Girish Karnad was an Indian actor, film director, Kannada writer, playwright, and Jnanpith awardee, who predominantly worked in South Indian cinema and Bollywood. Girish Karnad was born in the Chitrapur Saraswat Brahmin family of Matheran, in present-day Maharashtra, in 1938. His mother Krishnabai (née Mankikar) was a young widow, she began working as a nurse and cook (general housekeeper) for the bedridden wife of a certain Raghunath Karnad, a doctor in the Bombay Medical Services.
He earned his Bachelor of Arts degree in mathematics and statistics from Karnataka Arts College, Dharwad (Karnataka University), in 1958. After graduation, he went to England and studied Philosophy, Politics, and Economics at Magdalen in Oxford as a Rhodes Scholar (1960–63), earning his Master of Arts degree in philosophy, political science, and economics. Karnad was elected the President of the Oxford Union in 1962–63.
After working with the Oxford University Press, Chennai for seven years (1963–70), he resigned to take to writing full-time. While in Madras, he got involved with the local amateur theatre group, The Madras Players.
During 1987–88, he was at the University of Chicago as visiting professor and Fulbright playwright-in-residence. During his tenure at Chicago Nagamandala had its world premiere at the Guthrie Theater in Minneapolis based on Karnad’s English translation of the Kannada original.
He served as director of the Film and Television Institute of India (1974–1975) and chairman of the Sangeet Natak Akademi, the national academy of the performing arts (1988–93). He served as director of the Nehru Centre and as Minister of Culture, in the Indian High Commission, London (2000–2003).
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