Ninasam

Ninasam (Kannada: ನೀನಾಸಂ) is a cultural organisation located in the village of Heggodu in Sagar Taluk of the Shivamogga district in the state of Karnataka, India. Ninasam (also spelt as Neenasam) is the short form of Sri NIlakanteshwara NAtyaseva SANgha, an organisation dedicated to the growth of drama, films and publishing. Akshara the current head of Ninasam tells a story where Ni means you, Na means me, and Sam is a pun on the English word Sum, and in music is the moment where rhythm comes together. Ninasam was the brainchild of the renowned dramatist and Magsaysay award winner, K V Subbanna. As he said it is the communitarian activity. Ninasam works similar to a co-operative society. Currently A R Shreedhara Bhatt, a retired Revenue Officer, is the president and K V Akshara, the son of Subbanna is the director.

The seeds of Ninasam were laid in 1945 in Heggodu, when Subbanna and his friends started to get together in the evenings to exchange views and discuss about the politics and other current issues. After the Indian Independence in 1947, this group of boys started a library and also launched a newspaper called The Ashoka Weekly with a circulation of 500. It was printed on a cyclostyle machine and carried articles related to local and national events. This group also started producing small plays and in the year 1949, they formed a cultural group Ninasam; the name dedicated to the native Hindu God of Heggodu, Nilakanteshwara. Subbanna's father was the first president and the initial plays staged were those related to the Hindu epics, Ramayana and Mahabharata. After his graduation from Mysore University, Subbanna returned to Heggodu and started producing plays at Ninasam that included Kannada translations of works by Shakespeare, Molière and Brecht and also those of Kannada writers. Since 1987, Ninasam has been coming out with a quarterly house journal.

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