The family and friends of the slain Kannada scholar, Prof M M Kalburgi, reminisce his prolific research and academic pursuits.
Early on a Sunday morning exactly five years ago, the news flashing across the Kannada news channels dealt a numbing shock that rang across the country 바카라 Prof M M Kalburgi, a scholar of Kannada, had been shot dead at his doorstep. This was in a quiet lane in Dharwad town, just a short walk away from Karnatak University where he had begun his journey in academics.
That journey of letters, in a way, continues through prints and re-prints of the ambitious endeavours that Kalburgi immersed himself in. Since his death in 2015, two new volumes in his Marga series have been published -- there are now eight in all. His pet project -- a two-volume collection of 21,000 vachanas -- too went into print soon after. Meanwhile, the translation of about 2,500 well-known vachanas into various foreign languages is a work in progress 바카라- currently, the collection is available in 23 Indian languages.
바카라Physically he바카라s not there but spiritually, or you could say from a literature point of view, he바카라s still alive and with us,바카라 Srivijay M Kalburgi, the scholar바카라s son, tells Outlook. There바카라s still unpublished material that the family, his students and collaborators are working on. Besides, PhD students still drop in at their home from time to time, to refer to his personal collection of books.
The past five years have been a difficult time for the family -- for a long while, there was little progress in the murder case even though the Karnataka Police, based on ballistic evidence, suspected a link between Kalburgi바카라s murder and the killing of rationalist Narendra Dabholkar and communist leader Govind Pansare in Maharashtra. In 2019, the Supreme Court entrusted the Kalburgi case to a special investigating team which had probed the Gauri Lankesh murder two years earlier.
Last August, the probe team filed its chargesheet naming six persons who were part of a radical rightwing group -- including the alleged shooter Ganesh Miskin, who had earlier been identified as one of two motorcycle-borne assailants in the 2017 Lankesh murder.
Earlier this year, the Supreme Court closed its monitoring of the Kalburgi case since the chargesheet had been filed and the case committed to the sessions court.
바카라Actually, the journey begins now, that바카라s how I feel,바카라 says Srivijay. 바카라Five years is a long period but there is some hope now. There is a concrete thing that has happened, things have moved forward. Now, the court will decide.바카라
During his lifetime, Kalburgi produced 121 books 바카라 all these have been compiled into 40 volumes and will be released on his birth anniversary on November 28, says the vachana scholar Dr Veeranna Rajur, one of Kalburgi바카라s longtime collaborators. For present and future researchers, Kalburgi has left behind enough material, he says.
Apart from the work on vachana literature, writer Rahamath Tarikere points to two undertakings that were equally monumental in scale 바카라 Kalburgi set into motion the translation into Kannada of a large collection of Persian and Dakhani literature produced during the Bahmani and Adil Shahi dynasties and later principalities of the region. Various scholars were involved in the translation and 18 volumes were published before Kalburgi바카라s death. A couple of volumes came out later. 바카라That is a monumental work,바카라 says Tarikere, explaining that the historians in Karnataka until then had largely neglected these resources which were not available in Kannada (though translations in Marathi were available.)
The other key translation project he took up soon after retirement, says Tarikere, was to render the works of the Marathi scholar Ramachandra Chintaman Dhere into Kannada. 바카라I would like to consider this as a bridging of two linguistic communities. Right now, Maharashtra and Karnataka spar occasionally on the border and language issue. But when it comes to culture, we share a common history.바카라
Srivijay recalls how his father, after retiring from the Kannada University at Hampi as vice chancellor, kept himself busy with various ideas. 바카라He had so many projects in his mind,바카라 says Srivijay. 바카라He always used to say that this life is too short to complete all the things he had to do.바카라