Bangalore, May 2: A south Karnataka temple this week cancelled the staging of a play written by Girish Karnad, bowing to pressure from a Sangh parivar affiliate that objects to the playwright's open support for beef-eating.

Nagamandala was to be staged at the Sri Narasinghe Temple in Manipal, some 400km from here, on April 30 but was abruptly called off the previous day.

The 1988 play has been staged at least 25 times across the state without controversy and was made into a Kannada movie in 1997. It was Karnad's recent pro-beef stand that prompted the Samskrita Bharati to ask the temple to scrap the show, the Sangh affiliate's general secretary, Vasudev Bhat, acknowledged.

Ramesh Salavankar, the temple's managing trustee, said he had received several calls from the outfit.

"We cancelled it because we didn't want to risk trouble," he said. "Beef is a sensitive issue. We had booked the show only considering the merit (of the play) and not the utterances of its writer."

Karnad had last month participated in a protest in Bangalore against the Maharashtra beef ban. Some of the protesters cooked and ate beef during their demonstration. Karnad didn't join the beef meal.

Rangabhumi, a 35-year-old theatre group in Udupi that had been hired to stage the play, expressed disappointment at the cancellation.

"It's a blow to the theatre as a whole," Rangabhumi joint secretary Raviraj H.P told The Telegraph. "We tried to convince the temple authorities that the play has nothing to do with its writer's comment (on the beef ban) but they sounded helpless."

Karnad said he wasn't bothered at the cancellation of a "private event".

"It's their (temple's) show, their money and their event. If they don't want it, it's fine with me," he said.

The Jnanpith awardee is not new to controversies. He had in 2012 called Nobel laureate V.S. Naipaul "anti-Muslim" and dubbed Rabindranath Tagore a "second-rate playwright but a great poet".

Bhat, the Samskrita Bharati official, justified the diktat to the temple. "We had already taken a decision to boycott Karnad as he has hurt us several times with his comments," he said.

He added that the "boycott" motion had been ratified at the Virat Hindu Samajotsava, a convention held by the VHP and other parivar outfits, in Udupi on March 10.

"We are telling all the temples in Udupi to shun Karnad and his work and to never allow him any space in temple activities," Bhat said.

Although cow slaughter is banned in Karnataka, bulls and oxen are slaughtered for their meat.

Rangabhumi, which runs on a shoestring budget, had spent Rs 10,000 on props and background music without having received any advance from the temple.

Eighteen persons, including technicians, had worked through nights to get the play into shape as they all have day jobs, Raviraj said. But he stressed that the key issue was the attack on creativity and freedom. "Tomorrow, it could be some other play (to be banned)," he said.

Writers expressed shock. "It's so unfortunate that a beautiful work like Nagamandala has been dragged into controversy over its writer's personal views," said Kathyayini Kunjibettu, a Tulu writer.

Kunjibettu had last year translated Nagamandala from Kannada into Tulu, a language spoken in southwest Karnataka and northern Kerala. It was the Tulu version that was to be staged at the temple.

"One can't decide on the quality of a work by looking at the personal opinions of its creator. I can assure everybody that Nagamandala by itself has nothing to do with Karnad's stand against the beef ban," she said.

"If I say I like the poems of Vajpayee, can you say I'm for the BJP?"

Jeevanram Sullia, who runs the theatre group Nagamane in Karwar, a district neighbouring Manipal, said he had approached Ranghabhumi to stage Nagamandala on April 30.

"But they had already committed to the show at the temple and couldn't accept my offer. Now, after spending so much money and effort, they have lost both shows," he said.

He added: "Tomorrow it could be another theatre and another play only because its writer's personal views don't conform to the thoughts of some fringe group."

Nagamandala tells the story of a cobra that takes a man's form to seduce a woman trapped in a physically and emotionally unsatisfying marriage with a womaniser.