The 1991 Ramon Magsaysay Award for Journalism, Literature and Creative Communication Arts

CITATION for K. V. Subbanna

Ramon Magsaysay Award Presentation Ceremonies
Manila, Philippines

In recent years Asia's prosperous urbanites have discovered the rural arts. Handicrafts from villages now adorn their city homes. Meanwhile, polished versions of country dances and plays appear on television and grace official extravaganzas. Yet the finer elements of urban culture are rarely introduced to the village world; its inhabitants are thought too unsophisticated to appreciate them. By introducing modern plays and films to rural folk in southern India, K. V. SUBBANNA is making a powerful case for the universality of art.

The rural town of Heggodu is home to some five hundred people in the Kannada-speaking state of Karnataka. There, areca palms and betel-pepper vines provide members of the SUBBANNA family with a comfortable living. But theater is their passion. In 1949 SUBBANNA formed the theater group, Ninasam, to stage local favorites based on the Indian epics Ramayana and Mahabharata; his father became the group's first president.

After finishing a literary degree at Mysore University, SUBBANNA returned home with fresh ideas for Ninasam. Under his leadership, its repertoire grew to include Kannada-language renditions of Shakespeare, Moliere, and Brecht, as well as new plays by Kannada playwrights, plays for children, and modern adaptations of classics from the Indian canon. With help from the state government, he built a large local theater, a rarity in rural India, and introduced modern staging and lighting. Heggodu's citizens liked what they saw—and came back for more.

Ninasam's success led SUBBANNA to form the Ninasam Theater Institute in 1980. In this "theater ashram," fifteen students a year learn theater arts in a Gandhian atmosphere of simple living and hard work. An itinerant troupe formed from the institute's graduates perform Ninasam's plays the length and breadth of Karnataka—often in open-air theaters before crowds of seven hundred or more. Following Ninasam's example, and with its practical assistance, local theater companies are now being formed in other rural districts.

Film followed theater. Ninasam began introducing film classics to Karnataka audiences in the 1970s. Today, participants in its annual film-appreciation course view works of leading filmmakers like Satyajit Ray and Akira Kurosawa, both former Magsaysay awardees, and Ingmar Bergman. By showing such films, Ninasam is bridging the gulf between rural and urban cultures. India's democracy, SUBBANNA believes, demands cultural diffusion of this kind.

Playing many parts in his time, SUBBANNA also crafts traditional Indian myths and tales into plays that probe modern issues. As a publisher, he brings out new works by regional writers as well as his own poems and translations of foreign movie scripts and books.

With financial prudence and a gift for bringing others into leadership, SUBBANNA has built Ninasam to last. Its headquarters in Heggodu boasts a library, rehearsal hall, guesthouse, and office, in addition to its famous theater. At fifty-nine, SUBBANNA says, he now leaves most of the real work to junior colleagues who include his son, Ashkara. But as one admirer has pointed out, self-effacing SUBBANNA still carries on multiple projects, "seemingly oblivious to the scale of his activities."

In electing K. V. SUBBANNA to receive the 1991 Ramon Magsaysay Award for Journalism, Literature, and Creative Communication Arts, the Board of Trustees recognizes his enriching rural Karnataka with the world's best films and the delight and wonder of the living stage.