Biography of A.

K Ramanujan

Introduction
Attipate Krishnaswami Ramanujan also known as A. K. Ramanujan,
was a scholar of Indian literature who wrote in both English and
Kannada. Ramanujan was a Indian poet, scholar and author, a
philologist, folklorist, translator, poet and playwright. His academic
research ranged across five languages: Tamil, Kannada, Telugu,
Sanskrit, and English. He published works on both classical and modern
variants of these literature and also argued strongly for giving local, nonstandard dialects their due.

Childhood
He was born into an Iyengar(Brahmin) family in Mysore City on 16 March
1929. His father, Attipat Asuri Krishnaswami, a professor of mathematics
at Mysore University and an astronomer, had a study crammed with
books in English, Kannada. and Sanskrit. The house was alive with
ideas. On summer nights, the children gathered on the third floor terrace
while their father pointed out and explained the constellations.
Sometimes at dinner, the children listened intently as their father
translated for their mother the stories of Shakespeare and other Western
classics into Tamil.
Ramanujan's mother was an orthodox Brahmin woman of her time,
limited by custom in the scope of her movement and control, in this way
a typical housewife. Though she was no intellectual practitioner, she was
neither typical nor limited in her learning and imagination. She was
widely read in Tamil and Kannada, and comfortable in the world of
ideas.
These were the parents who gave Ramanujan the telling metaphor of
father language and mother tongue that enlightens much of the analysis

found in the essays of this book. By the time his father died, when
Ramanujan was only twenty, the older man had already helped shape
his son's devotion to an intellectual life.
As a youth, Ramanujan was perplexed by his father's seemingly
paradoxical belief in both astrology and astronomy: how could one man
blend the rational and irrational in this way? Curiously, Ramanujan
chose magic as his first artistic endeavor. While in his teens, he had the
neighborhood tailor fashion him a coat fitted with hidden pockets and
elastic bands in which he concealed rabbits and bouquets of flowers.
With added accoutrements of top-hat and wand he performed for local
schools, women's groups. and social clubs. The desire to be a magician
was perhaps a strange use of the insight he gained from his father's
quirky belief in the irrational.

Education
He was educated at Marimallappa's High School and Maharaja College
of Mysore. In college, Ramanujan majored in science in his first year, but
his father, who thought him 'not mathematically minded', literally took
him by the hand to the Registrar's office and changed his major from
science to English.He was a Fellow of Deccan College, Pune in 1958 59 and Fulbright Scholar at Indiana University in 1959 - 62. He was
educated in English at the Mysore University and received his Ph.D. in
Linguistics from Indiana University.

Career
Having been a lecturer in English at Quilon and Belgaum, he taught at
The Maharaja Sayajirao University of Baroda for about eight years. In
1962, he joined the University of Chicago as an assistant professor,
where he was affiliated throughout the rest of his career, teaching in
several departments. However, he did teach at several other U.S.
universities at times, including Harvard, University of Wisconsin,

University of Michigan, University of California at Berkeley, and Carleton

College. At the University of Chicago, Ramanujan was instrumental in
shaping the South Asian Studies program. He worked in the
departments of South Asian Languages and Civilizations, Linguistics,
and with the Committee on Social Thought.
In 1976, the government of India awarded him the honorific title Padma
Shri, and in 1983, he was given the MacArthur Prize Fellowship
(Shulman, 1994). In 1983, he was appointed the William E. Colvin
Professor in the Departments of South Asian Languages and
Civilizations, of Linguistics, and in the Committee on Social Thought at
the University of Chicago, and, the same year, he received a MacArthur
Fellowship.
As an Indo-American writer Ramanujan had the experience of the native
milieu as well as of the foreign milieu. His poems like the "Conventions
of Despair" reflected his views on the cultures and conventions of the
east and the west.
A. K. Ramanujan died in Chicago, on July 13, 1993 as result of adverse
reaction to anesthesia during preparation for surgery.

Contributions to South Asian Studies

A. K. Ramanujan's theoretical and aesthetic contributions span several
disciplinary areas. In his cultural essays such as "Is There an Indian
Way of Thinking?" (1990) he explains cultural ideologies and behavioral
manifestations thereof in terms of an Indian psychology he calls
"context-sensitive" thinking. In his work in folklore studies, Ramanujan
highlights the intertextuality of the Indian oral and written literary
tradition. His essay "Where Mirrors Are Windows: Toward an Anthology
of Reflections" (1989), and his commentaries in The Interior Landscape:
Love Poems from a Classical Tamil Anthology (1967) and Folktales from
India, Oral Tales from Twenty Indian Languages (1991) are good
examples of his work in Indian folklore studies.

MOTHERLAND
Despite A.K. Ramanujan stayed in America, he never forgot his mother
and motherland and always lived in the reminiscences of Indian culture.
His poems prove that he was pulled by his mother and motherland again
and again. His poems prove that he was not only mentally but also
physically alienated from his birth place, India. His poetry proves that his
heart was deeply rooted in Indian culture and society. It also proves that
he faced a lot of identical problems in America and thats why he felt
alienated.
As it is well known to all that poetry reflects the poets confrontation with
life and cultural values. Most of the existential problems of life are taken
up by the poets. Whether a person is shifted to an alien soil for an
intellectual or economic reason or else the country in which he is born
and lives may be under the power of imperialism, his life gets affected by
the cross cultural and religious encounters. Thus the work of A.K.
Ramanujan is outstanding by any standard because of his first hand
experience of a life of alienation in a foreign country like America.

POETRY
For Ramanujan, if the traditional, religion is a lost world, he finds little to
enthuse himself in present day socio-political set-up of which he is an
unsparing critic, while he is at the same time aware of his own cultural
rootlessness. Not only is this, but discovery of cultural alienation is even
more disturbing for Ramanujan. It can be noted that the impact of
westernization has estranged the poet from his own ancient culture and
heritage; nevertheless, he realizes that his roots cannot lie else where.

In his poem Self Portrait A.K. Ramanujan talks about and uncertain self
alien to its own viewer.

I resemble everyone
but myself, and sometime see
in shop-windows,
despite the well-known laws
of optics
the portrait of a stranger,
date unknown,
often signed in a corner
by my father
Diverse modes of alienation have thus been a strong impulse behind the
poetry of A.K. Ramanujan. A very vital question which may now be
posed is: to what extent alienation proved to be a fully creative force,
and if it has not, what are the reasons for this. The alienation of A.K.
Ramanujan is further accentuated by the fact that he belongs to the
advanced urban society of America which has now lost touch not only
with the vast rural masses but also with traditional religious and cultural
beliefs and values of great Indian culture. In this situation, the theory and
practice of western modernism naturally has a great attraction for
Ramanujan and the resulting spirit of emulation may be intensified his
alienation further. This proves alienation occurs in a state of cultural
displacement, dismemberment and disorder.

It is quite clear that Ramanujan was staying in two cultures one

Eastern and the other Western. The Eastern is related to India and
Western is related to America for him. This results in the formation of a
self of Ramanujan which acquires a distinctive identity. His poetry is
inevitably the product of this distinctive identity so that Ramanujan
convincingly declares the following things in his poem Elements of
composition.

I pass through them

as they pass through me
taking and leaving
affections, seeds, skeletons.

It is obvious that Elements of Composition sums up the essence of the

poetic self, and resolves the problems of a dichotomous identity which
apparently traverses through the woods of his poems. It is very
significant that in his another poem Death and the Good Citizen the
poet cherishes a hope to die in his own native land. Ramanujan prefers
to be cremated in Sanskrit and sandalwood in his poem Death and the
Good Citizen.
Hidebound, even worms cannot
have me: theyll cremate
me in Sanskrit and sandalwood,
have me sterilized
to a scatter of ash.
It is also to be noted that the more he lives and writes abroad, the more
he becomes aware of his Indian culture and heritage. It is true that
Indianness is not merely a part of Ramanujans past but work continuous
to live in him, condition and regulate his attitude, behaviour and values.
Ramanujan proudly acknowledges the continued influence of the
inherited value system and there by affirms his deep and live
relationship with people and places of past. At this moment, it is also to
be noted that Ramanujan stayed in India since his early childhood upto
the age of thirty. His Indianness can be seen in his Still Another View of
Grace.
Bred Brahmin among singers of shivering hymns
I shudder to the bone at hungers that roam the street
Beyond the constables beat.

Controversy Regarding His Essay

His 1991 essay "Three Hundred Ramayanas: Five Examples and Three
Thoughts on Translations" courted controversy over its inclusion in B.A.,
History syllabus of Delhi University. It was included in 2006. In this
essay, he had written about existence of many versions of Ramayana
and a few versions portrayed Rama and Sita as siblings, which
contradicts the popular versions of the Ramayana, such as those by
Valmiki and Tulsidas.

ABVP a student wing of BJP opposed its inclusion in the syllabus,

saying it hurt the majority Hindus' sentiments, who viewed Rama and
Sita as Gods and were husband and wife. They demanded the essay be
scrapped from the syllabus. In 2008 Delhi High Court directed the Delhi
University to convene a committee to decide on the essay's inclusion. A
4-member committee was formed, which subsequently gave its verdict
3-1 in favour of inclusion in the syllabus.

The academic council however, ignored the committee's

recommendation and voted to scrap the essay from its syllabus in Oct
2011. This led to protest by many historians and intellectuals, and
accused the Delhi University of succumbing to non-historians' diktat.

Conclusion
To conclude, A.K. Ramanujan stands out as an eminent poet who has
made an indispensable position for himself in the realm of Indian English
poetry. Despite his death in 1993, he will always be remembered as a
poet gifted with a varied poetic sensibility, blessed with a treasure trove
of memories which the passage of time refused to corrode, a skilful
technical artist and as one who maintained a perfect balance between
the traditional and the modern. He is credited for having kept intact his
originality despite being subjected to the onslaught of various influences
both Indian and Western.It can be said that the theme of alienation gets
its significance because of its opposite, essence of belonging. It is also
to be noted that a alienated poet like Ramanujan cannot escape from
the values by which he is alienated or the person by whom he is
alienated or the environment by which he is alienated. His alienation
may be classified into different categories such as religious alienation,
cultural alienation, self alienation, social alienation and economic
alienation, but he in general suffers in isolation. According to all these
things, the very meaning of life is constantly to proceed forward in all
situations boldly. Despite Ramanujan was staying in America, he
maintained the status of equilibrium by not forgetting his own Indian
culture. This proves that he successfully managed himself to live in two
cultures simultaneously. It means the truth of life lies neither in alienation
nor in essence of belonging, but in the balancing of these two
experiences of life. It is a universal fact that life is not a process of
passing from one end to another, but is a cyclical process of day and
night, joys and sorrows and alienation and a sense of belonging which is
wonderfully described by A.K. Ramanujan in his poetry.