Elements of Caste and Superstition in the Work of U.R. Anantha Murthy's Samskara

Dr. Udupi Rajagopala Acharya Anantha Murthy was one of the pioneers of the Navya literary movement in contemporary Kannada Literature. He received Gyanpeetha Award; the highest literary honour in India for his novel Samskara in 1994 and the Government of India also honoured him with the prestigious award the Padma Bhushan. He was an Indian contemporary writer, a renowned academic, well known for his striking literary work and the outstanding critic of his generation in Kannada, a Dravidian language spoken in Karnataka state. He was born on 21st of December 1932 at Melige, a remote village in Tirthalli Taluk in Shimoga district in Karnataka. He was brought up in a conservative Brahmin household. He completed his primary schooling in a traditional Sanskrit school in Durvasapura and graduation from Mysore University. After receiving a Master of Arts degree from the Mysore University, he won a Commonwealth scholarship. Later he moved to Birmingham University, England to complete his doctorate. His dissertation topic was "Politics and Fiction in the 1930s,? under the supervision of the English critic and novelist, Malcolm Bradbury. Anantha Murthy?s Samskara is first published in 1965; later on, it is translated into English in 1976, by A.K Ramanujan and finally it is made into a film in 1970. It has created a lot of controversies. Samskara is not only translated into English, Hindi, Bengali, Malayalam, Marathi, Urdu, Tamil and Gujrati but also translated into other foreign languages as Russian, German, Hungarian, French, and Swedish etc. Apart from the novels, he is also known for his poems, stories and essays in the literary field. The Indian Literature of regional languages makes effort by such genius which is so attractive and unique that the people from India and all over the world are reading and glorifying it.