Udupi-Kaup: Janardan Puranik - an Unsung, yet Self-respecting Freedom Fighter

by Richie Lasrado - with inputs and pic from Durga Digitals

Mangalore / Udupi, Aug 15: How sad ! Only around Independence Day, we tend to remember those who fought the foreign rule so that the future generations could live in freedom, while it is our duty to remember them all through the 365 days, year after year.

On the other hand, there are persons who are not being remembered even on the Independence Day. Perhaps they are the ones who do not hanker after honour, awards, publicity and what have you.

Nonagenarian M Janardan Puranik, hailing from Majur-Kalya of Kaup in Udupi district is perhaps one of those unsung and unhonoured heroes who belong to the aforesaid category. Born in 1916, he, by a strange turn of events, landed in Muddebihal in the present northern Karnataka at the age of 20 and set up a restaurant there. Around the same time, in 1936, he was eyewitness to a shocking incident wherein a 15-year-old boy was shot dead by the then British-controlled district administration, while trying to suppress the agitation for freedom around the place. For Puranik, it was a revolting and blood-curdling spectacle.

The incident motivated him to plunge head-on into the struggle for freedom. He ensured that the protest against the boy's death snowballed into full-blood independece struggle. Joining other leaders like Govind Gudi, S Y Gudi, Y Lakshman, Sindhura Kanavi and many others, he organized public meetings and demonstrations against the British rule in Hubli, Gadag, Kurtukoti, Hulikote and other places.

Puranik managed to evade arrest since he hailed from Udupi and the police in what is now northern Karnataka did not know him well enough to be recognized easily. So he continued supporting the freedom struggle, even while running his restaurant business. In 1942, he played a key role in the Quit India movement in that area. He was once arrested in Biroda and was kept in jail only for 3 days. Obviously the police thought they had jailed a wrong person. After all, those were the days, when the freedom fighters moved around in fictitious identities. He continued to play his role in the struggle right up to 1947.

Even after Independence, Puranik kept a low profile. A highly self-respecting person, he did not lobby for Tamra Patra and related benefits. Now at 90, and having settled down in his native village, he leads a contented life with the grown-up children.

Looking back and comparing the current state of affairs, Puranik has only one regret - that the hard-fought freedom is now being misused and abused for injustice, greed, inequality and disunity, and keeps wondering if all the sacrifices made by those who fought for the country's freedom were all that worth.

Having shunned and rejected all honours and publicity, Puranik has only a single-minded appeal to the younger generation to engage themselves in socially-beneficial work.