By John B Monteiro

Karkala, Mar 10: Utsava is on from March 10 to 20, 2022 showcasing several cultural programs and (hold your breath) offering helicopter rides. There is no mention of showcasing the sculptural heritage of karkala or the struggling to survive sculptural cottage industry for which the town is known. This article focuses on the sculptural heritage and the struggle of sculptural industry to survive.

There are art patrons and promoters, including for sculptural art. While European and American sculptural art is mainly marble-based, India has centuries of history of sculptors working on granites. One such example of sculpting in granite is Savira Kambada Basadi  (Thousand-pillar Basadi-Jain/Buddhist temple) in the heart of Karkala city, 60 km from Mangalore, and tall statue of Gomateshwara nearby. These granite-based sculptural marvels are centuries-old. Later generations, up to the present, have inherited this tradition - but now in danger of extinction because of lack of access, or beyond economic reach, the basic granite blocks. But, first the latest news on this front.

According to media reports dated January 8, 2021, sculptors in and around Karkala town had complained to the visiting Karnataka Minister for Mines and Geology, CC Patil (then), supported by local MLA V Sunil Kumar (now a Minister), about granite blocks, the basic raw material, are either scarce and not legally and economically accessible. According to Kumar there was a bar on extraction and high royalty fixed on them. This was driving the local sculptors away from their traditional artistic sculpting work like temple pillars. Minister Patil had assured that his department will work out the modalities of making granite available to sculptors legally.

It may be relevant and timely to recall the heroic heights attained by Karkala sculptors as reflected in the artistic work done by the tallest of them – Renjala Gopalkrishna (Gopala) Shenoy whose  original small workshop, attached to his modest residence, is located close to Venkatramana Temple in the heart of the town.

Gopala was commissioned in 1936 to carve the four pillars at the entrance of sanctum sanctorum of Karkala’s Venkatramana Temple located a few metres away from his home/workshop. These were carved out of granite stone in his workshop which then came to be called Bhuvanendra Shilpa Shala. The work
was completed in 1942. The four pillars depict Narada, Garuda, Thumbura and Ashwini as doorkeepers. These pillars have intricate carvings depicting birds feeding chicks with worms and grape-vines laden with bunches of grapes. They have also chains carved out of granite stone which mimic iron chains. These not only attract admiring tourists and devotees but are also so famous that people offer to swear standing between the pillars.

In 1941-1942, Gopala sculpted a three feet statue of Shri Gopalakrishna for Divine Life Society, Rishikesh. It was so life-like and attractive that the Swamiji of the temple invited Gopala to meet him. When he went there, the Swamiji was down with paralysis. Yet, with the help of his disciples he came out and hugged Gopala saying, “You are not just a sculptor but a divine sculptor. You have Krishna in your heart.” The statues he made went all over India and beyond. People from England commissioned him to make a statue of Shakespeare which was much admired.

Having been moved by the Gomateshwara (Bahubali) statue at Shravanabelagola, Ratnaverma Heggade, head of Dharmasthala shrine, commissioned Gopala to do a similar statue. The work started at Mangala Pade, a granite hillock 8 KM from Karkala, on October 12, 1967 and the finished statue started its road journey to Dharmasthala on March 27, 1973 on a motorised trailer with 64 wheels and pulled by three tractors of 250 HP each.

The transport had to be done on treacherous winding roads on which many minor bridges and culverts were surveyed and reinforced to take on the unprecedented heavy load. It was not as the crow flies between Karkala and Dharmasthala. The route for the transportation could not be through shorter link roads but the main district road touching Karkala (already host to an older Gomata statue of lesser height), Moodbidri, Venoor (also host to a smaller Gomata statue), Gurvainkere, Belthangady, Ujire and, finally, Dharmasthala. The cost of transport to Dharmasthala, by Mangathram, one of Mumbai’s leading transport firms, and its installation there worked out much more expensive than what the sculptor was paid for the work of carving the statue. It may be noted here, apart from the motorised trailer used for the transport, on-site carving of the giant stone block was cut and turned around without the use of modern lifting tackle like cranes. Gopal’s workforce was mainly sourced from Tamil Nadu, especially Coimbatore – many of them have now made Karkala their home and form the backbone of the stone-carving industry there.

Another statue of Bahubali, 35 feet high, was carved for installation at Phirozabad in U.P. The Japanese Buddhists, on their pilgrimage to Jain-Buddhist centres in north India, who saw this statue, came to Karkala to request Gopala to carve one for them to be installed in a temple at Dera, Japan. This was a twenty-metre high sitting Buddha, carved in sections and reassembled at the temple site in Japan. I flew from Bombay to Mangalore via Bangalore and the Japanese gentlemen were seated next to me on the Bangalore-Mangalore stretch. Next day I was with Gopala when the Japanese came to meet him with the request to carve a sitting Buddha and I had, incidentally, acted as a translator from English to Kannada and vice versa.  Also incidentally, on my first of many visits to Gopal’s modest abode, I discreetly looked at his fingers because there was a belief that in the olden days the chieftains who commissioned sculptors or other artists cut off their fingers so that they do not replicate such art for others, specially their rivals. To my relief, his ten fingers were intact.

Apart from $100,000 for this work, Gopala got orders for hundreds of smaller Buddha statues from Japan. Once again the cost of sculpting the twenty- metre sitting Buddha statue was dwarfed by the cost of packaging and transporting it to Japan. However, it should be noted that the Japanese generously included a cost escalation clause in the contract with the result Gopala got much more than what he initially bargained for.

Gopala married Sathyabhama at the age of 20 years. The couple had seven children-- three male and four female. His sons did not take much interest in their father’s art. Thus, his artistic legacy fell on Radhamadhav, son of Gopala’s second son, Manjunath (now late). When Radhamadhav was 18 years Gopala pulled him out of college and was initiated into the sculptural art. Gopala died on December I, 1985. Twenty-two years earlier, his wife also had died on the same date. Their shradda is now marked together on the same day.

As one commentator noted, perhaps Gopal did not leave any medium untouched to express his aesthetic outpourings. He had chosen paper, mud, wood, stone, silver, gold, panchaloha and even coconut shells for his work. It may be noted that the name Karkala is derived from kari-kallu – black stones. They were the curse of farmers. But, Gopala turned them to gold, literally, by earning foreign exchange with the export of sculptures made out of them.

A massive statue, sculpted by Radhamadav, dominates the Mangaluru-Bajpe International Airport Road at Marakkada, close to the Maravoor bridge, and can be seen while motoring to/from the airport.  

So, the bottom-line is instead of helipad for the elite, a museum showcasing the sculptural treasure of sculptors of Karkala, headed by Gopala, is more apt than transient time-pass ten-day melas.