After Naipaul, Girish Karnad attacks Rabindranath Tagore

Bangalore, Nov 9: It seems actor and playwright Girish Karnad is miffed with the entire literary world. After attacking

, Karnad has trained his gun on another Nobel Laureate poet

.

Karnad said all the plays written by Tagore till 1947 are second-grade. "Tagore is a great poet, but his plays are unbearable," added Karnad.

Speaking to reporters after a talk on "culture and entertainment" organised by the Azim Premji Foundation at its campus in Bangalore on Thursday, Nov 8, Karnad said, "Naipaul is an old fogey. There is no development in his thought. He is saying the same thing. And he's been uncreative for the past 10 years."

Karnad first attacked Nobel laureate and India-origin author Naipaul at the Mumbai Literature Festival on Friday, Nov 2. Karnad called Naipaul "tone-deaf" and "anti-muslim". Karnad, who was present at the lit-fest to conduct an hour-long master class on theatre, spoke at length about Naipaul instead for almost 45 minutes and even questioned the decision of the organisers for honouring the Nobel laureate at the festival.

"Mr Naipaul has written three books on India, three very big books and if you read them you will find that not one of them contains any reference to music. He has gone through the whole of India without responding to Indian music. Now, I think that this only means that he is tone deaf. That's my reading of the situation but then there's no reason why he shouldn't be tone deaf," he said.

Karnad also accused Naipaul of being "anti-Muslim" by saying that "he does not know how Muslims have contributed to the Indian history". "He has no music and therefore no conception of how the Muslims contributed to our history," he added.

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