 1902 in Kota, Karanth left his studies to join Gandhi's movement in his youth, and then devoted his life to learning and creation on a scale that is almost unbelievable. He was a novelist, a playwright, a poet, an essayist, a scientist, a painter, and an environmentalist — and he mastered them all.
His novels, beginning in the 1920s, transformed the Kannada novel — from the social realism of Chomana Dudi, the story of a landless farmer, to his great family sagas. He also wrote a monumental history of the Yakshagana art, studied and painted, and carried on a lifelong campaign for the environment of the coast.
He was honoured with the Jnanpith Award in 1977 and the Padma Bhushan. He died in 1997, and his home at Saligrama has become a centre of the Kannada people's culture — the monument of the renaissance man of Karnataka.
Core Ideas
Chomana Dudi
His immortal novel of the landless farmer.
The Jnanpith
The highest honour of Indian literature, 1977.
The Renaissance Man
Novelist, scientist, artist, and environmentalist.
The Yakshagana Scholar
His monumental history of the art.
The Environmentalist
A lifelong campaign for the coast.
Why it matters today
Shivaram Karanth is honoured as the renaissance man of Karnataka — the novelist, scientist, and artist whose range has no equal in modern Bhārat. His novels are the treasure of the language, his environmental work shaped the conscience of the coast, and his name remains the greatest example of the writer as complete human being.