Trinamool Congress MP Mukul Roy was Tuesday sworn in as a cabinet minister and is expected to replace party MP Dinesh Trivedi, who had to quit as railway minister following the rail budget in which he proposed to hike passenger fares.

Roy, former minister of state for shipping, was sworn in by President Pratibha Patil at a brief function in Rashtrapati Bhavan.

Trinamool chief Mamata Banerjee forced Trivedi’s exit from the cabinet following the rail budget last week. Banerjee had written to the prime minister that Trivedi should be replaced by Roy.

The swearing in ceremony was attended by Vice President Hamid Ansari, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, Congress president Sonia Gandhi and several union ministers.

Banerjee was conspicuous by her absence as was Trivedi, whose resignation was accepted Monday. Most Trinamool MPs were, however, present.

Roy told reporters that safety, security and punctuality would be his priority as railway minister but added that he would speak in detail only in parliament.

Trinamool Sudip Bandyopadhyay said the new railway minister had the prerogative to take a decision on hike in passenger fares.

Mukul Roy was  born on 17th  April 1954 Now he is the  member of theRajya Sabha, the upper house of the Parliament of India, representing West Bengal. He also serves as the General Secretary of his party, the All India Trinamool Congress.

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‘I will overcome these ups and downs/Take life in my stride/Strike back ten times/With confidence I shall walk towards a new dawn’. These lines, voicing the determination of a victim of domestic violence, are from ‘I Will Survive’, one of the many poems penned by the 26-year-old, in her collection, ‘My Soul On A Platter’.

“Many women have not been victims of domestic violence but face oppression in their daily lives as a matter of routine. When fighting our way inside a packed bus, boarding a train or even simply walking on the pavement, elbowing men aside has become an unconscious action for most of us. There is a persistent feeling of being crowded by men. Isn’t that abuse?” asks Ghosh, adding, “Direct violence against the weak, uneducated or dependent women is not the only form of abuse. Women are pushed back, oppressed, crowded in, everywhere, every time. Ask the women celebrities, professionals or even the women drivers!”

But women are fighters and in Ghosh’s ‘Fighter’, she states: ‘I can’t give up/Nor can I give in/ I must go on, I have to win/Nothing can crush this indomitable spirit/For I know, that even in the darkness candles have been lit’. Indeed, the talented young woman has a way with the words. And her poetic works have many takers. Today, ‘My Soul On A Platter’, a product of Writers Workshop, is available in bookshops acrossSwitzerland,Canada, theUKand US. In fact, not only has the book been included in the collection of the prestigious Shakespeare and Company in Paris, it also recorded the highest sales at the International Book Fair, Geneva, in 2010.

While she may have started off with penning verses, Ghosh wasn’t sure whether poetry alone was enough to reach out to a collective conscience. “Some like reading, others prefer music and some are enthralled by painting. So after great thought, I hit upon the idea of amalgamation. I decided to bring in different aspects of art and literature together to convey my message to a larger audience,” she says.

A self-taught artist, Ghosh, who has a bachelor’s degree in Arts along with a degree in Gender and International Development, cites indigenous Maori, African and Indian art forms as her influences. Her signature pen-and-ink style first started on paper and gradually moved to canvas, glass, acrylic sheet and wood. Interestingly, her art is an extension of her poems.

Says Ghosh, whose poem ‘To The People Of R’ depicts the war-torn life of Rwandans, “When I talk about genocide in poetry I say: ‘Though weather-beaten/the survivors stand up/ they fight back/ with the beauty of love….’” And she has created a visual expression for these moving words on canvas too. “I have seen many viewers being moved by the paintings. I am happy if the audience receives the message loud and clear. If it takes painting to do that, then I will do my best to paint well,” says the artist, whose work is currently on display at the International Museum of Indigenous Art as part of Max Fourny’s collection inParis,France. In fact, she recently gave a unique presentation of her concept, ‘Words and Colours’ in Kolkata, which combined both sensory and cognitive simulations through a rendering of her poetry in cohesion with a pen and ink graphic repertoire.

If her verses form the basis of her artwork, they also inspire talented musicians. Like American songwriter William Pitt, who has set her poems to Indian ragas, and sarod player Pratap Kumar, who collaborated with her on ‘PEACE mode 365′, an initiative launched in September 2011.

Pratap Kumar, who is part of a project that “celebrates life and peaceful living through the practice of the art”, says, “‘PEACE mode 365′ is a global initiative for peaceful and harmonious living through arts and it transcends borders in building bridges in connecting artists, writers, poets, photographers, filmmakers, journalists, musicians, actors and other creative minds to build a network for sustainability through peace. I was inspired by Sreyashi’s vision to participate in the movement to promote a culture based on human rights.”

Dance, too, is a part of “communication” for Ghosh and at the Kolkata rendering of her poetry, young contemporary dancer Prasanna Saikia gave expression to ‘Return of the Bride’, that discusses the curse of dowry in Indian marriages: ‘Her bridal finery now tainted with tears/From now on, she is filled with rejection and fears/She is now cursed as an ill omen/Written off by society’. Ghosh reveals, “Both women and men in different countries have identified with the anguish of the devastated young bride, who is rejected for lack of dowry in this poem that has been translated in French, German and Spanish.”

Not one to rest on her laurels, the young woman is currently working with the Alliance Française du Bengale, Kolkata, designing a programme for International Woman’s Day in March. “My poetry will be read in the context of women rights as human rights, in the background of an exhibition and performance presentation.”

She is also sharing ideas with women ‘patachitra’ artists (scroll painters) for a fusion project detailing the relation between women and environment. “The idea is to marry my pen and ink repertoire signature style with this indigenous art form and showcase the interlinks between women, human rights, ecological sustainability and green jobs through stories based on mythological characters. The project is based on the UNESCO and UN Earth Charter mandate,” she says.

There are artists and there are activists. Ghosh, the Bengali poet-painter, has fused different art forms to propel rights activism, creating awareness through creative expression. And women are always central to her work. She says, “Equality is a gender issue. Women have to constantly prove themselves. One man will consider a woman to be his equal only if she proves herself better than ten men! From an eminent banker to an ordinary housewife, every woman seems to be constantly answerable, defending her right to exist.”

 (© Women’s Feature Service)

]]> http://indiacurrentaffairs.org/global-poet-painter-sreyashi-and-her-canvas-of-change-ajitha-menon/feed/ 0 http://indiacurrentaffairs.org/india-remembering-kamila-tyabji-sari-loving-firebrand-who-kept-her-wit-danish-khan/ http://indiacurrentaffairs.org/india-remembering-kamila-tyabji-sari-loving-firebrand-who-kept-her-wit-danish-khan/#comments Thu, 23 Feb 2012 04:29:07 +0000 India Current Affairs http://indiacurrentaffairs.org/?p=110803  In the late 1940s, an Indian woman was making her mark in the courtrooms ofLondon. Kamila Tyabji’sOxfordeducation and crisp saris sought to break the stereotype of Indian women. She was also the first woman to practise in the Privy Council Chamber. However, years of staying inEnglanddid not make her lose her fondness for the sari or her affinity toIndia, where she returned to start the Women’s India Trust (WIT) in 1968, leaving behind a successful career in law.

Born on February 14, 1918, Tyabji studied at St Xavier’s College, Mumbai, after which she joined St Hugh’s College atOxfordto study law. She was the granddaughter of Badruddin Tyabji, who was associated with the Congress in its initial days and who had famously granted bail to Lokmanya Tilak in 1897. Her father, Faiz Tyabji, was a distinguished lawyer and social reformer and made available for his children the best education possible.

Tyabji took forward her family’s tradition of strong and independent women when she did not yield to her parents’ wish of having her come back to Mumbai after finishing her studies. Instead, she built a successful practice inLondon, excelling in insurance cases. Her sojourns to court became the talk of the town and she was credited with having introduced ‘brilliant silken saris to the sombre monotony ofLondon’s law courts’.

Her love for sari was legendary to the extent that she chided Indian women who did not choose to wear the garment. “I will never discard the sari. It is the most beautiful dress for a woman,” she told a Reuters correspondent inLondonin late 1930s.

But despite her love for the Indian dress, she did not restrict herself to moving around only in Indian circles. She mingled well with the British intelligentsia where she was noted for her pointed arguments in the Privy Council Chamber. Her social diary was wide and diverse, which reflected her deep desire to understand the British society and people.

Of course, Tyabji’s decision to stay back inLondondid not go down well with her family, especially her parents, who were very unhappy with her decision. Being the youngest in the family, she was a pampered child and her brother Badruddin Tyabji Junior (who joined the Indian Civil Service) has noted in his book that ‘getting her own way in everything had become a habit, almost a necessity for her’. Ultimately, the family yielded to her wishes and she stayed put inEngland. In fact, in 1938, when her brother came for a visit she took him to meet Dr S. Radhakrishnan, who was inOxfordat that time.

Though a prominent member of the British Indian community, Tyabji always encouraged Indian students to freely mingle with the other communities and not align themselves only with Indians. In those days, she appeared on radio and television and chose to remain single. Her ‘Guardian’ obituary noted her reason for not marrying: “All the men are too frightened of me to marry me.” The ones who were not afraid were turned down. Legend has it that Sir John Kotelawala, Sri Lanka’s third prime minister, had proposed to her but she had declined.

What finally prompted her to quit her charmed social circle ofLondonand come back toIndiawas the famine that hitBiharin the early 1960s. She decided to join Jayaprakash Narayan and work for grassroots women.

After studying the law, politics could definitely have been her calling. After all, Tyabji had sailed on the same ship as Indira Gandhi forOxford, and she had a family background in politics – even her mother, Salima was a member of the Bombay Legislative Assembly in 1937. Yet, she consciously chose to stay away from that arena.

Social activism is how she chose to make a difference. And it is as the founder of the Women’s India Trust (WIT) that she is best remembered. With a capital of Rs 10,000 (US$1=Rs 48.7) she started WIT, an organisation that did pioneering work from Panvel, a few kilometeres away from Mumbai. It began by training marginalised and unskilled women to stitch sari petticoats. The idea was to make them economically independent. Today it also runs a nursing home, kindergarten teachers’ training classes and other vocational skill enhancing programes.

Tyabji’s formal training in law meant she also kept up with the burning social issues of her times. She conducted a study on the types of polygamy inIndia, as the issue was intimately connected with the women she sought to support. The Shah Bano case and the Uniform Civil Code also kept her busy and she did not feel shy about voicing her opinion and concerns.

So close was she to the subject of women’s empowerment that she was chosen to representIndiaat the United Nations on the status of women. But, for her, these foreign trips were also about scouting for potential markets and consumers for WIT products. In fact, it was her dedication and enthusiasm that propelled WIT products towards foreign markets.

Today, WIT continues to grow and in its quest to help as many less privileged and unskilled women as possible, it has broadened its activities. Apart from the food processing units, there are departments dedicated to tailoring, screen printing, toy making, and block printing. Keeping in mind the lack of formal education, many girls and women are given professional training so that they can become financially independent in time.

A whole range of products, from chutneys, jams, marmalades and fresh fruit squashes to greeting cards, gift envelopes, home linen, paper products, toys, mobile covers and wallets are made by these women and exported to countries such as Spain, Germany, the UK and Australia. WIT’s cloth and slipper bags are also used by top hotels acrossIndia.

Tyabji passed away on May 17, 2004, but just as her saris had made heads turn inLondon, WIT products, in their own way, have also carved a niche in today’s crowded and competitive market. Says the current chairperson of WIT, Dolat Kotwal, who has been with the organisation for almost two decades, “I met Kamila Tyabji in 1993 and started volunteering at WIT. I am still at it today. It was inspiring and fun to work alongside her for almost 20 years.”

She remembers Tyabji as a woman of unflinching faith. Says Kotwal, “On one occasion we were so short of working capital that I suggested we should sell a small section of the office. She firmly ruled that out saying, ‘we must only increase our assets, grow and expand’. She was certain that funds would flow for good work. And she was so right, her faith was steadfast.”

(© Women’s Feature Service)

Speaking on the occasion, the Minister said, ‘Shri Ramkinkar Baij was one of the pioneers of modern Indian sculpture. He was a modernist with his themes, well grounded in the local and the present. His work was a unique assimilation of what he took away from European art and his deep rooted Indian sensibilities. The range of human suffering he saw around him led him to transform immediate facts into allegorical, symbolic and occasionally even didactic images. This gave a new thematic focus to his works, as well as an element of drama and expressive-immediacy to his execution’.

Ramkinkar Baij (1906-1980) was born in Bankura, West Bengal, into a family of little economic and social standing, and grew by sheer determination, into one of the most distinguished early modernists in Indian art. In 1925, he made his way to Kala Bhavana, the art school at Santiniketan and was under the guidance of Nandalal Bose. Encouraged by the liberating intellectual environment of Santiniketan, his artistic skills and intellectual horizons blossomed thus acquiring greater depth and complexity. Soon after completing his studies at Kala Bhavana he became a faculty member, and along with Nandalal and Benodebehari Mukherjee played a pivotal role in making Santiniketan one of the most important centres for modern art in pre-Independent India. In 1970, the Government of India honoured him with the Padma Bhushan for his irrefutable contribution to Indian art.

Ramkinkar’s monumental sculptures established landmarks in public art. One of the earliest modernists in Indian art, he assimilated the idioms of the European modern visual language and yet was rooted it in his own Indian ethos. He experimented restlessly with forms, moving freely from figurative to abstract and back to figurative, his themes were steeped in a deep sense of humanism and an instinctive understanding of the symbiotic relationship between man and nature. Both in his paintings and sculptures, he pushed the limits of experimentation and ventured into the use of new materials. For instance, his use of unconventional material, for the time, such as cement concrete for his monumental public sculptures set a new precedent for art practices. The use of cement, laterite and mortar to model the figures, and the use of a personal style in which modern western and Indian pre-classical sculptural values were brought together was equally radical.

The retrospective includes over 350 works from various important collections including paintings, drawings, graphics and sculptures- covering about six decades of his artistic journey. The exposition is also enhanced by diverse media interventions such as photographic blow ups, digital prints, texts and video clips in an attempt to ontextualize the man and the artist in the most comprehensive manner.

The curator of the exhibition K S Radhakrishnan says “My curatorial venture aims at flagging those junctures where Ramkinkar Baij met all those who travelled before him, with him, and after him. In other words, this retrospective aims to be a context in which the post 1980s generation of Indian artists see, accept, reject, understand or misunderstand the master creator, the artist, the man, Ramkinkar Baij”.

On the occasion of this retrospective exhibition, NGMA is honoured to bring out a number of significant publications ‘Ramkinkar Baij’ by Prof. R. Siva Kumar, being brought out in collaboration with the Delhi Art Gallery, ‘My Days with Ramkinkar’ translated by Ms. Bhaswati Ghosh originally authored by Mr. Somendranath Bandhapadhyaya being brought out in collaboration with Niyogi Books, ‘Ramkinkar’s Yaksha Yakshi’ by Mr. K.S Radhakrishnan brought out by the Musui Art Foundation and supported by Aakar Prakar and Navya Gallery, ‘Ramkinkar Straight from Life’ by Mr. Johnny M.L brought out by the Musui Art Foundation.

Besides these extremely well illustrated productions the NGMA is delighted to publish two comprehensive books on Ramkinkar that provide a holistic view of Ramkinkar the man and the artist. ‘Ramkinkar and his Work’ authored by Prof. K.G Subramanyan and ‘Ramkinkar: The Man and the Artist’ authored by Prof. A. Ramachandran. The NGMA has also produced three portfolios drawn from the repertoire of watercolour, oil and graphic works of Ramkinkar Baij.

“I on behalf of the NGMA am extremely delighted to present the retrospective exhibition of Ramkinkar Baij, a bold and daring creative personality. Perceived as a bohemian, he has been the subject of much mythification. His powerful experimentations, ranging from the representational to the abstract have inspired generations of younger artists.

The exhibition sheds light on an enlightened and creative soul who was more of a Fakir and a wanderer and through his work represents the larger-than-life persona of the artist and his creative genius.” Says Prof. Rajeev Lochan, Director, National Gallery of Modern Art.

This is the ninth retrospective exhibition organized by the National Gallery of Modern Art as part of an endeavor to showcase the lifetime achievements of artists whose contributions in the field of art are outstanding. This year NGMA had organized the retrospective exhibition of prominent modern artist – K.K Hebbar and now of Ramkinkar Baij.

The exhibition will subsequently travel to its regional centers at Mumbai and Bengaluru.

Whenever an elder person was disappointed with advanced age I used to say ‘come and see 95 year old Vepa P Sarathi, he travels by ordinary bus to NALSAR, teaches and writes regularly”. He was always introduced as youngest member of NALSAR faculty, truly young in thinking and inspiring in teaching. There are just two solutions to the vexed problems of India: abolish religion and impose compulsory birth control measures. This was the firm belief of Professor Vepa Partha Sarathi, who was active in NALSAR class room till 48 hours before he breathed last on 25

Vepa was born on July 17, 1916. He started practicing in 1942, after taking his Law Degree from Madras University. From 1951 to 1960 he was arguing Government cases allotted to him, till 1954 by the Advocate General of Madras and thereafter by the Advocate General of Andhra at Guntur. From 1960-61 he was also lecturing in the Osmania University. Later in 1962 he shifted to the Supreme Court. During all this time, he was reporting cases in the Madras Law Journal, Indian Law Reporter (Andhra Series) and the Supreme Court Reports. His head notes were appreciated by the judges for their accuracy and brevity. In 1988-89 he represented the Union of India in the Bhopal Gas Leak case at Bhopal district court, High Court of Madhya Pradesh at Jabalpur and Supreme Court. As part of law of Torts, Professor Vepa explained why the Supreme Court preferred a settlement of 475 million dollars in Bhopal gas leak litigation rather than adjudicating it. The way he justified the negotiated settlement was very convincing and students were benefitted to understand certain ground realities and legal problems in that unprecedented events. He was designated as Senior Advocate by the Supreme Court of India in 1976 and was a member of the Law Commission under Justice K. K. Mathew (retd.) between 1983-85 where “he richly contributed for the development of law especially in Consumer Law, Promissory Estoppel and Contract ‘d’adhesion (Adhesive Contracts)”. Prof.Sarathi was also the Advocate General for Sikkim twice (from January 1990 to October 1994 and from October 1994 to 31st December 1994).

He has numerous books to his credit and most of them are authentic text books for law students. His book on “Law of Evidence” (1962) is a classicabout which the In 1964 Modern Law Review, London reviewed his book on Law of Evidence (1962): “The English Reader will sadly reflect on the dearth of comparable work in his own country.” In another review Lionel Horwitz, a former judge of the Madras High Court stated,“You have succeeded in making the rules appear reasonable, ingenious, and stimulating. You have avoided the dullness of so many text books on the subject by enlivening your commentary by a bright and colourful style. I am sure that students and others will find your book of the greatest help in their studies.”  Great Judge who lived for hundred years, Lord Denning himself appreciated scholarly work “Interpretation of Statutes”, in a letter to Dr. Sarathi.

A complete human being Vepa made all to laugh with his spontaneous humour and apt anecdotes to suit the context and the subject in class room. It is no wonder that he has carried that eternal smile beyond the life up to cremation. His loving students projected his smiling image on screen during a condolence meeting and vowed that they never forget that smile. He lived a simple life with two idlies for breakfast, one papad and a cup of curds for lunch and a glass of complan for dinner. His contribution was phenomenal.

Vepa could be easily identified and located, his address was the place from where resounding laughs were emanating. Whether lecture or usual conversation, it is laced with anecdotes in accurate phrases and sentences, with minute details of names and dates. He perfected the art of quotations with complete grammar and punctuation mentioning the source making it very authentic. His student Aloke said: To us, his students at NALSAR, he will always be our “Vepa-Sir” — easy going, a little hard of hearing perhaps, mentally sharp as a razor’s edge honed to the width of a molecule, with a memory that astounded us on a daily basis, and always full of good cheer and warmth. A firm believer in the uselessness of all testing and examination in the life of a student, it was impossible to dislike the man…. Few scholars can claim to have authored a book on Ancient Indian Mathematics and Astronomy and a classic on the law of evidence, the transfer of property and the interpretation of Statutes. Fewer still perhaps can claim felicity with the paint-brush or the ability to quote Gilbert & Sullivan operettas just as easily as Shakespeare; declaim from the King James Bible as easily as recite profoundly dirty limericks…. Vepa went beyond being a mere polymath and could genuinely be called a true “Renaissance Man” – someone who respected individual freedoms, supported the pursuit of truth unburdened by religious dogma, and always brought a scientific and rational approach to the problems of humanity.” It is a great tribute indeed.

Vepa Sir inspired more than ten batches of students and the colleagues at NALSAR. Mr. Mohan Rao, judicial officer recalled his perfect knowledge of text of law saying “he never looked into a book to explain the Evidence Act or Transfer of Property Act, his memory is phenomenal as he renders exact text of any section. During one session at AP Judicial Academy a judge has disputed text, but has to agree with Vepa after referring to the bare Act of that law”.

Looking at his active and healthy attitude at nineties, some asked him “what is the secret of your health?” His answer was: “I have no secrets. I always look for humorous examples to explain any context, which keeps me happy and make others to laugh”. It was one hundred per cent truth. As he has already mastered the subjects he was teaching, his preparation was collecting relevant quotations and hilarious episodes. His hobbies included mathematics, painting with water colours and collection of jokes and classic anecdotes. I remember his beaming face when NALSAR very appropriately conferred Honoris Cause LL.D on Vepa for his scholarly publications.

His nephew, Vepa Kamesam, former Deputy Governor of Reserve Bank of India, says, “He along with his father, Sir Vepa Ramesam (His father was former Chief Justice of Madras High Court and was knighted by the British) wrote a book on Elementary Geometry without using the Euclidean axioms.”

The nonagenarian professor saw demise of his daughter and later, his son in law. His daughter entrusted him with care of a family who helped her. Professor Vepa has started teaching and writing books to maintain that family and got three girls educated. One of them graduated from NALSAR. This speaks volumes of his humaneness and willingness to do hard work at his eighties and nineties.

During my prolonged conversations with him in NALSAR bus, he was always expressing that we need to make good lawyers and good human beings. He tried his best to do so in law school. If NALSAR could produce good lawyers, it might be because of teachers like Vepa. It is appropriate to quote our student Alok in this context again. “A good lawyer, according to Vepa-Sir was not one who had just mastered the concepts of law, its practice and procedure, and its intricate jargon. All of those are of course necessary but definitely not sufficient to produce a good lawyer. A good lawyer had to be someone with more than a passing familiarity of literature, who appreciated the arts, who engaged freely in thoughtful debates, and engaged with the great public questions of the day. A lawyer was not just anyone with an opinion, but someone whose opinions are informed by facts, by an understanding of the issues, and by a willingness to listen to and appreciate the merits of another’s point of view. These, and these alone, stand out as the hallmark of a good lawyer”.

His commitment to duty was great. Due to illness he could not attend for two days before his death. He exchanged his classes with his colleagues and said that he would definitely come to NALSAR and take those classes. On 20^th January he told in his last class: “Even if I die physically, (he died on January 25, 2012) I don’t want to die intellectually.” Those were the last words. Professor Amita Dhanda said, he taught us how to live and die in peace and happiness.

Vepa was an efficient teacher, lawyer and great author. He stood for human values, never valued his writings in terms of money, which factor was exploited by publishers. His book on Interpretation of Statutes is worth prescribing as must for the students, teachers, lawyers and more so for the judges. It is full of anecdotes from classic texts and literature reflecting the need to learn life from different experience rather than confining to texts of law only. His books are original with conceptual clarity and fearless analysis of judgments. He writes how right to property was wrongly handled in judgments of Supreme Court, and how authors confused the concept of culpable homicide and its kinds in criminal law. Vepa defended the logical reasoning of Evidence Act, especially Sections 24 to 27 making confessions to police irrelevant. If the persons who matter read his books Vepa should have become the director of National Judicial Academy teaching these nuances of law to judges, which could have helped in achieving justice for generations to come. Vepa got very less than what he deserved and society drew much less than what he could have given.

Author is the Professor and Head Center for Media Law and Policy, NALSAR University of Law

Sreedharan, then 65, joined the Delhi Metro Rail Corporation in 1997. The first eight kilometre stretch opened in December 2002. Today, the network extends over 190 km in Delhi and the National Capital Region (NCR) towns of Gurgaon in Haryana and Noida and Vaishali in Uttar Pradesh. Eighteen lakh passengers travel on the 2,400 train trips on the network every day.

This after a five-decade career in the Indian Railways during which he delivered what many considered to be impossible — the Konkan Railway along the country’s wests coast covering around 760 km with 93 tunnels and 50 bridges. He took up the project in 1990 after retiring from the Indian Railways and seven years later, seamlessly transited to the DMRC.

Now 79, Sreedharan has not only set a new paradigm for the way in which people travel but raised the bar for delivering infrastructure.

“The guidelines Mr. Sreedharan laid down will be followed as they are. Even if he retires, he will be our role model. He has set a path that cannot be tampered with,” a senior DMRC official, pleading anonymity told IANS.

AS is his wont, Sreedharan completed Phase I of the Metro project involving 65 km of underground, ground level and elevated tracks two-and-a-half years ahead of schedule. The 125 km Phase II took four-and-a-half years. Planning is now underway for the 117-km Phase III.

Not for nothing has the DMRC model now been taken across the country to Ahmedabad, Bangalore, Chennai, Hyderabad, Jaipur, Kochi and Kolkata.

“He (Sreedharan) is known for his outstanding work. His managerial skills are admirable. We will miss his services,” Delhi Chief Minister Sheila Dikshit told IANS.

“My government will miss him. He has given us a most reliable and modern Metro network. He made travel in the city more comfortable. I do not have words to offer our gratitude to him for giving us a wonderful mode of public transport,” Dikshit said.

Sreedharan, who was to step down in 2000, was repeatedly requested by the Delhi government to continue as the DMRC chief. He was given five extensions to avoid any hindrance to Delhi Metro’s Phase I and II projects.

In an earlier interview with IANS, Sreedharan had said he would definitely quit in 2011 as the pace of work was becoming too hectic for him.

“I am not really indispensable to the DMRC. Very frankly, the only thing is the government felt that my continuing was necessary for the completion of Phase I and phase II. As for Phase III in Delhi, I will be involved only in the initial work as in a project of this type there are so many decisions to be taken.”

Sreedharan’s will be a hard act to follow and the mantle has fallen on Mangu Singh, 56, the DMRC’s director (works), who oversaw the construction of the showpiece Airport Express Metro.

Mangu Singh, a civil engineer and Roorkee University alumnus, was selected by a three-member panel consisting of union Urban Development Secretary Sudhir Krishna, Delhi Chief Secretary P.K. Tripathi and Sreedharan.

Malaviyaji is the founder of the Banaras Hindu University, which is today one of the premier national universities in the country with nearly twenty thousand students and 140 departments ranging from social sciences to medicine and engineering.

Malaviyaji wanted the youth of India to benefit from an integrated education that incorporated modern scientific knowledge, practical training, ethical standard and the study of the arts. He wanted to blend the best of Indian learning with the modern scientific ideas of the West.

quote from the Malaviya’s  message on the founding of the Banaras Hindu University.

“India is not a country of the Hindus only. It is a country of the Muslims, the Christians and the Parsees too. The country can gain strength and develop itself only when the people of the different communities in India live in mutual goodwill and harmony. It is my earnest hope and prayer that this centre of life and light which is coming into existence, will produce students who will not only be intellectually equal to the best of their fellow students in other parts of the world, but will also live a noble life, love their country and be loyal to the Supreme ruler. “ 

he is a better ideal of education in India and it remains as relevant today as it was when it was written nearly a hundred years ago.

Malaviyaji believed in the power of education and morality in arousing the national consciousness.

That was an era when a group of like minded individuals, who were men and women of unimpeachable integrity and intellectual giants in their own rights, provided moral, intellectual and political leadership of a rare quality to our country. They were widely loved and respected and their politics was infused with a high degree of idealism, selfless service and the hope of building a new and modern India unshackled from colonial subjugation.

Despite the cynicism that prevails today around us,  in the heart of each one of us there is a yearning for decency, for goodness and respect for fundamental human values. These are the same values that we associate with the founding fathers of our republic. And it is our bounden duty to remind successive generations of what they aspired for in building a free and modern India.

initiations  taken by the Ministry of Culture to celebrate the life and achievements of one of our great patriots that Malaviyaji was.

At the first meeting of the National Committee headed by me that was set up to Commemorate the 150th Birth Anniversary Year of Malaviyaji, we received a number of very constructive suggestions on the commemorative events to be organized.

A wide range of projects are being undertaken as part of the commemoration to make Malaviyaji’s ideals and achievements more accessible to a wider audience. Our aim is to motivate the youth of our country to learn and be inspired by his thoughts, by his teachings and by his achievements.

special efforts are being made to translate the biography and literary works of Malaviyaji in different Indian languages. A series of countrywide seminars, lectures and exhibitions will be organised for spreading his message to the people at large.

A Centre for Malaviya studies will be set up at the Banaras Hindu University, where a digital collection of Malaviyaji`s writings will be compiled for the first time. We also plan to establish chairs, scholarships and education related awards in his memory.

These  commemorative events will capture the multi-faceted genius of Pt. Madan Mohan Malaviya and his versatile contributions to the making of history of modern India.

He worked tirelessly to build the Indian National Congress, of which he was elected President four times. Malaviyaji served for 14 years in the Imperial Legislative Council and later in the Central Legislative Assembly. He was a fiery orator and showed his oratorical skills and intellectual prowess in a four and a half hour long speech in the Imperial Council against the Rowlatt Bill.

He was Chairman of the Hindustan Times from 1924 to 1946 during which period a Hindi edition of the newspaper was also launched. Pt. Malaviya campaigned to secure entry for Dalits to the Kalaram Temple on the day of the Rath Yatra. He was a member of the Royal Industrial Commission of 1918 where he argued forcefully for granting protection to Indian industries against indiscriminate imports from abroad.

For lesser mortals, these are the achievements of many lifetimes.

quoting what Pt. Jawaharlal Nehru said about Pt. Madan Mohan Malaviyaji is – ‘It is fit and proper that we should pay homage to this great man who is the foundation stone of the huge building of Independence.’ What a glowing tribute to the great patriot, visionary and nation builder we honour today.

Source : It is Based on  the text of Prime Minister, Dr. Manmohan Singh’s speech at the Commemoration of 150th Birth Anniversary of Mahamana Madan Mohan Malaviya inaugural function in New Delhi :

The statue is located outside the headquarters of software design company Graphisoft, whose founder Gabor Bojar commissioned the statue, Xinhua reported.

Nearly two metres tall and weighing around 220 kg, the statue was designed by Hungarian sculptor Erno Toth. It depicts Jobs in a jumper and jeans with arm outstretched, in the middle of a product presentation.

Inscribed on a bronze iPad-shaped tablet at the foot of the statue is a quotation from Jobs: ‘The only way to do great work is to love what you do.’

The company said the statue was the first in the world.

‘I wanted to commemorate him and his achievements in information technology and his particular contribution to the development of my company,’ Bojar was quoted as saying.

Bojar met Jobs in Hanover, Germany, in 1984 and said he remains grateful for the inspiration and assistance he received from Apple.

‘Apple’s support included cash and computers at a time when Graphisoft was a small company with limited resources,’ he said.

‘It expresses the dynamism and the spirit of Steve Jobs,’ Bojar said of the design. ‘The people who are walking past it will hopefully be inspired by that.’

R. Viswanathan, Indian ambassador to Argentina, said Sreyashi Mishra from Kolkata gave rendition of Rabindra Sangeet, Gustavo of Hastinapur Foundation, Argentina, recited the Nobel Laureate’s poems, and Axel Maimone, an Argentine scholar, gave a talk on Tagore and his works.

The programme, held to mark the 150th birth anniversary of the Nobel Laureate, was organised in the garden of Vila Ocampo, the residence of Argentine literary personality Victoria Ocampo. Tagore had stayed there in 1924.

Dickens is seen in profile, with typography making up his portrait, using the titles of his greatest works, including ‘Oliver Twist’, ‘Great Expectations’, ‘David Copperfield’ and ‘A Christmas Carol’, the Daily Express reported.

It has been produced by the Royal Mint.

On the edge of the coin is an inscription of the quotation ‘Something Will Turn Up’, spoken by Wilkins Micawber in David Copperfield.

Artist Matthew Dent said: ‘I wanted the design to reference both the immense contribution Dickens has made to British literature and his iconic portrait.’

‘The visual reference for the portrait was based on a bust of a bearded Dickens which is part of the collection of the Charles Dickens Museum in London.’

‘The typography uses several different typefaces, from ones that would have existed during his lifetime, to ones that were designed since his death.

‘This symbolises his enduring popularity,’ the Express quoted Dent as saying.

Jawaharlal Nehru was born in Allahabad on November 14, 1889, to Swaroop Rani, the wife of Motilal Nehru, a wealthy Allahabad based barrister and political leader himself. He was Motilal Nehru’s only son amongst three younger daughters including Vijaya Lakshmi Pandit. The Nehru family is of Kashmiri lineage and of the Saraswat Brahmin caste.

Educated in the finest Indian schools of the time, Nehru returned from education in England at Harrow, Trinity College and Cambridge to practice law before following his father into politics.

By his parents’ arrangement, Nehru married Kamala Nehru, then seventeen in 1916. At the time of his wedding on 8 February 1916, Jawaharlal was twenty-six, a British-educated barrister. Kamala came from a well-known business family of Kashmiris in Delhi.

Gandhi And The 1920 s

Jawaharlal father Motilal Nehru was already a prominent figure in the Indian National Congress and had served as its President. Thus when young and glamorous Jawaharlal entered the Congress, it excited young Indians all over, who felt Nehru would rejuvenate India’s political leadership and come at the same level with the British rulers of the land.

Nehru did not share Motilal’s moderate-liberal line. He began to draw closer to the rising leadership of Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi, a former barrister who had won battles for equality and political rights for Indians in South Africa, and had emerged a national hero with the successful struggles in Champaran, Bihar and Kheda in Gujarat.

Nehru was instantly attracted to Gandhi’s commitment for active but peaceful, civil disobedience. Gandhi saw India’s future in the young Jawaharlal Nehru.

The Nehru family transformed their lifestyle according to Gandhi’s teachings. Jawaharlal and Motilal Nehru abandoned western clothes and tastes for expensive possessions and pastimes, and adopted Hindi, or Hindustani as their common language of use. Young Jawaharlal now wore a khadi kurta and a Gandhi cap, all white – the new uniform of the Indian nationalist. Nehru was first arrested by the British during the Non-Cooperation Movement (1920-1922), but released after a few months.

After Gandhi suspended civil resistance in 1922 as a result of the killing of policemen in Chauri Chaura, thousands of Congressmen were disillusioned. But Nehru stayed with Gandhi and the Congress.

Jawaharlal was elected President of the Allahabad Municipal Corporation in 1924, and served for two years as the city’s chief executive. He used his tenure to expand public education, health care and sanitation. He resigned citing lack of cooperation from civil servants and obstruction from British authorities.

From 1926 to 1928, Jawaharlal served as the General Secretary of the All India Congress Committee, an important step in his rise to Congress national leadership.

AS INDIA’S FIRST PRIME MINISTER

He headed the Indian government for 17 long and brilliant years. He wanted India to develop into a world recognized nation. He supported technological and scientific progress and encouraged art and literature. He wanted to eliminate discrimination from the face of the world and encouraged peaceful co-existence. Nehru did not believe in aligning himself with the military political blocks and wanted to end the cold war. He was awarded the Bharat Ratna in 1955.

NEHRU AS A PERSONALITY

Not only was he a brilliant orator, a charming, warm and noble thinker and philosopher, but also a fantastic writer. His most popular books are ‘Discovery of India’, ‘Glimpses of World History’ and ‘Letters from a father to a daughter’. On May 27, 1964, India lost a great influence. In the words of Dr. Radhakrishnan “As a fighter for freedom he was illustrious as a maker of a modern India, his services were unparalleled. His life and works have had a profound influence on our mental make-up, social structure and intellectual development.”

NEHRU AND KASHMIR

Since Nehru’s forefathers had migrated from Kashmir Valley and the family had retained not only the connection, but also the cultural traditions of Kashmir. Nehru had great attachment and love for Kashmir and the Kashmiri people. It was for this great attachment that he became a staunch supporter for the liberation of Kashmiris from the autocratic rule of the Maharaja. For this purpose, Jawaharlal Nehru linked the freedom movement of India with the Quite Kashmir Movement, launched by National Conference under the leadership of Sheikh Mohammad Abdullah.

Pt. Nehru persuaded Sheikh Mohd. Abdullah to rechristen Muslim League that had started struggle against autocracy in 1931 as J&K National Conference. Nehru even visited Kashmir to plead for Sheikh Abdullah who had been arrested by the Maharaja’s government. Nehru was denied permission and was arrested at Kohala border point.

After 1947, Pt. Nehru played a vital role in political, social and economic development of Jammu & Kashmir. Towards the end of his life and career, he re-established rapport with estranged Sheikh Mohd. Abdullah and sent him as an emissary to Pakistan for bringing the two nations together. Though Nehru’s untimely death frustrated the move, his confidence in Abdullah and reconciliation with Pakistan clearly indicated that till his end he remained deeply concerned with Kashmir and its people.

*Deputy Director, PIB, Srinagar (J&K)
Source : PIB Features

‘When people talk about the ways in which social support is good for our health, they typically assume that the benefits of social support come from the support we receive from others,’ senior study co-author Naomi Eisenberger said.

‘But it now seems likely that some of the health benefits of social support actually come from the support we provide to others,’ added Eisenberger, assistant professor of psychology at the University of California, Los Angeles, the journal Psychosomatic Medicine reports.

Eisenberger and psychology graduate student Tristen Inagaki studied 20 young heterosexual couples in good relationships at the university’s Brain Mapping Centre, according to a varsity statement.

The 20 women underwent functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) brain scans while their boyfriends were just outside the scanner receiving painful electric shocks.

At times, the women could provide support by holding the arm of their boyfriends while at other times they had to watch their boyfriends receive shocks without being able to provide support (each woman instead held a squeeze-ball).

At still other times, the boyfriends did not receive a shock, and the women could either touch or not touch them.

Scientists found that when women supported boyfriends in pain, they showed increased activity in the ventral striatum and septal area.

‘The ventral striatum, is typically active in response to simple rewards like chocolate, sex and money,’ Eisenberger said.

The more reward-related neural (brain activity) activity these women showed, the more connected they reported feeling with their boyfriends while providing support.

‘The fact that support-giving also activates this region suggests that support-giving may be processed by the brain as a very basic type of rewarding experience,’ she concluded.

He was the first to raise the issue of the National System of Education which is today the bed-rock of the National Policy on Education (1986) updated in 1992. The concept implies that, upto a given level, all students, irrespective of caste, creed, location or sex have access to education of a comparable quality. All educational programmes, he said, must be carried out in strict conformity with secular values and constitutional framework. He stood for a common educational structure of 10+2+3 throughout India. If Maulana Azad were alive today he would have been the happiest to see the Right to Free Education Bill getting cabinet approval for the approval of Parliament. The Right to Education Bill seeks to make free and compulsory education a fundamental right. The wealth of the nation, according to Maulana Azad, was not in the country’s banks but in primary schools. The Maulana was also a great votary of the concept of Neighbourhood schools and the Common School System.

Born in Mecca on November 11, 1888, his father Maulana Khairuddin was a noted scholar, his mother Alia was an Arab, niece of Shaikh Mohammad Zahir Vatri of Madina. His father gave him the name of Feroze Bakht but he became Abul Kalam and the name stayed. At 10 he was well-versed in Quran. At 17 Abul Kalam was a trained theologian recognized in the Islamic world. His studies at Al Azhar University Cairo further deepened his knowledge. At Calcutta where his family had settled he started a magazine called ‘Lisan-ul-Sidq’. His early influences were Maulana Shibli Naomani and Altaf Hussain Haali, the two great Urdu critics.

Azad made a debut in politics when the British Government partitioned Bengal in 1905 on religious grounds. The Muslim middle classes supported the partition but Azad rejected it outright. He took active part in the agitation, joined the secret societies and revolutionary organization, came in contact with Sri Aurobindo Ghosh and Shyam Sundar Chakravarty. He stood for a unified India and never deviated from his stand. He writes in his famous book ‘India Wins Freedom’ : ‘It is one of the greatest frauds on the people to suggest that religious affinity can unite areas which are geographically, economically and culturally different’. It is a fact of history that while other Congress leaders accepted the partition in 1947, Maulana stood steadfast. His famous statement on Hindu-Muslim unity stands out as Magna Carta of his faith : “If an angel were to descend from the heavens and proclaim from the heights of Qutab Minar: Discard Hindu-Muslim unity and within 24 hours Swaraj is yours, I will refuse the preferred Swaraj but shall not budge an inch from my stand. The refusal of Swaraj will affect only India while the end of our unity will be the loss of our entire human world.”

At the age of 20 he went on a tour of Iraq, Syria and Egypt and met the young Turks and Arab nationalists including Christians. The tour proved very useful to Azad to crystallize his thoughts on the neo-colonialists who were exploiting those countries and how India could help them. On return he started a journal in Urdu named ‘Al Hilal’ in 1912. It was this journal where he aired his liberal views, ‘Rationalist in outlook and profoundly versed in Islamic lore and history’. Writes Nehru in his ‘Discovery of India’. The Maulana interpreted scriptures from the rationalist point of view. Soaked in Islamic tradition and with many personal contacts with prominent Muslim leaders of Egypt, Turkey, Syria, Palestine, Iraq and Iran, he was profoundly affected by political and cultural developments in these countries. He was known in Islamic countries probably more than any other Indian Muslim.

The journal ‘Al-Hilal’ became extremely popular and in two years its circulation rose to 30,000. The inevitable happened when in 1914 the British Government confiscated the press and banned the journal under the Defence of India Act. Azad was arrested and sent to Ranchi jail where he suffered untold hardships.

Released from jail he resumed his educational writings. He spoke in a new language, writes Nehru. It was not only a new language in thought and approach, even its texture was different, for Azad’s style was tense and virile though sometimes a little difficult because of its Persian background. He used new phrases for new ideas and was a definite influence in giving shape to Urdu language as it is today. The older conservative Muslims did not react favourably to all this and criticized Azad’s opinion and approach. Yet not even the most learned of them could meet Azad in debate and argument, even on the basis of scriptures and tradition, for Azad’s knowledge of these happened to be greater than theirs. He was a strange mixture of medieval scholasticism, eighteenth century rationalism and modern outlook. There were a few among the older generation who approved of Azad’s writings, among them being Shibli and Sir Sayyaid of Aligarh University.

After the confiscation of ‘Al-Hilal’ Azad brought out a new weekly called ‘Al Balagh’ but this too came to an end when Azad was interned in 1916. He remained in jail for four years. When he came out he was an acknowledged leader and took his seat with the great might of the Indian National Congress. In 1920 he met Tilak and Gandhi which was the turning point of his life. Gandhi had launched the ‘Khilafat Movement’ under the Deoband School and Firanghi Mahal where Gandhi and Azad were frequent visitors. But when Muslim League denounced Gandhiji’s Satyagraha, Azad who had enrolled himself in the League when a boy, left the Muslim League forever. His popularity was so high that at 35 he became the President of the Indian National Congress, the youngest ever to hold that office. In 1942 during the Quit India Movement he was elected as the Chief spokesman of the Congress. This distinction he also had during the negotiations with the Cabinet Mission in 1946 at Simla.

As Education Minister (15.08.47 to 22.02.1958)

In 1947 when the Interim Government was formed Maulana Azad was included as Member for Education and Arts. On August 15, 1947 when India attained Independence he became Free India’s first Education Minister with a cabinet rank where he achieved a number of distinctions and established institutions of excellence to promote education and culture.

Among the new institutions he established were the three National Academies viz the Sangeet Natak Academy (1953), Sahitya Academy (1954) and Lalit Kala Academy (1954), the Indian Council for Cultural Relations having been established by him earlier in 1950. The Maulana felt that the cultural content in Indian Education was very low during the British rule and needs to be strengthened through curriculum. As Chairman of the Central Advisory Board of Education, an apex body to recommend to the Government educational reform both at the center and the states including universities, he advocated, in particular, universal primary education, free and compulsory for all children upto the age of 14, girls education, vocational training, agricultural education and technical education. He established University Grants Commission (UGC) in 1956 by an Act of Parliament for disbursement of grants and maintainence of standards in Indian universities. He firmly believed with Nehru that if the universities discharged their functions well, all will be well with the Nation. According to him the universities have not only academic functions, they have social responsibilities as well. He was pioneer in the field of adult education. His greatest contribution, however, is that in spite of being an eminent scholar of Urdu, Persian and Arabic he stood for the retention of English language for educational advantages and national and international needs. However primary education should be imparted in the mother-tongue. On the technical education side he strengthened All Indian Council for Technical Education. The Indian Institute of Technology, Kharagpur was established in 1951 followed by a chain of IIT’s at Bombay, Madras and Kanpur and Delhi. School of Planning and Architecture came into existence at Delhi in 1955.

Student Unrest

Secular to the marrow of his bones Maulana’s advice to students was: ‘Bury communalism once for all.’ Student indiscipline, however, continued to worry him. Presiding over the meeting of the Central Advisory Board of Education (CABE) on February 7, 1954 he said: “What worries me most is that the extent and magnitude of the student’s unrest is very often without any relation whatsoever to the supposed cause. Such unrest among the students strikes at the root of our national culture. The student of today is the potential leader of tomorrow. He will have to sustain the social, political and economic activities. If he is not properly trained and does not develop the necessary resources of character and knowledge he cannot supply the leadership which the national will need”.

As an Author

Maulana Azad was a prolific writer with books in Urdu, Persian and Arabic notably amongst which is ‘India Wins Freedom’, his political biography, translated from Urdu to English. Maulana’s translation of Quran from Arabic into Urdu in six volumes published by Sahitya Akademy in 1977 is indeed his ‘Magnum Opus”. Since then several editions of ‘Tarjaman-e-Quran’ have come out. His other books include ‘Gubar-e-Khatir’, ‘Hijr-o-Vasal’, ‘Khatbat-I-Azad’, ‘Hamari Azadi’, ‘Tazkara’. He gave a new life to Anjamane-Tarrqui-e-Urdu-e-Hind’. During the partition riots when the ‘Anjamane-Tarrqui-Urdu suffered, its Secretary Maulvi Abdul Haqq decided to leave for Pakistan alongwith the books of the Anjaman. Abdul Haqq had packed the books but Maulana Azad got them retrieved and thus saved a national treasure being lost to Pakistan. He also helped the Anjaman to revive by sanctioning a grant of Rs. 48,000 per month from the Ministry of Education. Likewise he increased the grants of Jamia Millia Islamia, Aligarh Muslim University in their days of financial crisis. He paid particular attention to the Archaeological Survey of India’s efforts to repair and maintain the protected monuments.

Throughout his life he stood for the chords of cordiality between Hindus and Muslims and the composite culture of India. He stood for modern India with secular credentials, a cosmopolitan character and international outlook.

Orator

As an orator Azad had no equal among his contemporaries. When he spoke the audience listened to him spell-bound. Recalling the memories of the Roman and the Greek orators, there was magic in his words, his language was chaste, civilized, his speech was dramatic. In October 1947 when the Delhi Muslims were leaving for Pakistan tens of thousands of them, he spoke from the ramparts of Jama Masjid, like an ancient oracle: “Behold, the high towers of Jama Masjid are asking you: where have you lost the pages of your history. Only yesterday your caravans had performed ‘Wazu; (Ablutions) on the banks of Jamuna. And today you are afraid to live here. Remember that you have nourished Delhi with your blood. You are afraid of tremors, time was when you yourself were an earthquake. You fear darkness when you yourself symbolized light only recently. The clouds have only poured dirty water and you have raised your trousers for fear of being drenched. They were your forefathers who had dived deep into the seas, cut across the mighty mountains, laughed away the lightnings, answered the thunder of the skies with the velocity of your laughter, changed the direction of the winds and turned the typhoons that they have been misled to a wrong destination. It is an irony of faith that those who played with the destinies of the kings are victims of their own destiny today. And in doing so they have become so forgetful of their God as if it never existed. Go back it is your home, your country….”

The effect of his speech was dramatic. Those who packed up their baggages to migrate to Pakistan returned home filled with a new sense of freedom and patriotism. There was no mass migration thereafter. In the history of international oratory Maulana Azad’s Jama Masjid speech can only be compared with the Gettysburg address of Abraham Lincoln, Birla House speech of Nehru on Gandhi’s assassination and recently of Martin Luther’s speech: ‘I have a dream’.

As a man Maulana was even greater, he led an austere life. He had the madness of a Spinoza, the courage of Prometheus Unbound, the humility of a Dervesh. At the time of his death he had neither any property nor any bank account. In his personal almirah were found some cotton ‘Achkans’. A dozen ‘Khadi Kurtas’ and ‘pyjama’, two pairs of sandals, an old dressing gown and a used brush. But there were lots of rare books which are now a property of the Nation.

A man like Maulana Azad is born rarely. Throughout his life he stood for the unity of India and its composite culture. His opposition to partition of India has created a niche in the hearts of all patriotic Indians.There he stands with Khan Abdul Ghaffar Khan, his senior an Ashfaqullah his junior. In the words of Iqbal : Hazaron sall Nargis apni benoori par roti hai, Bari Mushkil sey hota hai chaman mein deeda var paida. ( For a thousand years the Narcissus weeps for her blindness, With great difficulty is born in the garden a man with vision). Maulana Abul Kalam Azad’s Birthday 11th November has been declared as National Education Da y.

Source : PIB features

Doctors told Laura Binder, a mother-of-two, her cancer had spread from her breast to liver and there was nothing that could be done to cure it, the Daily Mail reported.

But Binder’s nine-year-old daughter Linzi refused to give up. For next seven months everyday Linzi wrote her mother a letter, urging her not to give up the fight.

One read: ‘You are like the centre of a rose and you smell just like a beautiful red one. You can fight cancer. You can fight it. I love you!’

The single mother, 32, who lives in Norwich city with Linzi and her younger daughter Alicia, said: ‘It is really remarkable. I was so scared that I was going to die and leave my daughters without a mother.

‘Linzi refused to give up on me and wrote me these wonderful letters every day ever since. She was determined that I wasn’t going to die and I was going to get better. And her wonderful letters have helped a miracle happen.’

Binder said: ‘It just brought tears to my eyes when I read Linzi’s letters. To read such devotion was so inspiring. I was exhausted from the chemotherapy and I lost all my hair. But her letters gave me the strength to fight on.’

Binder then went for a scan at the end of September, expecting to hear that the cancer had spread even further. But to her amazement the scan revealed no trace of any tumours.

A spokesman for Cancer Research UK said: ‘Occasionally it can happen that cancer goes completely into remission like this when it is thought there is no hope.

‘The love from a daughter is a strong powerful thing. Positive thinking provides an incentive to get better. It’s amazing how things like this can happen and there is no explanation for it.’

Brought up in a family enjoying the heights of affluence Indira was nurtured in the backdrop of the freedom struggle. She grew up listening to patriotic songs like “Vandemataram”.

Shrimati Indira Gandhi was indeed a multi-faceted, multi-dimensional figure. A flash-back takes one to Asiad 1982, staged in Delhi. A change of guard brought Indira Gandhi to the helm. She took up the challenge and with the help of her team proved to the sports world that India can stage the Asiad. Starting from scratch, with not a ‘naye paisa’ in the coffer,  itwas as if Indira Gandhi waved a magic wand. And a magic carpet for sports and games was spread across the venues. The sports extravaganza cast a spell all around.

Asiad 1982 brought India immense prestige. Prime Minister Indira Gandhi gave the Nation’s capital the state-of-the-art most modern stadia. The International Olympic Council’s President, Samaranch flew into Delhi to confer the supreme honour of the “Gold Order”. He came specifically to present India’s Prime Minister the ‘blue-ribbon’ of the world sports and games. She was hailed as the ‘Patron Saint’ of Indian Sports.

I was commissioned to go round the various stadia and present a word-picture of the events through newscast at the end of the day. Indiraji’s love of the Nation’s sports and games and concern for the performer’s welfare enabled me to have the good fortune andprivilege  of an interaction with the towering leader.

The charismatic flavour of Indira Gandhi’s Statesmanship could be seen in the rapport she enjoyed with World Leaders. Her disarming frankness could remove the mists  ofmisunderstanding.

The US President Mr. Reagan cherished his friendly relation ship with IndiraGandhi from the time of her visit to Washington. He spoke in glowing terms of her counsel during the periods of international crises. Queen Elizabeth of Britain and Premier Margaret Thatcher spoke appreciatively of her Statesmanship. She asserted India’s independent stance on world issues without tilting towards any bloc  “India is neither pre-east or pro-west; we stand erect; we are only pro-India” was her constant ‘mantra’.

Foreign policy was Indira Gandhi’s greatest asset. She maintained a high profile in International politics. The year 1983 cast the dye on her role as the Head of the Non-Aligned Movement of a hundred and one nations, the largest in its history. The Movement’s summit hosted by India was a diplomatic triumph testifying the country’s role in the cause of peace, disarmament and development.

I had the advantage of free access to the Prime Minister on significant occasions. Here one recalls her visit to Sri Lanka in 1967. It was in the wake of the assassination of theIsland’s Premier S.W.R. Bandarnaike. As a privileged member of her team of “State-Guests”, I could interact with her but without my tape-recorder. At the Ratmalana International Airport, she said “This is my second visit to the emerald isle where I first came with my father as a young girl. It’s a wonderful feeling”.

Throughout the Indian Prime Minister’s week-long stay I was with her almost always. Her visit to the higher altitude beauty spot Kandy was an eye-opener! Indira Gandhi’s hour-long address to the large gathering was interspersed with repeated chorus of standing ovation and peals of applause “An enchanting island, an enchanting people” were her words inspiring the Sinhalese like a magic chant.

On the way to Kandy at Horagolla, Shrimati Gandhi was guest of the Island’s Parliamentary Opposition Mrs. Sirimao Bandarnaike. Her elder daughter Sunetra  had come from Oxford for the occasion. The younger Chandrika in mini skirt was standing by whoever could foresee that the Osborne-educated Chandrika Kumaratunge  would ride the crest of destiny as the island’s powerful Executive President.

In the eventful years of Shrimati Indira’s stewardship India came to occupy the ‘commanding heights of economy, our society poised for economic and technological advance at a quicker pace.

The Nation specifically remembers Indira Gandhi within a brief period of less than a month, her death-anniversary on October 31 and birth anniversary on November 19.

The World bowed in reverence as the sad news of her demise flashed across the Continents. The flood of words followed like a torrent from the world media. The hymns of homage under scored her pre-eminence as an “outstanding statesman of the era”.

As a ring-side witness to Indira Gandhi’s significant actions and speeches this writer was most impressed on the historic day when Bangladesh was liberated from a despotic regime that ran the stern writ from a far-flung western terrain. It was ‘blissful’ to watch from the Lok Sabha Press Gallery the Prime Minister alight with her light step to make “a statement”. She informed the House, “The West Pakistan forces have unconditionally surrendered in Bangladesh. The instrument of surrender was signed in Dacca at 1631 hours IST today by Lt. General A.A. K. Niazi on behalf of the Pakistan Eastern Command.  Lt. General Jagjit Singh Arora GOC-in-C of the Indian and Bangladesh forces in the Eastern Theatre accepted the surrender. Dacca is now the free capital of a free country”. Each sentence was greeted with ovation. The Prime Minister concluded her statement with, “All nations who value the human spirit will recognize it as a significant milestone in man’s quest for liberty”.

The blend of military personnel who liberated Bangladesh reflected the secular image of India diligently upheld by Indira Gandhi.  SHFJ Manekshaw - a Parsi, General Arora a Sikh and Commander Jacob who paved the way for entry into Dacca, a Jew. All functioned under Indira Gandhi a Hindu wedded to a Parsi. She reflected the Hindu way of life of co-existence of various faiths.

That was Indira Gandhi of charismatic charm who left a sublime imprint on the sands of time! (PIB Features)

]]> http://indiacurrentaffairs.org/indira-gandhi-a-profile-tribute-m-k-dharmaraja/feed/ 1 http://indiacurrentaffairs.org/thinking-wont-help-you-resist-temptation/ http://indiacurrentaffairs.org/thinking-wont-help-you-resist-temptation/#comments Fri, 28 Oct 2011 05:39:47 +0000 India Current Affairs http://indiacurrentaffairs.org/thinking-wont-help-you-resist-temptation/  Temptation comes in many guises — for a dieter, it’s a sweet treat; for an alcoholic, a drink; for a married man, an attractive woman.

How to defeat the impulse to gratify desire and stick to your long-term goals of slimness, sobriety, or fidelity? Don’t stop and think. Thinking may not help.

That is the surprising conclusion of a new study conducted by Loran Nordgren and Eileen Chou at Northwestern University’s Kellogg School of Management, the journal Psychological Science reported.

Nordgren and Chou wanted to make sense of two contradictory bodies of literature.

‘One shows that the presence of temptation contorts cognition (thinking) in ways that promotes impulsive behaviour,’ says Nordgren, according to a statement from the school.

‘Another shows that temptation engages protective (thought) processes that promote self-control. You show a dieter a piece of cake, and an early thought is ‘I’m dieting’—and ‘no thanks’,’ he adds.

Both stories leave out a crucial factor, he states.

‘The interaction between temptation and ‘visceral state’ — hunger, thirst, sexual desire, satiation or craving — which ‘dictates whether the same cognitive processes will be oriented towards impulsive behaviour or self-control’,’ he notes.

The researchers looked at different cognitive mechanisms, to see how temptation affected them.

In one experiment, 49 male students in committed relationships watched either an erotic film, putting them in an aroused (‘hot’) state.

Or a filmed fashion show, creating a ‘cool’ state. The experimenters then showed them images of attractive women and observed how long they gazed at them.

A week later, the procedure was the same, but the men were told the women were incoming students — thus, available. This time, the aroused men gazed longer. More temptation promoted less fidelity. The cool-state men did the opposite.

It depends on how the apology is perceived, according to researchers from the universities of Southern California, Washington-St. Louis, Miami and Singapore Management.

They investigated what is called substantive efforts to repair trust — those responses to violations that are more significant than a verbal apology, the journal Organizational Behaviour and Human Decision Processes reports.

Researchers concluded that the ability of each method to repair trust hinged on the extent to which the response by the alleged trust violator showed that the defaulter was truly repentant, according to Southern California statement.

His heart-wrenching story is strikingly similar to Bollywood film ‘Anand’, about a terminally cancer patient who strives to live every moment of his life and make others smile.

He (name withheld) is just a regular boy born in a tightly-knit family of Bihar, brought up on rich family values that today stand between him and telling his own parents the biggest truth of his life.

Three years ago, he came to tech-hub Bangalore with dreams of becoming an engineer. But just a year into his graduation, he was diagnosed with brain cancer.

But he has not been able to bring himself to share his grief with his parents. Reason: his grandfather had died of cancer in 2009, and his family had raised huge money and gone into debt.

‘My grandfather had lung cancer and for his treatment, papa had spent a lot. He even sold our properties,’ the 21-year-old told IANS.

‘Soon after my grandfather’s death, I discovered I had tumour. After initial check-ups in Bangalore, I went to AIIMS in Delhi. I went through chemotherapy and was kept there for a month.

‘But when I saw there was no improvement, I asked the doctors very clearly about my chances of recovery. They told me I’ll live only for a few years. After that, I left the hospital,’ he said.

All of 19, he left his studies and carried on his life as if nothing happened.

The boy suffers from ependymoma, a glial tumour that arises from ependymal cells within the central nervous system.

‘If my family went into debt to save my grandfather, they could go to any extent for me. So I didn’t say anything to them, as nothing could have been done,’ he said.

His father is a small-time contractor, mother a homemaker and a younger brother is studying in school. He has disclosed his medical illness to only a handful of friends even as he somehow manages to keep living in the college hostel.

Six months ago, when his condition deteriorated, he was admitted to the Tata Memorial Hospital (TMH) here.

‘One of my friends informed my family that I was hospitalised. If my parents had come to the hospital, the doctors might have told them. So I ran away from there and told my parents that everything was okay.’

Since then, he’s never visited any doctor. He spends the money his parents send for his education on travelling and friends.

He hid his illness even from his girlfriend, from whom he is separated now.

‘I am quite happy with my friends and I have no regrets for my short life. But sometimes I feel real bad for my family,’ he said in a choked voice.

‘I just want to live life happily as I have been living before. I really do not know what is in store in the next moment…just want to cherish every moment.’

His friends are amazed to say the least.

‘We call our parents when we have a slight fever and go home for little aches and pains, but this guy amazes me,’ Sahab Alam, his roommate, told IANS.

‘He is a great friend, ready to help anyone. I just can’t believe how anyone who knows his death is so near can smile every moment,’ he added.

(Shahnawaz Akhtar can be contacted at shahnawaz.a@ians.in)

A team led by Peter Currie and Nicholas Cole from Monash and Sydney universities respectively have discovered how the muscles controlling the pelvic fins of some fish have cleared the way for the evolution of back legs in higher animals.

This innovation gave rise to the four-legged creatures, along with our distant ancestors who made the first steps onto land some 400 million years ago, the journal Public Library of Science Biology reports.

The genetics of a fish are not vastly different to our own, Currie said.

‘We have shown that the mechanism of pelvic muscle formation in bony fish is transitional between that in sharks and in our tetrapod (four-legged) ancestors,’ he said, according to a Monash statement.

‘By examining the way the different fish species generated the muscles of their pelvic fins, we were able to uncover the evolutionary forerunners of the hind limbs. Humans are just modified fish,’ said Currie.

Scientists have long known that the ancient lungfish species are the ancestors of the tetrapods. These fish could survive on land, breathing air and using their pelvic fins to propel themselves.

Australia is home to three species of the few remaining lungfish – two marine species and one inhabiting Queensland’s Mary River basin.

There have been big gaps in the knowledge of these fish until now. Most of the conclusions have been drawn from fossil skeletons, but the muscles critical to locomotion cannot be preserved in the fossil record.

The scientists used fish living today to trace the evolution of pelvic fin muscles to find out how the load bearing hind limbs of the tetrapods evolved.

‘I was really shocked when I woke up and heard the news in the morning. It is like a giant star falling from the sky,’ microblogger ‘Wei Jinhuan’ said on Sina Weibo, the largest microblogging website in China.

‘His creativity and imagination had made the whole world astonished. His death means the end of an era,’ microblogger ‘Li Rong’ wrote.

‘I will never see him introducing his new products in simple dress and with powerful and enlightening words. Alas,’ Xinhua quoted user ‘Mo Xiaowei’ as posting.

Jobs, the co-founder of Apple Inc., died in the US at the age of 56 Wednesday after losing a long battle with cancer.

His death came the day after Apple launched the iPhone 4S.

‘I now understand why the iPhone 5 can only be called iPhone 4S, because that stands for ‘iPhone for Steve’. I will buy a new iPhone 4S to remember great Jobs,’ microblogger ‘Xue Qi’ said.

‘Your products change the world and your thoughts influence a generation. May you rest in peace,’ Li Kaifu, former Google China president and now CEO of Innovation Works, wrote on Sina Weibo.

I am honored to be with you today at your commencement from one of the finest universities in the world. I never graduated from college. Truth be told, this is the closest I’ve ever gotten to a college graduation. Today I want to tell you three stories from my life. That’s it. No big deal. Just three stories.

The first story is about connecting the dots.

I dropped out of Reed College after the first 6 months, but then stayed around as a drop-in for another 18 months or so before I really quit. So why did I drop out?

It started before I was born. My biological mother was a young, unwed college graduate student, and she decided to put me up for adoption. She felt very strongly that I should be adopted by college graduates, so everything was all set for me to be adopted at birth by a lawyer and his wife. Except that when I popped out they decided at the last minute that they really wanted a girl. So my parents, who were on a waiting list, got a call in the middle of the night asking: ‘We have an unexpected baby boy; do you want him?’ They said: ‘Of course.’ My biological mother later found out that my mother had never graduated from college and that my father had never graduated from high school. She refused to sign the final adoption papers. She only relented a few months later when my parents promised that I would someday go to college.

And 17 years later I did go to college. But I naively chose a college that was almost as expensive as Stanford, and all of my working-class parents’ savings were being spent on my college tuition. After six months, I couldn’t see the value in it. I had no idea what I wanted to do with my life and no idea how college was going to help me figure it out. And here I was spending all of the money my parents had saved their entire life. So I decided to drop out and trust that it would all work out OK. It was pretty scary at the time, but looking back it was one of the best decisions I ever made. The minute I dropped out I could stop taking the required classes that didn’t interest me, and begin dropping in on the ones that looked interesting.

It wasn’t all romantic. I didn’t have a dorm room, so I slept on the floor in friends’ rooms, I returned coke bottles for the 5 deposits to buy food with, and I would walk the 7 miles across town every Sunday night to get one good meal a week at the Hare Krishna temple. I loved it. And much of what I stumbled into by following my curiosity and intuition turned out to be priceless later on. Let me give you one example:

Reed College at that time offered perhaps the best calligraphy instruction in the country. Throughout the campus every poster, every label on every drawer, was beautifully hand calligraphed. Because I had dropped out and didn’t have to take the normal classes, I decided to take a calligraphy class to learn how to do this. I learned about serif and san serif typefaces, about varying the amount of space between different letter combinations, about what makes great typography great. It was beautiful, historical, artistically subtle in a way that science can’t capture, and I found it fascinating.

None of this had even a hope of any practical application in my life. But ten years later, when we were designing the first Macintosh computer, it all came back to me. And we designed it all into the Mac. It was the first computer with beautiful typography. If I had never dropped in on that single course in college, the Mac would have never had multiple typefaces or proportionally spaced fonts. And since Windows just copied the Mac, it’s likely that no personal computer would have them. If I had never dropped out, I would have never dropped in on this calligraphy class, and personal computers might not have the wonderful typography that they do. Of course it was impossible to connect the dots looking forward when I was in college. But it was very, very clear looking backwards ten years later.

Again, you can’t connect the dots looking forward; you can only connect them looking backwards. So you have to trust that the dots will somehow connect in your future. You have to trust in something – your gut, destiny, life, karma, whatever. This approach has never let me down, and it has made all the difference in my life.

My second story is about love and loss.

I was lucky – I found what I loved to do early in life. Woz and I started Apple in my parents garage when I was 20. We worked hard, and in 10 years Apple had grown from just the two of us in a garage into a $2 billion company with over 4000 employees. We had just released our finest creation – the Macintosh – a year earlier, and I had just turned 30. And then I got fired. How can you get fired from a company you started? Well, as Apple grew we hired someone who I thought was very talented to run the company with me, and for the first year or so things went well. But then our visions of the future began to diverge and eventually we had a falling out. When we did, our Board of Directors sided with him. So at 30 I was out. And very publicly out. What had been the focus of my entire adult life was gone, and it was devastating.

I really didn’t know what to do for a few months. I felt that I had let the previous generation of entrepreneurs down – that I had dropped the baton as it was being passed to me. I met with David Packard and Bob Noyce and tried to apologize for screwing up so badly. I was a very public failure, and I even thought about running away from the valley. But something slowly began to dawn on me – I still loved what I did. The turn of events at Apple had not changed that one bit. I had been rejected, but I was still in love. And so I decided to start over.

I didn’t see it then, but it turned out that getting fired from Apple was the best thing that could have ever happened to me. The heaviness of being successful was replaced by the lightness of being a beginner again, less sure about everything. It freed me to enter one of the most creative periods of my life.

During the next five years, I started a company named NeXT, another company named Pixar, and fell in love with an amazing woman who would become my wife. Pixar went on to create the worlds first computer animated feature film, Toy Story, and is now the most successful animation studio in the world. In a remarkable turn of events, Apple bought NeXT, I returned to Apple, and the technology we developed at NeXT is at the heart of Apple’s current renaissance. And Laurene and I have a wonderful family together.

I’m pretty sure none of this would have happened if I hadn’t been fired from Apple. It was awful tasting medicine, but I guess the patient needed it. Sometimes life hits you in the head with a brick. Don’t lose faith. I’m convinced that the only thing that kept me going was that I loved what I did. You’ve got to find what you love. And that is as true for your work as it is for your lovers. Your work is going to fill a large part of your life, and the only way to be truly satisfied is to do what you believe is great work. And the only way to do great work is to love what you do. If you haven’t found it yet, keep looking. Don’t settle. As with all matters of the heart, you’ll know when you find it. And, like any great relationship, it just gets better and better as the years roll on. So keep looking until you find it. Don’t settle.

My third story is about death.

When I was 17, I read a quote that went something like: ‘If you live each day as if it was your last, someday you’ll most certainly be right.’ It made an impression on me, and since then, for the past 33 years, I have looked in the mirror every morning and asked myself: ‘If today were the last day of my life, would I want to do what I am about to do today?’ And whenever the answer has been ‘No’ for too many days in a row, I know I need to change something.

Remembering that I’ll be dead soon is the most important tool I’ve ever encountered to help me make the big choices in life. Because almost everything – all external expectations, all pride, all fear of embarrassment or failure – these things just fall away in the face of death, leaving only what is truly important. Remembering that you are going to die is the best way I know to avoid the trap of thinking you have something to lose. You are already naked. There is no reason not to follow your heart.

About a year ago I was diagnosed with cancer. I had a scan at 7:30 in the morning, and it clearly showed a tumor on my pancreas. I didn’t even know what a pancreas was. The doctors told me this was almost certainly a type of cancer that is incurable, and that I should expect to live no longer than three to six months. My doctor advised me to go home and get my affairs in order, which is doctor’s code for prepare to die. It means to try to tell your kids everything you thought you’d have the next 10 years to tell them in just a few months. It means to make sure everything is buttoned up so that it will be as easy as possible for your family. It means to say your goodbyes.

I lived with that diagnosis all day. Later that evening I had a biopsy, where they stuck an endoscope down my throat, through my stomach and into my intestines, put a needle into my pancreas and got a few cells from the tumor. I was sedated, but my wife, who was there, told me that when they viewed the cells under a microscope the doctors started crying because it turned out to be a very rare form of pancreatic cancer that is curable with surgery. I had the surgery and I’m fine now.

This was the closest I’ve been to facing death, and I hope it’s the closest I get for a few more decades. Having lived through it, I can now say this to you with a bit more certainty than when death was a useful but purely intellectual concept:

No one wants to die. Even people who want to go to heaven don’t want to die to get there. And yet death is the destination we all share. No one has ever escaped it. And that is as it should be, because Death is very likely the single best invention of Life. It is Life’s change agent. It clears out the old to make way for the new. Right now the new is you, but someday not too long from now, you will gradually become the old and be cleared away. Sorry to be so dramatic, but it is quite true.

Your time is limited, so don’t waste it living someone else’s life. Don’t be trapped by dogma – which is living with the results of other people’s thinking. Don’t let the noise of others’ opinions drown out your own inner voice. And most important, have the courage to follow your heart and intuition. They somehow already know what you truly want to become. Everything else is secondary.

When I was young, there was an amazing publication called The Whole Earth Catalog, which was one of the bibles of my generation. It was created by a fellow named Stewart Brand not far from here in Menlo Park, and he brought it to life with his poetic touch. This was in the late 1960′s, before personal computers and desktop publishing, so it was all made with typewriters, scissors, and polaroid cameras. It was sort of like Google in paperback form, 35 years before Google came along: it was idealistic, and overflowing with neat tools and great notions.

Stewart and his team put out several issues of The Whole Earth Catalog, and then when it had run its course, they put out a final issue. It was the mid-1970s, and I was your age. On the back cover of their final issue was a photograph of an early morning country road, the kind you might find yourself hitchhiking on if you were so adventurous. Beneath it were the words: ‘Stay Hungry. Stay Foolish.’ It was their farewell message as they signed off. Stay Hungry. Stay Foolish. And I have always wished that for myself. And now, as you graduate to begin anew, I wish that for you.

Stay Hungry. Stay Foolish.

Thank you all very much.

The students of JBIMS, Welingkar, Sydenham Institute of Management and Amity Business School, along with three professors, have reached Pretoria in South Africa for the 5-day visit as guests of Unisia University. Each student has prepared a presentation on Gandhian philosophy, relating it with micro-credit, micro-financing and self-sustainable village initiatives.

The students have been selected for the trip under MU’s social initiative Mumbai University New Initiative for Joint Action Now.
Vivek Jain of JBIMS said, “I am thrilled to have my first foreign trip in a country where many streets bear Gandhiji’s name. I want to know how the youth there identifies with Gandhiji who started work in their country and then became a global icon.”

The initiative aims to develop a common platform to take brand Gandhi global, initially through social networking sites.
On Gandhi’s death anniversary next year — January 30 — the students from South Africa will visit Mumbai.

‘Embarrassment is one emotional signature of a person to whom you can entrust valuable resources,’ said study co-author and social psychologist Robb Willer from University of California, Berkeley.

‘It’s part of the social glue that fosters trust and cooperation in everyday life,’ added Willer, the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology reports.

Subjects of the research who were more easily embarrassed reported higher levels of monogamy, according to a California statement.

‘Moderate levels of embarrassment are signs of virtue,’ said Matthew Feinberg, doctoral student in psychology at Berkeley, who led the study.

Researchers point out that moderate type of embarrassment should not be confused with social anxiety or with ‘shame’, associated with such moral transgressions as being caught cheating.

While the most typical gesture of embarrassment is a downward gaze to one side while partially covering the face and either smirking or grimacing, a person who feels shame, as distinguished from embarrassment, will typically cover the whole face, Feinberg said.

Respectable people may be perceived as desirable leaders in peaceful contexts, but they are viewed as submissive when compared to their more self-seeking peers, who can handle conflicts.

‘People with high prestige are often regarded as saints, possessing a self-sacrificial quality and strong moral standards,’ said study author Robert Livingston, assistant professor of management and organisations at the Kellogg School of Management.

‘However, while these individuals are willing to give their resources to the group, they are not perceived as tough leaders,’ added Livingston, according to the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology.

Researchers define dominance as an imposed ‘alpha status’, whereas prestige is respect freely-conferred by others, according to a Kellogg School statement.

Al Capone, for example, can be viewed as a high-dominance individual, whereas Mother Teresa exudes high prestige.

‘This research begins to explore when ‘nice guys’ finish first and when they finish last, depending on the group context,’ said Nir Halvey, acting assistant professor of organisational behaviour at the Stanford Graduate School of Business.

”Nice guys’ don’t make it to the top when their group needs a dominant leader to lead them at a time of conflict,’ added Halvey, who led the study.

The Nightingale of India, who has around 30,000 songs to her credit, has decided to spend a quiet birthday with her family and attend an award function later in the day.

“I do not celebrate my birthday in a lavish way. I do not believe in cutting cakes. It will be a family affair…where all family members will be present. My whole day will be spent in accepting wishes from friends and fans worldwide. Later in the day, I will go for Hridaynath award function,” Lata told PTI in an interview.

Starting her career in 1942 with songs in Marathi, Lata’s first Hindi song was ‘Paa lagoon kar jori’ for Vasant Joglekar’s movie ‘Aap Ki Seva Mein’ in 1946.

Two years later, composer Ghulam Haider gave Lata her first major break with the song ‘Dil mera toda’ in ‘Majboor’ and after that there was no looking back for Lata didi, as she is fondly called.

She has recorded songs for over a thousand Bollywood movies and has sung songs in over thirty-six regional Indian languages and foreign languages. However, her major work is in Hindi.

Recipient of the Bharat Ratna, the highest civilian award in the country, she has lent her voice to generations of Bollywood actresses from Madhubala to Kajol. She is the most sought-after singer by top filmmakers from Yash Chopra to Sanjay Leela Bhansali.

“I think whatever I am today…is all because of my fans and well wishers. It is all due to their never-ending love, blessings, support and appreciation. I thank all my fans and well-wishers for making me Lata Mangeshkar,” Lata said.

For more Reading. . .

The study found that adults aged 60 and over were better at strategising their decisions than those in their late teens and early 20s, Daily Mail reported Friday.

The University of Texas at Austin and Texas A&M University researchers said their study goes against negative stereotypes that elders lose mental edge and reasoning ability with age. Instead, they are able to make better decisions under some conditions.

The study will be published in the journal Psychological Science.

Darrell Worthy, professor of psychology at Texas A&M University, said the study throws light into the decision-making process.

‘Broadly, these results suggest that younger adults may behave more impulsively, favouring immediate gains, while older adults are better at considering the long-term ramifications of their actions,’ a statement by the University of Texas quoted Worthy as saying.

But this bold approach could also wreck an ever-greater havoc.

Take the 2008 financial crash and the 2003 Iraq war, which are just two examples of an extreme overconfidence backfiring, the journal Nature reports.

A team from the Universities of Edinburgh and California, San Diego, used a maths model to simulate the effects of overconfidence over generations, pitting overconfident, accurate, and underconfident strategies against each other.

The evolutionary model also shows that overconfidence peaks in the face of high levels of uncertainty and risk, according to an Edinburgh statement.

When we face unfamiliar enemies or new technologies, overconfidence becomes an even better strategy.

Study co-author Dominic Johnson, a reader in politics and international relations at Edinburgh said: ‘The model shows that overconfidence can plausibly evolve in a wide range of environments, as well as the situations in which it will fail.’

‘The question now is how to channel human overconfidence so we can exploit its benefits while avoiding occasional disasters,’ Johnson added.

The finding shows that overconfidence frequently brings rewards, as long as spoils of conflict are sufficiently large compared with the costs of competing for them.

The US study followed a random group of 10,317 college students since their graduation in 1957.

In 2004, they were asked about the voluntary work they had done in the past 10 years and how regularly. Four years later, 4.3 percent of the non-volunteers had died as had four percent of volunteers with self-oriented motives, Daily Express reported.

But only 1.6 percent of those, whose motivations were more focused on others, were dead.

According to Andrea Fuhrel-Forbis, co-author of the study published in the journal Health Psychology,it is reasonable for people to volunteer in part because of benefits to the self.

‘However, our research implies that, ironically, should these benefits to the self become the main motive for volunteering, they may not see those benefits.’

RS, as he was known to his friends, began his historical studies in the late 1940s, producing a book on World history in Hindi in two volumes (1951, 1952). This is particularly to be noted since he, always in his mind if not always explicitly, related developments inIndia to those in other parts of the world. As a Marxist, he especially looked at the economic and social structures, but was conscious of the full requirements of scientific rigour while proceeding to generalisations.

Quite naturally, given his basic ideas, he turned to the issues of caste, his first book in English being Some Economic Aspects of the Caste System in Ancient India, 1952. His researches in the field led to the larger work, Sudras in Ancient India, 1958, a revised version of his thesis at the London School of Oriental and African Studies.

From caste, Sharma’s sights extended to the links between ideas and economic change, and this endeavour produced, first, hisAspects of Political Ideas in Ancient India (1959) and then his Indian Feudalism, 300-1200 (1965), which many would regard hismagnum opus. Many other works, including papers, followed in which his theses were refined and defended. Ultimately, based on an extensive study of archaeological evidence, he wrote a work of fundamental importance, Urban Decay in Medieval India (circa 300 to 1000), 1987. A notable addition soon followed: Origin of the State in India (1989).

‘RS’ was deeply committed to the scientific and secular spirit. He could, therefore, write for the general reader, and this is shown by his text book, Ancient India, for NCERT (1977), which has now been republished as India’s Ancient Past (2005). He was unshaken by the attack from the communal lobby, and continued with his critique of chauvinist views, notably, in his Advent of the Aryans in India (1999).

Among the historians ‘RS’ was, perhaps, the earliest and most forceful critic of the Ayodhya movement, leading to the destruction of Babri Masjid in 1992. Under his influence, the Indian History Congress began passing almost annual resolutions from 1986, calling upon the government of India to protect the monument. He himself wrote Communal History and Rama’s Ayodhya (1990) and penned with three other historians, A Report to the Nation in 1991.

‘RS’ always treated the proper pursuit of History as a special cause. His encouragement of younger researchers was a by-word. Simple and cheerful, he won hearts by his consideration for others in all matters. At the same time, he did his best to secure facilities for proper research, both when he successively headed the History Department at Patna and then at the Delhi University. As the first chairman of the Indian Council of Historical Research (ICHR), 1972-77, he shaped the policy of that organisation, directing its funds to support research in all parts of the country.

Source : Statement of  Indian History Congress, 

It is pathetic that these selfish ministers led by inept Prime Minister and some pseudo intelligentsia consider Anna as adamant and trying to dictate an elected Legislature to make the law as he wanted and supporting the stupid and anti constitutional actions of the Manmohan’s most confused and inaction oriented Government. With Sonia convalescing in a US hospital, the UPA became leaderless ruling coalition and the Government became a ship without a captain or an airplane without pilot.

The Constitution of India is supposed to be supreme and only then we can be called a state of rule of law. It is proved over a period that eternal vigilance is the price of democracy and people’s discussions and debates should shape the character of law without leaving it to indecisive and rudderless governments, though elected for a term. These critics should remember that government lasts for a term and law survives these short spells of rule by Prime Ministers like Manmohan.

Who makes the law? Technically speaking it is the legislature. But do they really make law. It is physically not true. A few officers who know drafting write the bill on the instructions of secretaries based on the policy decided by the cabinet or the rulers if there is any policy. We had no environmental policy or law till a global company Union Carbide killed 20 thousand people and maimed at least one lakh people in Bhopal in 1984 through its reckless operations resulting in a leak of a poisonous gas. Who made this law? It is the tragedy driven public opinion and severe criticism against Government that was bankrupt of policy that spurred the sleeping giant to make the law called Environment Protection Act 1986. Right to Information Act is made by the civil society not by the clerks of legal drafting section. Each clause is debated, agitated and finalized in public forum and not just deliberated in a closed door meeting of cabinet. In advanced countries like US, UK and Australia, people discuss the policy and draft bills are rejected or approved on the forum of media. Executive is compelled to look to editorial columns to understand working of the proposed law. We in India, discuss just politics and also law because it relates to individual politics. It is a shame that so called media intellectual rally round individual politicians and unhesitatingly support their vested interests for nothing. Totally biased media or interested in sensationalizing the events to improve their TRP rates do not bother about a sensible point that could alter the bad law into good and workable law. We hear in TV debates the ego based questions like who is he, who are you, none of your business, I am elected so I am supreme etc. Do they belong to intellectual class? They should have some introspection as to why and who they are standing by, as if they are purchased by these elements, though not.

Why not these elements understand that we need a system just to investigate an allegation? We have living examples before us as recent as 2g spectrum scandal is. D. Raja enjoyed all privileges and power though all those in power including Prime Minister know that his policy was based on corruption and irregular decisions. Central Bureau of Investigation might have its own deficiencies but delivered expected results when allowed to investigate. FIR is registered and was simply ignored for years. Neither the police, nor CBI nor CAG are allowed to investigate. If Comptroller and Auditor General reported possible loss out of this irregular policy initiated by Raja, the Constitutional Experts of Congress pounced upon CAG as if they were attacking a politically motivated opposition member in a press conference. These statements mean open support to Raja, who deprived the nation right under the nose of Manmohan Singh, who like Dhritarashtra was blind folded reciting mantra of ‘coalition compulsions’ in association of Karunanidhi, blind-folded by black glasses and compulsions of big family consisting of quarrelling wives and feuding sons and daughters through them. Is this opportunistic power sharing arrangement called ‘coalition’ supreme?

At least Anna Hazare raised a voice of protest against these corrupt an inept rulers. That is why there is enormous support. These arm-chair critics of Anna are not in a position to see the anger and dissent of the people finding a rallying point in the voice of Anna Hazare. His lack of knowledge of law or the people around him are targeted by sinister ministers. They may have reason, though not justified, to oppose him. Why these intellectual elements are unleashing their tongues against this single most honest leader having no political ambitions? Is he forcing the parliament to pass the Janlokpal Bill? He is asking Parliament to consider the bill along with Government’s useless Lokpal Bill. If any body wants to improve Janlokpal Bill, none is preventing them. If people’s representatives really find time and sincere enough to discuss the bill and generate better ideas, they are welcome. Will the Parliament dominated by corrupt, rich and business based MPs who reached there with money power and business strength, blindly toeing the line of rulers without analyzing the needed legislation to fight corruption, be in a position to offer a better bill than Janlokpal Bill? They approve with their brutal majority bulldozing the Governments Bill for Lokpal who can appointed by Sonia Gandhi and dismissed by Rahul Gandhi. This Government might find Dinakaran or Balakrishnan as suitable candidates for Lokpals. People who oppose Anna Hazare and his bill should understand one very important draconian provision of Government Bill, which punishes complainant with a minimum of 2 years imprisonment if complaint is not proved while prescribes minimum punishment of six months if the complaint is proved. Before the people reject these pseudo intellectuals and dump in dustbin of history they should see the reality of the draconian bill proposed and realize the need to fight corruption. Vigilant people alone can make Constitution workable and that Constitution alone will be supreme.

Professor, NALSAR University of Law Hyderabad

It is easy to talk at length about Mr Narayana Murthy’s simplicity, his spartan life style, his down-to-earth qualities and the influence of his values on the company that he founded. His phenomenal success over the years had no impact on him as a person.

Even today, when he has become a global brand, he remains the same simple individual that he was in ’91. And let us not forget his contributions and those by his family members to various social causes.

I wish corporate India had more gentlemen with brains and open wallets like the founder of Infosys who retires. He leaves with Infosys a legacy of success, values and ethics that few have created in their lifetime.

I am sure the future holds greater things for him.

Mr Infosys – the person and the brand

Narayana Murthy walks into the sunset leaving Infosys with a legacy of success, values and ethics that few have created in their lifetime.

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Dagarsaheb’s students are scholars, teachers, musicians- devoted to the preservation of the Dhrupad gayaki and its traditional values. Some of them hold important positions in India and abroad. Like Smt Kaveri Kar (lecturer of music at Viswa Bharati University, Shantiniketan), Bhai Baldeep Singh (Executive Board Member of Sangeet Natak Akademi and Founder of the Anad Conservatory at Sultanpur Lodhi), Amelia Cuni (Western dhrupad singer and Lecturer at Vicenza Conservatory, Italy), Irfan Zuberi (Scholar, and Consultant for the Aga Khan Trust), just to name a few.

Ustad Rahim Fahimuddin Dagar witnessed the dramatic passage in the history of Indian music, from the time of the court tradition to the internet-global era. His spiritual attitude allowed him to accept the social changes, leaving uncompromised his musical and spiritual values, the ‘dhruva-pada’ of his life.

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It is a truism that the Indian reality is reflected in contrasting images. We have witnessed in our own times significant strides in economic growth, technological innovation and social change. We also see societal and regional inequalities, wide spread poverty and disease, and unrealized aspirations for a better life. Change has generated hope; the challenge to our political process is to transform this hope into reality.

Venkataraman ji believed in the Gandhian dictum that “self government is not a substitute for good government”. He noted in the opening lines of his presidential memoirs that he viewed his role as one where the ideals of Lord Krishna, taught upon the battlefield, were tested. He believed that while the observance of one’s dharma, and right conduct, was necessary for the efficient functioning of our democracy, it was nevertheless insufficient since the test of good governance lay in delivery of justice.

The key to the twin imperatives of observance of dharmaand delivery of justice thus lies in adherence to propriety in public and personal behaviour and practice. Shri Venkataraman’s life and conduct is a fitting example of such propriety. He remains a shining example worthy of emulation.

The question of propriety in politics, of political morality, is a perennial one. Kautalya dwelt on the perils of flouting theDharmashastras and the Arthashastra. Others accorded differing priorities; Confucius stressed the primacy of virtue; Machiavelli espoused the ‘virtue’ of the ruler in terms of success and sustainability; Ambedkar spoke of “the paramount reverence for the forms of the constitution.”

It is necessary to dilate on this matter since it goes beyond ideals and touches the very core of public behaviour.

While political virtue is important, it can neither be pursued in isolation nor can it be the sole guide for political action. Political virtue, combined with idealism and activism, can also degenerate into political anarchy, even tyranny. A classic case is Robespierre’s famous oration on political morality wherein he argued that in revolutionary times the mainspring of popular government is both virtue and terror.

In any structured society and polity therefore, and especially in a republic such as ours, it is paramount that political virtue be wedded to the grammar of constitutional morality.

What are the ingredients of constitutional morality?  We can do no better than to go back to the description relied upon by Dr. Ambedkar. It involved, as he put it:

“a paramount reverence for the forms of the Constitution, enforcing obedience to authority acting under and within these forms yet combined with the habits of open speech, of action subject only to defined legal control, and unrestrained censure of those very authorities as to all their public acts combined too with a perfect confidence in the bosom of every citizen, amidst the bitterness of party contest, that the forms of the Constitution will not be less sacred in the eyes of his opponents than in his own.”

In other words, freedom with self restraint, recognition of plurality, consensus on constitutional processes, and absence of a claim to singularity in representation, are absolutely necessary. Constitutional morality, in the words of an eminent political scientist, requires that allegiance to the constitution is non-transactional, is not premised on specific outcomes.

It was conceded even by the constitution framers that such an outcome was not to be a natural process and required the development of healthy conventions.

How successful have we been in developing such conventions and adhering to them? How vibrant is our democratic process in the periods between elections? Has our democracy tended to become progressively non-deliberative? Is there a suggestion of disenchantment with the state and its institutions?

It is essential that there be public debate on these issues.

Today we witness, across the length and breadth of the country, political activism at grass-roots level. In some instances, such activism has sought to utilize Gandhian approaches, both in tactical and strategic terms. These socio-political movements co-exist alongside mainstream politics represented by the political parties and related electoral dynamics at the national, state and local government levels. Their causes vary from environment, farmers’ issues, land acquisition problems, disputes regarding natural resources and mining activities, and public policy goals such as improving public service delivery and combating corruption.

Instead of focusing on solving socio-political problems through established constitutional processes, the search for solutions is increasingly moving towards quasi-legal, perhaps, extra-legal arenas. This has longer term implications. Delegitimizing the political processes is unlikely to solve our problems. Likewise, seeking to erode the careful in-built balance between the Executive, Legislature and the Judiciary as contained in the Constitution, either through under-reach of one or over-reach of another, could lead to chaos.

We were fortunate that many of the founding fathers of the Republic were not only freedom fighters, but were deeply committed to putting in place institutions, systems and processes. They had idealism, were endowed with political virtue, and were deeply committed to the constitutional morality of the republic. Shri Venkataraman was from that political stock and hence imbued his public life with such an approach. There is merit in rejuvenating that spirit, and the commitment that went with it.

Source :The Vice President of India Shri M.Hamid Ansari’s Addressing speech at the birth centenery celebrations of former President of India late Shri R. Venkataraman

On the night of his departure to China on August 22, 1939, Mr Nehru had an unexpected and hilarious sartorial disaster in the early morning. “When I put on pyjamas the izarbandh [pyjama string] slipped on one side and I could not tie it. I had no time to pull it properly and so I tucked it in as best as I could and marched out. The wretched thing would not remain up and I had to hold on to it all the time. At that frightfully early hour, the Chinese consul turned up at my hotel. At the aerodrome at 4 a m there was a crowd of Congressmen and others. Imagine my plight — holding on to my pyjamas, accepting bouquets, shaking hands, doing namaskar, etc, etc. It was a terrible ordeal for an hour.”

“Life is full of regrets but curiously the regrets are seldom about things done — almost always they are tied round things undone,” he wrote.

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Swami Rama on Tagore One of the greatest masters from the Himalayas, Swami Rama is the founder of Himalayan Institute. Born in India he studied in both India & Europe and received his spiritual training in Himalayan cave monasteries and in Tibet. His best known work “Living with Himalayan Masters” reveals the many facets of the singular adept and demonstrates his embodiment of the living traditions of the East. According to Swami Rama who met Tagore as a teenager, the key point of Tagore’s life was not sacrifice but conquest. This key point emerged from his faith that only mental and spiritual striving of man has lasting value and that he can conquer all obstacles by inner strength.                                                                                     Swami Rama,  in his book ‘Living with Himalayan Masters’ writes that as a teenager he happened to meet Tagore with his brother and disciple DandiSwami Shivananda of Gangotri, at a small town called Rajpur while on way to Mussoorie at the foot of the Himalayas. During those days Tagore was staying in a cottage there. Swami Shivananda was from Bengal and knew Tagore and his family well; so they were invited to live in the same cottage with him for two months.                                                                                                                                         Swami Rama visitedShantiniketan in 1940. He writes “Rathindranath Tagore, the son of Rabindranath Tagore, received me and arranged for me to stay in one of the cottages next to Sri Malikji, who was a devout and committed admirer of Tagore and his institute. Tagore was known as “Gurudeva” by the students of Shantiniketan and as “Thakur” by the general public. He was a very gifted poet fromBengal, and one of the greatest poets of all times. In the realms of religion, philosophy, literature, music, painting, and education his many-sided, handsome, and towering personality was well-known to the world.”                                                                           Commenting on Tagore as per his observations during period of stay with him, Swami Rama says, “ I was able to observe his devotion to his work. He was always engaged in his daily practice or was busy writing or painting. He spent very few hours in sleep, and would not recline in the daytime. The infirmities of age did not change his habits. I looked upon him as an earnest sadhaka [spiritual seeker]. It is true that one object of all sadhakas of the world is to be somewhat godlike. It was not necessary for a godlike man like Tagore to imitate other god-men of India in order to express himself. His life was not like that of an Ascetic’s, which is as barron as a desert. Asceticism is the most ancient path of enlightenment and genuine asceticism is indeed worthy of reverence. Equally worthy is the treading of the more difficult path of remaining in the world while doing one’s duties. Tagore believed in living in the world without being of it.” A line from one of his poems, “Liberation by detachment from the world is not mine,” is highly expressive of his philosophy.                                                                                                                              Humanity has seen three kinds of great men: first, those who were gifted and great by birth; second, and those who have attained greatness by sincere and selfless effort; those who have unfortunate ones on whom greatness is thrust by the press and publicity. Tagore was in the first category- a gifted and highly talented poet and genius. He lived and practiced according to the sayings of the Upanishads: “All – whatsoever that moves in the universe – is indwelt by the Lord. Enjoy thou what hath been allotted by him. Covet not the wealth of anyone.”                      Swami Rama writes, “I admired Tagore. He was the most universal, encompassing, and complete human being I have known. He was a living embodiment of the whole of humanity, who knew both man the knower and man the maker. He believed in allowing a person to grow by satisfying both the demands of society and the need for solitude. Sometimes I used to call him the Plato of the East.”                                                                                                     Tagore’s views about the East and West were highly admired by the people of both these cultures. Swami Rama says, “Tagore did not want Westerners to become Easterners in their minds and outward behavior. He wanted the West to join hands with the East in the noble contest for the promotion of the highest ideas which are common to the whole world. According to him, the evolution of man is the evolution of the creative personality. Man alone has the courage of standing against the biological laws. Behind all great nations and noble works done in the world there have been noble ideas. An idea is that something which is the very basis of creativity. It is true that life is full of misfortunes, but fortunate is he who knows how to utilize the ideas which can make him creative. Time is the greatest of all filters, and ideas are the best of all wealth. Fortune is that rare opportunity which helps one to express his ideas and abilities at the proper time.”                                                                                                                               Tagore’s philosophies surmounted all the obstacles which at first obscure that truth. According to him death has for ages been a source of fear and misery because people have not pondered over the truth. “O! Who suffer and fear the approach of death should hear and learn the music of Tagore, which teaches how to lose yourself in the infinite and the eternal. Just tune the chords of your being and make them move in harmony with the music of the cosmos. Every woman and man should strive to secure the light of truth, and live simply and wisely for the common good.” The rhythm of music supported Tagore’s philosophy of life. Music completed his personality, but this is not all. His words and melodies are still going on in the minds of poets and musicians today.                                                                                                                        Tagore believed that all existences constitute the one organism of the entire cosmos, emitting love as the highest manifestation of its vital energy and having as its soul the center of the spiritual galaxy. The world so far talks only about the religion of God, but Tagore always talked of the religion of man. It is a religion of feeling through ecstatic experience, which represents opinion in its most intense and living stage offering a far better solution to the ills of life than philosophy and metaphysics.                                                                                           After staying at Shantiniketan Swami Rama left for the Himalayas to assimilate the ideas  he had acquired there, and then formulate certain guidelines for  his future.

Paramhansa Yogananda on Tagore Another yogi, SriParamhansa Yogananda, the author of “Autobiography of a Yogi”, writes, “I met Rabindranath soon after he had received the Nobel Prize for literature. I was drawn to visit him because I admired his undiplomatic courage in disposing of his literary critics. I was introduced to Rabindranath in Calcutta by his secretary, Mr. C.F. Andrews, who was simply attired in Bengali dhoti. He referred lovingly to Tagore as ‘Gurudeva.’” “Rabindranath received me graciously. He emanated an aura of charm, culture, and courtliness. Replying to my question about his literature background, he told me that he had been chiefly influenced by our religious epics and by the works of Vidyapati, a popular fourteenth-century poet.” About two years after founding the Ranchi school he received an invitation from Rabindranath to visit him at Santiniketan to discuss their educational ideas. SriParamhansa Yogananda writes, “I went gladly. The poet was seated in his study when I entered; I thought then, as at our first meeting, that he was as striking a model of superb manhood as any painter could desire. His beautifully chiseled face, nobly patrician, was framed in long hair and flowing beard. Large, melting eyes; an angelic smile; and a voice of flutelike quality that was literally enchanting. Stalwart, tall, and grave, he combined an almost womanly tenderness with the delightful spontaneity of a child. No idealized conception of a poet could find more suitable embodiment than in this gentle singer.” “Tagore and I were soon deep in a comparative study of our schools, both founded along unorthodox lines. We discovered many identical features – outdoor instruction, simplicity, ample scope for the child’s creative spirit, Rabindranath, however, laid considerable stress on the study of literature and poetry. The Santiniketan children observed periods of silence but were given no special yoga training.” The Poet listened with flattering attention to the Yogi’s description of the energizing Yogoda exercise and of the yoga concentration techniques taught to all students at Ranchi. Narrating his early educational struggles Tagore told him, “I fled from school after the fifth grade,” he said, laughingly.“That is why I openedSantiniketan under the shady trees and the glories of the sky.” He motioned eloquently to a little group studying in the beautiful garden. “A child is in his natural setting amidst the flowers and the songbirds. There he may more easily express the hidden wealth of his individual endowment. True education is not pumped and crammed in from outward sources, but aids in bringing to the surface the infinite hoard of wisdom within.” Sri Paramhansa Yogananda writes, “Rabindranath invited me to stay overnight in the guest house. In the evening I was charmed by a tableau of the poet and a group in the patio. Time unfolded backward: the scene before me was like one in an ancient hermitage—the joyous singer encircled by his devotees, all aureoled in divine love. Tagore knitted each tie of friendship with cords of harmony. Never assertive, he drew and captured the heart with an irresistible magnetism. Rare blossom of poesy blooming in the garden of the Lord, attracting others by a natural fragrance!” The Yogi also recalls that in his melodious voice, Rabindranath read to them a few of his exquisite poems, newly created. He says, “The beauty of his lines, to me, lies in his art of referring to God in nearly every stanza, yet seldom mentioning the sacred Name. Drunk with the bliss of singing, he wrote, I forget myself and call Thee friend who art my Lord. Sri ParamhansaYogananda says, “I rejoice that the little school has now grown to an international university, Visva-Bharati, where scholars from many lands find an ideal environment.” (PIB Features)

One of the outstanding examples of the creative genius of India is Swami Vivekananda, whose life is a saga of spiritual fervour, patriotism, universal outlook and philosophic attainments of a very high order.

In a short life span of thirty nine years he accomplished more than what could be achieved in an entire lifetime. His contributions are truly manifold, affording tremendous scope for a study.

Swami Vivekananda’s lectures at Madras upon his return from the Parliament of World Religions in Chicago afford a glimpse into his deep involvement with the social conditions prevalent in India and his views on a national awakening and resurgence through a healthy amalgamation of India’s spiritual wealth with the technological and scientific outlook of the West.

Even at that time, there was a tendency among the educated and elite classes to deride everything that was Indian and take to a blind imitation of the West. This tendency, as the Swami pointed out was the sure path to downfall. But, as he said, merely making empty talk of India’s glorious heritage a sacred past was nothing but stagnation and decadence.

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Shri Jairam Ramesh has earlier been Advisor to the Finance Minister during 1996-98, Deputy Chairman Planning Commission during 1992-94 and to the Prime Minister in 1991. He has served in the Planning Commission, Ministry of Industry and other economic departments of the Central Government. He has been entrusted with numerous special assignments like, for reorganizing India’s international trade agencies in 1990 and for implementing the technology missions during 1987-89, for reorganizing the CSIR in 1986 and for analyzing energy policy during 1983-85. He was also invited to join the official delegation to the WTO meeting in Seattle in 1999.

Born on 9 April 1954 at Chikmagalur in Karnataka, Shri Jairam Ramesh has studied public management at Carnegie Mellon University during 1975-77, at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) technology policy, economics, engineering and management as part of the newly –established inter-disciplinary Technology, Bombay (IIT-B), Mumbai in 1975. In 2001, IIT Bombay presented him with the Distinguished Alumnus Award.

Shri Jairam Ramesh has been a pioneer in putting forward the Green India initiative during his stint as the Union Minister of Environment & Forests .He has authored a number of key government reports in area as diverse as energy, technology, capital goods, industrial policy and telecom. He has been a founding member of the Indian School of Business in Hyderabad promoted by the Wharton School, London Business School, and Kellogg School of Management and is a member of the International Council of the New York-based Asia Society. His column on economics and public policy called ‘Kautilya’ in The Times of India is very popular. He is also the author of the book ‘Making Sense of Chindia’, a book that describes the forces of globalization and liberalization, and is an assessment of international relations in today’s world. Shri Jairam Ramesh has also anchored a number of popular television programs on business and the economy including Business Breakfast and Crossfire. It is expected that under his dynamic leadership the Ministry of Rural Development would carry forward its pro poor and pro people initiatives on the road to inclusive growth and development.

He inspired fierce loyalty among his followers and fear among his rivals; in death, YSR leaves behind a larger than life image.

YSR, as Dr. Yedugoori Sandinti Rajasekhara Reddy was popularly known in Andhra Pradesh, had played out his own version of the Dullesian doctrine, “Those who are not with me are against me”; and its rather illogical extension that “those who are with me ought to be against others.” He demanded fierce loyalty from his followers and reciprocated it by way of unflinching support.
That defined his political style during his long career spanning almost three decades.  It earned him bitter political foes along with diehard followers. He always positioned himself in a trench and rarely did one find him at a negotiating table. He refused to be a courtier even when the Congress culture expressly demanded it as a price for political upward mobility. He wrested positions only by waging battles.  He always preferred bugle to olive branch.  That’s perhaps why he had to wait to become the chief minister of the state until battles decided political fortunes rather than high command’s patronage.

His political beginning was modest from Kadapa district of the faction-ridden Rayalaseema region. He did not hold any important office since his first election as a lawmaker in 1978 till he became the chief minister in 2004 except for a brief stint as a junior minister in the state cabinet holding some inconsequential portfolio for about two years. He became the president of the state Congress within a short time after his political debut as a legislator.  When the Congress was on the back foot following the unseating of N.T. Rama Rao by an ugly palace coup, no tall leader was available to the party to lead it in 1984 Parliament and 1985 Assembly elections. Rajiv Gandhi picked him to head the state unit.  That’s when YSR began to be a recognizable actor on the larger stage of state politics.  And that’s when his nurturing of a statewide following began. Most of them who continued to remain loyal to him were those who were selected by him as candidates or state Congress office bearers. The party’s fortunes were at their lowest at that time. There were, in fact, few takers for both the tickets and the party positions.  This made YSR’s job easy to groom a new and fiercely loyal following of his own throughout the state.  What took other leaders decades to cultivate was possible for YSR in a relatively short span.  That political capital lasted till his very end.  Any succession plan will have to contend with this highly inflammable political group.

Rajesekhara Reddy never lost an election.  Since 1978 when he first won his Assembly seat, he never ceased to be a legislator.  He was either a member of the state legislature or the Lok Sabha.  He was elected four times to the Lok Sabha.  But he did not distinguish himself as a Parliamentarian.  In fact, he seemed to be a reluctant member of the House and perhaps saw it only as a way of retaining political hold over his native district. When he went to the Lok Sabha, his brother kept his Assembly seat warm for him.  And when he was to go to the state Assembly, he sent his brother to the Lok Sabha.  Now, of course, his son, Jaganmohan, sits in the House.  He got elected 6 times to the state legislature.  And it is here that his political passion was evident.

YSR’s imprint on Andhra politics is not merely on account of what he did after he became the chief minister of the state.  That, of course, is very important.  He rooted for huge irrigation projects; talked about priority to agriculture, rural sector and the farmers in contrast to his hi-tech and IT-loving predecessor Chandrababu Naidu.  Reddy made almost every family living below the poverty line the beneficiary of one or two, or even all of his government’s welfare schemes:  old age pension, subsidised rice at Rs. 2 a kilo, free medical insurance, free power to agriculture, access to credit at paltry rates of interest to women, housing scheme, scholarships and fee reimbursement to backward class students, to name a few.  Earlier, local officials selected the beneficiaries at the behest of the ruling party cadres.  He changed that.  It was no longer selection:  it was what he called ‘saturation’, that is everybody in need would become a beneficiary.  Public debt, as a result, mounted.  State finances came under severe strain.  But that did not deter him.  His promise of free power to agriculture did not find favour with the Planning Commission, the then Union Finance Minister, and even Prime Minister Manmohan Singh.  But he persisted.   His trench mentality didn’t heed to counsel of prudence in public policy.

While he kept the masses happy with the welfare schemes, he faced strong allegations that he used slush money from huge irrigation and industrial projects to keep his political network well oiled.  He remained nonchalant in the face of persistent campaign by rival political parties and the media about his and his ministerial colleagues’ corruption.  He tried to blunt the media criticism by attributing ulterior motives to some newspapers and TV channels.  He did not fight shy to take on even the media.

The demand for a separate state for Telangana region became a strong sentiment within the Congress party too.  Although it was considered politically incorrect not to favour Telangana statehood, Rajasekhara Reddy made no secret of his opposition to the division of the state.  He deployed every means to extirpate Telangana Rashtra Samithi (TRS), the party that champions the cause.  Although his government’s position was not uncomfortable in terms of numbers, he began a systematic campaign to bring in legislators and other important leaders of rival parties into Congress.  The main opposition Telugu Desam and the newly formed Praja Rajyam of the matinee idol Chiranjivi began to succumb.  This will all change now.  No new leader of the Congress is likely to inspire as much confidence in those who would like to cross the floor.

Rajasekhar Reddy’s strong imprint is also on account of the manner he earned the position of chief minister.  The way he waged the 2004 and 2009 election battles was, indeed, a game changer in the state politics comparable only to NTR’s stormy campaign in 1982-83.  YSR’s 1,500-kilometre pada yatra in the scorching summer of 2003 marked the transition of YSR from a consummate Congress infighter to a mass leader.  It breathed new life into the Congress which was then on the verge of extinction after being out of power for a decade.  He was not even the State Congress chief then to initiate the campaign.  He wrested the initiative and therefore, the leadership.  This long walk throughout the length and breadth of the state made YSR an unrivalled leader of the Congress party in the state.  In fact, after the yatra, he didn’t have anybody to fight against in his own party.  He did not have to watch his rear anymore.

While his presence and his battle-tested skills lent enormous strength to the Congress party in the state, his absence in all likelihood will prove to be its crippling weakness.  The Congress, and indeed the state itself, are not prepared for his sudden exit.  With every other leader in the party dwarfed by his towering personality, the cadre got used to trust the political fortunes of the party to his care.

The deference he commanded from his followers and the fear he invoked in his adversaries kept the party intact.  It is not easy for the new leader of the Congress to keep the flock together.  For any chief minister to continue the slew of expensive welfare programmes in the face of dwindling revenues will be a formidable challenge.  Anybody who succeeds him will have the tough task to measure up to YSR’s larger than life image in the public imagination.

Dr. Parakala Prabhakar
Director, Centre for Public Policy Studies

Note: This article is originally written for ‘Forbes India’

“Death is not extinguishing the light; it is only putting out the lamp because the dawn has come.   ”                                                                                              -

Chittaranjan Das (1870-1925), whose life is a landmark in the history of India’s struggle for freedom, was endearingly called ’Deshbandhu‘ (Friend of the country). Born on November 5, 1870 in Calcutta, he belonged to an upper middle class Vaidya family of Telirbagh in the then Dacca district. His father, Bhuban Moban Das, was a reputed solicitor of the Calcutta High Court. An ardent member of the Brahmo Samaj, he was also well-known for his intellectual and Journalistic pursuits.

After receiving his early education at the London Missionary Society’s Institution at Bhowanipore (Calcutta),Chittaranjan passed the entrance examination in 1885 as a private candidate. He graduated from the Presidency College in 1890. He then went to England to compete for the I.C.S.; but he was “the last man out” in his year. Therefore he joined the Inner Temple and was called to the Bar in 1894.

It was Bankim Chandra who partly influenced him in his political ideas. While at the Presidency College,Chittaranjan was a leading figure of the Student’s Association; and from Surendranath Banerjee he took his first lessons in Public service and elocution. In 1894 Das came back to India and enrolled himself as a Barrister of the Calcutta High Court.

Chittaranjan’s patriotic ideas were greatly influenced by his father. It was Bankim Chandra who influenced him in his political ideas. It was not before 1917 that Das came to the forefront of nationalist politics. In that year he was invited to preside over the Bengal Provincial Conference held at Bhowanipore. His political career was brief but meteoric. In the course of only eight years he rose to all-India fame by virtue of his intense patriotism, sincerity and booming power.

He wanted “Swaraj for the masses, not for the classes”. To him, “Swaraj is government by the people and for the people”. An advocate of communal harmony and Hindu-Muslim unity, Das affected, in 1923, the Bengal Pact between the Hindus and Muslims of Bengal. A champion of national education and the vernacular medium, he felt that the masses should be properly educated to participate in the nationalist movement. His religious and social outlook was liberal. He was against caste-discrimination and untouchability. A believer in women’s emancipation and widow re-marriage, he supported the spread of female education and widow remarriage.

Great as a jurist, and dynamic as a leader of Bengal, Chittaranjan was a follower of Indian nationalism. In the words of Tagore, “the best gift that Chittaranjan left for his countrymen is not any particular political or socialprogramme but the creative force of a great aspiration that has taken a deathless form in the sacrifice which his life represented”.

His abilities as an advocate evoked admiration.The turning point in his career came when he was called upon to appear on behalf of Aurobindo Ghose in the Alipore Bomb Case (1908). It was due to his brilliant handling of the case that Aurobindo was ultimately acquitted.This case brought Das to the forefront professionally and politically.

Chittaranjan was the defence counsel in the Dacca Conspiracy Case (1910-11). He was famed for his handling of both civil and criminal law. Chittaranjan Das was a noted freedom fighter and social activist.

He was appointed the Mayor of Calcutta Corporation after it was formed. He attended Gaya  conference of India National Congress.

During non-cooperation movement he set many examples, such as, burning his own western clothes, sending his wife and son to jail and others. He, along with Motilal Nehru and Srinivas Ayyangar, founded “Swarajya Dal” in 1922 and came out successfully in the election of 1923. He published a daily paper FORWARD. In that year he formed a pact known as BENGAL PACT with Bengal Muslim Leaders depicting “unity from the top”, which he aimed at “a strange marriage” to uplift the religion-communal consciousness among the two communities.

Deshbandhu wanted “Swaraj for the masses, not for the classes.” He believed in non-violent and constitutional methods for the realization of national independence. In the economic field, Das stressed the need of constructive work in villages. A champion of national education and vernacular medium, he felt that the masses should be properly educated to participate in the nationalist movement. Chittaranjan also made his mark as a poet and an essayist. His religious and social outlook was liberal. A believer in women’s emancipation, he supported the spread of female education and widow re-marriage and was an advocate of inter-caste marriage.

Along with Motilal Nehru, Deshbandhu, founded the Swaraj Party in 1923. The party was recognized as the parliamentary wing of the Congress. Deshbandhu was elected mayor of Calcutta in 1924, after the Swaraj Party gained majority in the elections. During his tenure as the mayor, he brought greater efficiency to the administration and implemented many welfare projects. Chittaranjan Das later established the Deshbandhu Memorial Fund to build a temple, establish an orphanage and provide education to the masses. Besides being a shrewd lawyer, Das was also a literary person. He wrote collections of poems like ‘Mala’ and ‘Antaryami’ and ‘Kishore Kishori’. Along with another revolutionary leader, Aravinda Ghosh, he founded the famous journal ‘Bande Mataram’. He also served as the editor-in-chief of the journal ‘Forward’, which was the mouthpiece of the Swaraj party. Chittaranjan passed away on June 16, 1925 at Darjeeling at the age of 55. Great as a jurist, Chittaranjan was the greatest and most dynamic leader of the then Bengal. Above all, he was a messenger of Indian nationalism.

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A national Foundation called “Babu Jagjivan Ram National Foundation” has been established in New Delhi in the memory of Babu Jagjivan Ram to propagate his ideology, philosophy of his life and mission and services rendered for the sake of the underprivileged. The Foundation functions as an autonomous body under the Ministry of Social Justice & Empowerment.

Article 16 of the Constitution enables the Central Government to make special provisions for the socio-economic development of the deprived sections of the society to enable them to share the facilities at par with the rest of the society.  Education is pivotal and foundational for any kind of socio-economic development.  Education of Scheduled Castes assumes added importance in the sense that it elevates their social status and equips them with the acumen to take advantage of the emerging opportunities both in employment and other economic activities.

While illiteracy is a general problem for the country cutting across caste, religion, region and such other barriers, its effect on the life and status of the Scheduled Castes stands out prominently as an area of national focus. The females among the Scheduled Caste groups suffer from triple jeopardy in the sense that they suffer from social barriers, then females and then the least literate segment of the society.

The scheme of construction of hostels aims to supplement the efforts of the State Governments for creating a congenial study atmosphere free from the shackles of domestic chores, so as to encourage students belonging to the target groups to pursue their education career without dropping out.  Such hostels are immensely beneficial to the SC students hailing from rural and remote areas.

The scheme for construction of hostels for girls was in operation from 3rd Five Year Plan while for boys, the same was started from the year 1989-90. The earlier centrally sponsored scheme of hostels for SC boys and girls has been revised from the 1^st of January 2008 and is renamed as “Babu Jagjivan Ram Chhatravas Yojna’. The main modifications included in the revised scheme are- (a) 100% central assistance to States/UTs and Central Universities and 90% to deemed universities and private bodies for construction of girls hostel and (b) period of construction of hostels has been decreased from existing 5 years to 2 years.

The object of the Schemeis to provide residential accommodation facilities to SC Boys and Girls studying in middle schools, higher secondary schools, colleges and Universities.

The State Governments/Union Territory Administrations and the Central & State Universities/institutions are eligible for central assistance, both for new construction of hostel buildings and for renovation, repair extension, expansion of the existing hostel facilities while NGOs and deemed Universities in the private sector only for expansion of their existing hostel facilities.

Funding pattern for girls hostel-

• 100% Central Assistance to States / UTs / Universities for construction fresh construction of hostel buildings and for expansion existing girls hostels.
• 90% Central Assistance for NGO and deemed universities in private sector for girls hostel only for expansion of existing facilities
• Central Assistance for boys hostel -
• To States 50:50 basis.
• To Union Territory Administrations 100%.
• To Central Universities 90:10 basis.
• To States Universities/ institutions 45:10 basis (States 45).
• To NGOs and deemed universities in private sector (only for expansion) on 45:45:10(States 45).

In addition to the admissible central assistance under the Scheme, one-time grant of Rs.2500 per student is also provided for making provisions of a cot, a table and a chair for each student.

Some other highlights of the scheme are as follows:

Central assistance is released only for meeting the cost of hostel buildings and the responsibility for maintenance of such hostels rest with the respective State Governments/UT Administrations.

The grants-in-aid to the implementing agencies is released to them directly. The grant would be released in two installments to NGOs/Deemed Universities and in one installment to the State Government/Union Territory Administrations and Central and State Universities/institutions.

In case of girls, the hostels are to be located in areas having low SC female literacy. The girls’ hostels is constructed in close vicinity (as far as possible within a radius of 200 meters) of the educational institution.

The capacity per hostel should not exceed 100 students. However, this can be accepted & considered in exceptional cases, depending upon the need necessity and merit of the case. Thrust is primarily for construction of new hostels for middle and higher secondary level of education.

The proposal of NGOs /Deemed Universities for expansion of existing hostels is to be routed through State Government/UT Administration with their recommendation to the Ministry of Social Justice and Empowerment.

Construction period of hostels reduced to 2 years from the existing 5 years.

A Steering committee under chairmanship of Secretary (SJ&E)  monitors and reviews the construction of hostels regularly based on the progress reports, both physical and financial, submitted by the Field Implementing Authorities. For the purpose of effective monitoring, the Ministry/Steering Committee itself conducts or cause field visits by the appropriate agencies/authorities to inspect the projects.

The schemes such as Babu Jagjivan Ram Chhatravas Yojna would definitely help realize the dream Babuji cherished for the students from the underprivileged section of our society. (PIB Features)

T

Though he meticulously followed the tradition of Mahakavi Vallathol Narayana Menon (1878-1958), ‘G’ became notable even during the days of his illustrious predecessor, the distinctive voice being a more refined diction, more careful artistry, more profound view of life and pervading intellectualism. The profundity of ideas alone may not make poetry, but when there is an aesthetic demand to invent a new language – a new idiom – and a young poet succeedes in creating it, it can prove nothing less than an epoch – making event. This happened in the case of ‘G’. His words acquired wings and suggestions re-echoed in the minds of the readers. Though his earlier works published under the title Sahitya Kautukam reflected only the romantic-turned neo-classic school, the publication of ‘Surya Kanti’ in 1933 revealed subjective lyricism in its best form. Feelings conveyed through flowers, the ocean, the sky, the star, the cloud, were all surcharged with sublime human aspiration. It was a thrill but there was no outburst of it as the diction always followed a classic discipline. Nevertheless, the economy of words was a positive achievement of symbols or image which replaced descriptive words.

Some called them symbolic and a few others traced a mystic mould. It was a timely reappearance following the national resurgence of the age-old vedic voice of India, of which Rabindranath Tagore was referred to as a pioneer. External nature became an integrated part of human nature and ‘G’ always felt its presence in every human action.

The symbol he thus employed was gradually extended to convey even mundane ideas -like a spider as a monarch and its web as the empire, Gandhiji as a farmer sowing seeds of Dharma – resulting in what was called symbolism which was nothing but the most poetic application of Dhwani (suggestivity).

`G’ had been educated in the conventional system with its emphasis in knowledge of Sanskrit. He passed the Malayalam higher examination and served as a Malayalam pandit. He learned English through his own efforts and retired as a Professor of Malayalam. He also mastered Bengali and translated Geetanjali and over 100 other poems of Tagore into Malayalam. He was nominated to the Rajya sabha (1968-72) by the President.

New dreams released by modern education and changing patterns of social life has now upset the aesthetic ethos which had become an agglomeration of negations -negation of God, truth and cherished value systems. Disbelief in tradition has turned out new fashions in several guises. ‘G’ was not carried away by this West-oriented materialism. He was always of the view that faith in God was synonymous with Dharma and inevitable to culture at individual and national levels. As a prose-writer too he often dealt with this theme while arguing strongly for the unity and cultural identity of India. No wonder during a period when alien dogmas weighed heavily over the sensibility of the people, ‘G’ was looked down upon as a conventionalist by self-appointed progressivists who defined progress in their own arbitrary terms. ‘G’ had ceased to be a positive influence on this type of poets. But undeniable is the fact that his name is not written on moving tide; it is inscribed on granite foundation of Indian poetic heritage. His concept of poetry is based on the enduring values and super-sensory vision envisaged in Sanskrit classics with strong moorings in the social realities around him. Life in its complexity appealed to him and he never lost faith in it and never forgot his responsibility as a writer from a developing country. The beauty and the woes of the poor sections of the society portrayed with full sympathy and deep emotional appeal form a class of its own-like “The Dove-Couple ‘Master Mason’ ‘Three Streams and a River’ – where local colours, spoken idioms, and rustic images impart a distinct mark of realism. And by common consent, his forte is contemplative lyricism where fancy unfolds its wings of charm as in ‘Suryakanti’ (sun-flower) ‘Anweshanam’ (the search) and ‘Nakshatra – Geetam’ (song of the star). ‘Nakshatra – Gitam’ concludes with a profound assessment of the service rendered by the star : “When Life was a furnace to me,I was able to shed purity on earth with that light”

Perhaps the poet’s own assessment of his contribution.

For more Personalities. . .

MAITHILI’S FIRST

MODERN CLASSIC

Nagarjun, whose real name was Vaidyanath Mishra was born, at Tarauni, a small village in Darbhanga (Bihar) in 1911. According to Vikrami calendar, it was on the full moon day of the month of Jyeshtha, that coincided with June 15 that year of the Christian era. He studied Sanskrit and Buddhist literature, travelled far and wide, adopted Buddhist religion for some time and used Nagarjun as his nom de plume. In Maithili he wrote under the pen-name of Yatri (traveller). He wrote more than six novels in Hindi, more than a dozen collections of poems, two epic poems, two collections of poems in Maithili, one novel in Maithili, one epic poem in Sanskrit and some poems in Bangala. He was awarded by the Sahitya Akademi for his collection of poems in Maithili. He died on November 5, 1998.

Nagarjun began writing poems in Maithili at an early age, and in Hindi when he came in contact with Hindi writers at Varanasi where he stayed for learning Sanskrit. After that he wandered from one place to another. In the words of Vishnu Khare, he “continued to write both in Maithili and Hindi and while only two Hindi pamphlet-poems, Shapath (Vow) and Chana Zor Garam (‘Mighty’ Hot Grams) were circulated in 1948 and 1952 respectively, his first, compact yet comprehensive (28 poems) Maithili collection Chitra appeared in 1949 and became perhaps the first modern classic and a standard university textbook in the language. It is a microcosm with poems on the Mithila region and Gandhi and the state-of-the-nation jostling with nature-poems, nostalgia, love and social reform and commitment. Romantic lyricism gradually surrenders to a resolute realism. The longest (169 lines) poem of the collection, Dwandwa (The Duel Within), is uniquely central to the understanding of the poet’s painfully chosen way of life and his awareness of the irrevocable, dynamic dialectics of human history. It is uncannily like the testament of a modern Buddha after the renunciation, vulnerable to accusation of heartlessness, selfishness and escapism, yet resolute and unapologetic in its larger decision.”

“THE STREAM

OF THE AGE”

If his first collection, in Maithili, was appreciated for its pictorial quality, Yugdhara, the first one in Hindi, was considered as “the Stream of the Age.” By 1953, the year of its publication, Nagarjun had left behind the nostalgic association with his Meghaduta-Kalidasa kind of Sanskrit lyrical romanticism. He became the forerunner of a new wave of writing in Hindi of progressive content and satirical form. To quote Vishnu Khare again, “he is perhaps the only Hindi poet who saw and wrote about the mighty Indus during one of his wanderings in pre-Partition India. His 10-line 1950 poem about “the five worthy sons of Mother India” is a piece of classic satire, which he used to recite like a dancing Baul. The still shorter, 8-line poem on “The Famine and After” remains a masterpiece of tragedy and resurgence, hunger and satiety, gloom and cheer, establishing him as a major talent in Hindi poetry.”

He did not confine himself to the genre of poetry to depict the reality of his land. He took to novel writing and wrote novels in Hindi in the rich tradition of Premchand.

Ratinath Ki Chachi (Ratinath’s Aunt), his novel in Hindi is considered by critics as ‘one of the most realistic — and feminist — novels in Hindi.’ This novel depicts adulterous carnality and foeticide, but it is a rich conjuring-up of Maithil society, culture and ecology, interspersed with irony and humour so characteristic of the region.

Balchanma, his second novel in Hindi, was published in 1952. This novel also depicts the social reality telling the harrowing tale of abject poverty and naked exploitation; it promises liberation to such rebellious youngsters as Balchanma, only to end in his brutal murder by the mercenaries hired by the upper-caste kulaks and landowners.

Varun ke Bete (The Sons of the Water-God Varuna), written in 1954 and published in 1956, is yet another unconventional work. It is a story of the (low-caste) village fishermen fighting for their fishing rights and trying to form a fishermen’s cooperative.

Nagarjun wrote 13 novels — 11 in Hindi and two in Maithili — and each of them centres around a socio-economic-political theme, making him one of the most ‘programmatic’ novelists in Indian literature. His stories are invariably set in rural or semi-urban Bihar and tell the story of the downtrodden and the exploited, amongst them women and children.

While writing on his death, Vishnu Khare wrote, “Nagarjun remains predominantly a poet of politics and people, of the peasantry and of the proletariat. He was angrier than any angry young poet but also possessed a typically robust Maithil-Bihari sense of humour and savage satire..… His poetry and fiction are polyphonic; they have more than one sub-text and can be read as subaltern sociology and history but there is nothing subordinate about them — they belong to the real, dominant mainstream of Hindi literature. On the other hand, he is at core a vulnerable individual, with love, yearning, guilt and tenderness, tormenting and ennobling his soul. Its inner demons turned him into a tireless traveller — he was no profligate philanderer..…To those who read him, he is a deeply committed humanist with a rare mastery over language(s), style and craft. Now that the canonised and mobbed “Baba” is gone, one hopes that his devotees will turn to his works where he lives as the ever-readable, relevant and breathless Nagarjun.”

ONE WHO SIDED WITH

THE DOWNTRODDEN

In the beginning of the Nagarjun festival, Murli Manohar Prasad Singh, general secretary of the Janwadi Lekhak Sangh, welcomed the audience and said that emerging writers would get inspiration from the writings of Nagarjun who always sided with the downtrodden and remained committed to the cause of revolution. After the welcome address, the artistes of Jan Natya Manch, Kurukshetra, sang a chorus based on three poems of Nagarjun — Lal Bhavani, Lajwanti, and Shashan ki Bandook. Then began a session of discourse on Nagarjun’s contribution to literature and culture. First, Rajesh Joshi, an eminent Hindi poet, briefly spoke on the creative process of Nagarjun who kept with him a magnifying glass and a radio transistor. By referring to these two gadgets, Rajesh explained the element of progressive thinking in Nagarjun who kept a vigilant eye on every event related in press and radio. Then the special number of Naya Path, Hindi quarterly, on Nagarjun was released. Renowned Hindi critic Shiv Kumar Mishra spoke on various literary aspects of Nagarjun’s poetry and also his memoirs. In his brief presidential address, Namwar Singh said that Nagarjun was an experimentalist par excellence, whether it was the choice of metre, rhythm, content or form. The range of his poetry was very vast and thus he was really a people’s poet.

The most attractive part of the festival was the presentation of Nagarjun’s poems in classical music by Anjana Puri. Madan Gopal Singh, an eminent singer and composer of Sufi poetry, presented a programme of music, singing some of the best poems of Nagarjun, and earned high applause from the audience. In between the variety of programmes, some poems of Nagarjun were recited by well-known Hindi and Urdu writers such as Zubair Razvi, Matraiyee Pushpa, Leeladhar Mandloi, Mangalesh Dabral, Dinesh Kumar Shukla and Ashok Tiwari.

In the end Bigul drama group enacted a collage containing seven stages based on Nagarjun’s poems and then the JANAM, Kurukshetra, sang a poem, ‘Megh Baje Hain’ in classical mode. The programme was conducted by Chanchal Chauhan, general secretary of the Janwadi Lekhak Sangh.

COMMANDING

THE HEIGHTS

The reason for that is primarily because works of good art do not fall and rise in price like stocks and shares even though being a celebrity helps in boosting up the market price marginally. Husain’s works command the heights they do because they reflect a unique vision that is close to the life of the mass of our people who were the life-blood of the national movement and who won the admiration of our artists in the way they sacrificed all they had to free our country from imperial slavery and its local slave-drivers, the native princes.

The Progressive Artists Group, which Husain joined in 1947, represented one such trend. Although the group disbanded after a few years, its perception is powerfully expressed in his Zameen of 1955, which blends the issue of land to the tiller with our narrative tradition of cameos with forms that reflect the colourful vibrancy of our folk art executed with the sculptural quality of our Mauryan and Gupta art, as well as Pablo Picasso. It is interesting how Picasso, a member of the Communist Party, also died in exile rather than live in Franco’s Spain. Husain admired him and many of his works, like his Tribute to Safdar Hashmi, reflect his ongoing concern with democratic struggles.

What picked him out among his peers was the way he could innovate with any given aesthetic basis. He was a master of all forms of art, from making posters to producing engrossing prints, powerful paintings and even toys. The interlinkages he created between popular, classical and contemporary styles brought his imagery of the epics into the context of our modern perspective, rather like Raja Ravi Varma had done for the art of the colonial period. If the chief protagonist of India’s colonial art was of princely descent, actively involved in the intrigues of the Tranvancore court, Husain was the visual bard of the Republic. Nothing escaped his eye as he wandered barefoot among the tea-shops of Nizamuddin, the tea-stall at Lal Darwaza in Ahmedabad, the Café Samovar in Mumbai, and the Azad Hind Dhaba in Kolkata, to name only a few. At the same time, he celebrated a wide range of figures including Jawaharlal Nehru, Indira Gandhi, Mother Teresa, Satyajit Ray and a host of Bollywood divas in the same way as he celebrated the street people of India, epic characters, elephants, tigers, horses, doves and spiders all as parts of ongoing life. His broad scope of expression won him the Padma Bhushan in 1973, the Padma Vibhushan in 1991 and a seat in the Rajya Sabha in 1986. In fact, he left behind a powerful album of drawings of his experience in the house, and also tongue-in-cheek emergency paintings of Indira Gandhi as Durga. His politics was broad-base but closest to the vision of DR Ram Manohar Lohia, at whose request he painted the Ramayana and Mahabharata series.

PROTAGONIST

OF MASS CULTURE

He was in a sense the true voice of his times. Born among the masses, earning a living by his hands, he could enter into the role of an architect for the wealthy, a film-maker for the avant garde, an organiser of events for the glitterati which inappropriately gave him the label of gimmickry and, most of all, he was a generous artist who gifted so many works of his to children and friends that keep cropping up like signboards from all over the world. I mention these because they reflect his true character — that of reaching out to everyone and earning their love and respect in return, like his close friend Maria who gifted back his works of the 1960s, which he had given her, for the people of India. But his closeness to those in power and the people alike also made him many enemies.

I met him a number of times, but his greatest quality was that he never criticised others. He was concerned with his own expression, its development and its acceptance over as wide a circuit as possible. He was the chief visual protagonist of India’s post-independence mass culture, revelling in crushes on young actresses and the world of Bollywood. What is more important is that behind this positive attitude of his was not a fear of being challenged by others but a knowledge of his own worth. He knew that many of those who were bad-mouthing him were not worth a reply so he left them to their own devices and went ahead of them as he did.

Finally, he was a free-floating spirit, a human being with little respect for borders, just as he had little respect for barriers of class, religion and tradition. All these were nothing if they did not link larger and larger sections of humanity together. So, when he accepted Qatari nationality in 2010 it was because he was there and welcome, while at home he was faced with harassment, threats and, most of all, disruption of his working life. I understand what he meant by “My heart will always be in India” because whether in Qatar or in London, as it was India throbbing inside him like a generator that kept him active and alive. That is why he continued to paint Indian subjects dear to him till his death. The last series he hoped to complete was a hundred-year visual history of Indian cinema.

One can agree with the prime minister, Manmohan Singh, that his death was “a national loss” but one cannot help feeling that the failure of the government to tackle the facetious cases against him or to ensure he carry on his work undisturbed at home has also contributed to this loss. Husain understood the ephemeral nature of travel documents for a man on the move across the flow of history. But the people who drove him out of his “beloved land” are responsible for lowering our standards of civilisation in front of prejudice. Those who did not defend him fearing their onslaught will only have themselves to blame for it. In his characteristic generosity, Husain stated, “I have never felt betrayed.”

A man who could invent his own birthday, recreate a mother he never really saw, carry the love and affection of thousands of his fellow Indians and return it as he did, despite a Qatari passport and dying in London, continues to reach out to you and me every time we look at his work and see the joy of Pandharpur, the place  where he was born, the Ramayan and Mahabharat series that he did for the Hyderabad collector, Badri Vishal Pitti, that brought the epics alive to so many homes in our cities which had all but forgotten how close these figures are to those we see in life, to the young he gave the glamour of Mumbai, the city he made his name in, and the façade of grandeur of Delhi which patronised him but refused to protect him, can never fade from our memory.

A GUIDE

FOR ARTISTS

His chronicle of events in history blended with his own perception of myths from the epics, the battle of Karbala, the struggle of the Sikh faith, the last supper of Christ, Munshi Premchand’s Shatranj Ke Khilari set in the events of 1857 around Lucknow, the last years of the British Raj and the fall of Hitler being lampooned in the comedies of Charlie Chaplin. One can never really end the conversation he began over 80 years ago as an artist and which he compressed afresh in every work that he brought to life.

After today the conversational tone of these works will bring him to life before us for years to come with their inclusive vision, love for humanity and a remarkable humility that was both endearing and infectious. It will provide a good guideline for artists of the people to go ahead from his spontaneous positivism to a dialectical vision of the future. At the same time his fate at the hands of those in power should serve as a warning that friends in high places are often more a disadvantage than a help.

John Berger, writer, critic and historian of art, once famously remarked that “the spectator-buyer is meant to envy herself as she will become if she buys the product. She is meant to imagine herself transformed by the product into an object of envy for others, an envy which will then justify her loving herself.” But it is not just the love of oneself but one’s love for a possession that is an object of other’s envy that drives the price of art as much as its intrinsic worth.

FOR MORE READING. . .

He had a natural flair as well as an instinctive liking for the country’s folk and mythological traditions, for the patterns of its everyday life, and for the varied manifestations of its syncretism – all of which found expression in a dizzying range of canvases. He lived in and for his art, which he repeatedly showed would not bow down before the dictates of narrow-minded, petty men.

FOR MORE READING. . .

Celebrated Indian artist M F Husain, who earned both fame and wrath for his paintings, died in London on Thursday after being unwell for over a month.

He was 95.

Popularly known as MF and regarded as “Picasso of India”, the artist breathed his last at the Royal Brompton Hospital at 2.30 am local time. Husain had been keeping “indifferent health” for the last one-and-a-half month, family sources said.

They said that funeral arrangements are yet to be finalised.

Born in Pandharpur in Maharashtra on 17^th September 1915, Husain courted controversy over his paintings of Hindu goddesses.

His paintings on goddesses Durga and Saraswati invited the wrath of Hindu groups which attacked his house in 1998 and vandalised his art works.

In February 2006, Husain was charged with hurting sentiments of people because of his paintings.

In the wake of legal challenges and death threats in his home country, Husain had been living abroad in self-imposed exile since 2006 and was offered Qatari citizenship in January 2010, which he accepted.

As he had not responded to summons from an Indian district court in Haridwar, his properties in India were attached as per court orders and a bailable warrant was issued against him by the court.

Though Husain had been saying that he was keen to return to India, his wish had remained unfulfilled.

Three of Husain paintings recently topped a Bonham’s auction in London, going under the hammer for Rs 2.32 crore with an untitled oil work in which the legendary artist combined his iconic subject matters — horse and woman — fetching Rs 1.23 crore alone.

M.F. Hussain was born in Pandharpur, Madhya Pradesh on September 17, 1915 to mother Zunaib and father Fida. His mother died when he was three years old. His father remarried and the family moved to Indore where he did his primary education. His association with painting began at an early age- he learnt the art of calligraphy and practiced the Kulfic Khat with its geometric forms. He also learnt to write poetry. At 20 years of age he moved to Mumbai, determined to become an artist and joined Sir J. J. School of Arts for one year.

In 1937, he started his career painting cinema hoardings for a livelihood. He had a tough time initially, but as the earning got better he visited Surat, Baroda and Ahmedabad to paint landscapes. He also tried his luck in other jobs and the best paid job was at a toy factory, where he designed and built fretwork toys. In between, Hussain got married to Fazila in the year 1941 and they had two daughters Raisa and Aqueela and three sons, Mustafa, a restaurateur and Shamshad and Owais, both painters themselves.

Hussain’s painting ‘Sunhera Sansaar’ at the1947 annual exhibition of the Bombay Art Society won an award and marked his entry as a known artist. In 1946, Francis Newton Souzah invited him to join Bombay Progressive Artists Group, a group formed to explore a new idiom for Indian art. This exposed Hussain to the works of Emil Nolde and Oskar Kokoschka and made a strong influence, which led him to make some remarkable works ‘Re Between The Spider And The Lamp’, ‘Zameen and Man’ etc. He then visited Delhi, where he encountered ancient Mathura sculpture and Indian miniature paintings. This was a turning point of his career as an artist as he assimilated ideas from Western and Indian art.

His series of all over India exhibitions during the period 1948 to 1950 made him a publicly known artist. He conducted his first solo exhibition in Mumbai in1952. In 1954, he was nominated as an eminent artist by the Lalit Kala Akademi, New Delhi. The following year he won the national award at the Lalit Kala Akademi’s first national exhibition.

M.F. Hussain has participated in many international shows which include Contemporary Indian Art, Royal Academy of Arts, London 1982; Six Indian Painters, Tate Gallery, London 1985; Modern Indian Painting, Hirschhom Museum, Washington 1986 and Contemporary Indian Art, Grey Art Gallery, New York 1986. Along with several solo exhibitions he had major retrospectives in Zurich (Galerie Palette) and Prague (Manes) in 1956, Frankfurt (Kunst-Kabinet) and Rome ( 1960), Tokyo(1961), Mumbai (1969), Calcutta (1973) and Delhi (1978). His work was exhibited at the Salon de Mai in Paris (1951), the Venice biennales (1953, 1955), Tokyo Biennale (1959 where he won the International Biennale Award), the São Paulo biennales in1959 and in 1971 where he was invited to exhibit alongside Pablo Picasso. His work was first shown in the USA at India House, New York, in 1964. He has also had exhibitions of photography and in 1984 in Hannover, he exhibited works on plexiglass.

Besides painting, Hussain has also made a film ‘Through the Eyes of a Painter’ in 1967 which went on to win the Golden Bear Award in Berlin Film Festival. He has made several short films since then. On account of his immense contribution to Indian art, the Government of India honoured him with the Padmashree in 1966, Padma Bhushan Award in 1973 and the Padma Vibhushan award in 1989, all prestigious civilian awards. He was nominated to the upper house of the Indian Parliament, the Rajya Sabha in 1987; and during his six year term he produced the Sansad Portfolio.

He was a prolific playwright, author or more than 50 plays, and the winner of several awards, including the Sangeet Natak Akademi award and the Padmashri. Ebong Indrajeet (Evam Indrajeet, ‘And Indrajeet’, 1963) and Pagla Ghoda (‘Mad Horse’, 1967) are undisputed classics of the modern Indian stage, translated into several languages and performed across the country. They blazed a trail, and opened new vistas. Badal Sircar was a playwright of great power and technical sophistication. Playwrights and directors we consider masters today – Shombhu Mitra, Girish Karnad, Satyadev Dubey, B.V. Karanth, among others – acknowledged their artistic debt to Badal Sircar. Girish Karnad, for instance, says that he learnt about the fluidity of form from Pagla Ghoda, and Satyadev Dubey says that every play he has done after directing Evam Indrajeet has the shadow of this masterpiece on it.

And yet, when he was at the peak of his creativity, hailed as a modern master, Badal Sircar quit and went away.

He didn’t quit writing, and he didn’t go away from theatre. He quit being a ‘playwright’, and abandoned the urban proscenium stage of psychological realism and the box set, a theatre that showcased the actor and pandered to his ego. That sort of theatre often became, in effect, a vehicle for the actor to show off. In Bengal, the urban proscenium theatre was also overtly verbose. When an actor of the calibre of Shombhu Mitra was on stage, no one minded, because it was a pleasure to listen to him deliver Tagore’s or Badal Sircar’s lines. With his level of virtuosity, you almost felt it was right to show off. It became a drag when lesser actors pretended they had the stuff.

But then, what was the alternative? Sircar couldn’t simply have embraced the rural theatre. He was city-bred, and he did not want to be an imposter in the rural theatre. So he created what he called the ‘Third Theatre’. This was a theatre that lived and breathed among the common people, that spoke of their lives, that cried their tears and dreamed their dreams. This was theatre for social change. Later, he preferred the term ‘free theatre’ to ‘Third Theatre’. Not only was this term less confrontationist, it was also more accurate.

In the early seventies, the world, especially Bengal, was in turmoil, and this is the turmoil Sircar captured with such precision in his third classic, Michhil (Juloos, ‘Procession’, 1972). He had already formed his theatre group Satabdi, in 1967. Sircar and Satabdi performed their plays anywhere – in large rooms or halls, in the open, in fields, in parks and gardens. This was ‘free’ theatre. It required no ticket to see it, and it required very little money to do. More importantly, it was free in the sense of being free of constraints and obligations. It was insolent, unafraid to speak its mind.

What this theatre did require, though, was imagination. Too much of what goes in the name of ‘street theatre’ (particularly today, when the NGOs have appropriated the form to a great extent) is patronising, artistically weak, imaginatively barren and plain boring. Sircar’s theatre was never barren, intellectually or aesthetically. You might or might not agree with him, but you could not dismiss his theatre. In plays such as Bashi Khobor (Basi Khabar, ‘Stale News’, 1978) and Bhoma (1979), Satabdi created some of the finest instances of ‘physical theatre’ in India.

In other words, in Sircar’s work, writing, directing, and acting in plays became seamless parts of the larger process of creating theatre. And while he continued writing plays, the act of creating theatre involved, more and more, the reconfiguration of the performance space, and manipulation of actors’ bodies and voices to create meaning. Dialogue within the group became for him as important as dialogue in the play and dialogue with the audience.

Satabdi began performing in a room on the second floor of the Academy of Fine Arts three days a week. The room could take about 60-70 spectators, and was named ‘Angan Mancha’ (‘Space Theatre’) by Sircar. A few months after Angan Mancha came into being, Sircar learnt of theatre taking place in Surendranath Park (formerly Curzon Park) in the centre of the city. A theatre group named Silhouette had started this, and this became Satabdi’s venue as well. Initially, Sircar was sceptical about the audience taking to his plays, which were more complex and sophisticated than the average street theatre being performed there. But he was to be surprised. Over time, a serious and regular theatre going audience developed at Surendranath Park.

Ideologically, it is a little hard to characterise Badal Sircar’s theatre. He started with light hearted comedies (Ballabhpurer Rupkatha being the best known, and is still popular), then went on to express the angst and rootlessness of the urban middle class in his classic plays, and eventually, in his post-proscenium phase, he became more consciously anti-establishment.

However, a certain sort of political ambivalence is inscribed into his plays and in fact into his dramaturgy itself – in the sense that the non-verbal can just as easily ‘flatten’ meaning and equalise opposites. His theatre could was, variously, angry, nihilist, hopeful and deeply humanist. I am not being pejorative when I say that Badal Sircar’s theatre reflected a certain ‘middle class’ view of life. In fact, it could be argued that this was the result of his deep honesty and self-reflexivity. He didn’t delude himself that he could, in some magical way, transcend his class roots simply by mouthing radical slogans. In talking about his creative journey, he recounts the following:

‘But should we make a play on the Santhal revolt of 1855-56, taking roles of Santhals and the oppressors? The answer was – no. Then what? We shall show it from our point of view, that is, the point of view of a contemporary person belonging to the city-bred, educated middle class community. Why? Because we want to link that revolt to the present-day reality.’[1]

Sircar’s relations with the organised left remained awkward at best. Utpal Dutt, Sircar’s near exact contemporary and member of the CPI (M), hardly ever spoke kindly of Third Theatre. Perhaps because he was familiar with Dutt’s style, which was somewhat robust and highly polemical, to the best of my knowledge, Sircar didn’t respond to Dutt in kind. Some of his less patient followers did, however, and the mutual suspicion hardened over the years. This was unfortunate, because Sircar made a tremendous contribution by taking quality theatre to non-formal spaces. He was a key figure in what Safdar Hashmi called the ‘democratisation of Indian theatre’.

Above all, what Badal Sircar did was to seed practice and train practitioners. This is a part of his legacy that has not been appreciated enough. But through the 1970s, he travelled all over the country, holding workshops in the techniques he was exploring. The Kannada left-wing theatre group Samudaya (the theatre director Prasanna was associated with it, as was, though not so centrally, Karanth) invited Satabdi for a performance, and followed it up with a two week workshop with Sircar in Kumbulgod. This led directly to Samudaya taking up street theatre in 1978. Samudaya went on to become one of the finest exponents of street theatre in the coming years.

Or take the case of the Manipuri director, H. Kanhailal. Expelled from the National School of Drama because he couldn’t manage either the ‘high’ Hindi expected of him, nor very good English, Kanhailal found his own unique idiom after a workshop with Sircar. It was Sircar who introduced the non-verbal, physical idiom to Manipuri theatre. Sircar had got the psycho-physical exercises of the avant-garde Euro-American theatre from the Polish director and theorist Jerzy Grotowsky. In 1972, Sircar performed four of his plays in Imphal. Kanhailal saw these, and the following year he spent nearly a month in Kolkata, learning these exercises.

Eventually, though, the student in some ways rejected the teacher. But this was not a simple rejection. Kanhailal learnt from Sircar that to express complex issues and thoughts through theatre, one had to be neither a prisoner of the frills of the proscenium stage, nor of verbose playscripts. An empty space was enough, if the actors’ bodies were expressive, and the spectators’ imaginations could be fired. In a word, Sircar gave Kanhailal the confidence to find his own voice.

But soon, Kanhailal moved away from psycho-physical exercises. The Bengali actor needed to be ‘freed’ from his/her social inhibitions, so that s/he could begin using the body truly expressively. The Manipuri actor was the product of a different cultural milieu. S/he was physically less inhibited, and more athletic and flexible. Then there were other sorts of cultural conditioning. While Sircar encouraged – even demanded – a strong eye contact between the actors and with the audience, in Manipur, eye contact was something of a taboo. But even though he eventually moved away from psycho-physical training, there is no doubt that Sircar had unlocked the founts of Kanhailal’s creativity. Kanhailal’s extraordinary work, including early classics such as Pebet, Memoirs of Africa and, later, Draupadi and Dakghar, could not have been possible without Sircar’s defining influence.

It is an irony that while Sircar’s plays for the proscenium stage remain justly well-known, his post-proscenium career is hazy in the minds of theatre lovers. But perhaps that is how he wished it. He was a man who had walked away from the spotlight. Many think he spent his last years in a sort of retirement and that Satabdi had become defunct. Neither is true. About a decade before his death, Sircar had an accident, which had severe implications on his physical ability to act in or direct plays. What he achieved, though, was to enter into creative, nurturing collaborative relationships with other theatre groups active in and around Kolkata. Some of these groups folded up fast, but two had a long life – Ayna (founded 1978) and Pathasena (founded 1979). Both these groups considered Sircar their mentor, and he played an active role in training them, and sometimes also directing plays for them.

His last years were spent, by all accounts, in some financial difficulty. While some festivals and groups did confer awards upon him, he got no institutional support. We as a nation must hang our heads in shame at this. Too many artists who have played defining roles in the creation of modern India have died in need.

Badal Sircar went the day the Left Front lost. For all his differences with the left, I am not sure he would have relished the prospect of anti-communists coming to power in West Bengal. He timed his exit perfectly.

‘End of an era’ is a cliché. I never met him, but he was a moral compass. He embodied everything that drew me to left wing theatre – the inventiveness of the form, its rough texture, the ability to say a lot with very little, an unwavering commitment to the people, smell of the earth, and of the rain. Habib Tanvir died in 2009, and now Badal Sircar. The touchstones are gone.

Sudhanva Deshpande is an actor and director with Jana Natya Manch, and works as editor with LeftWord Books. He can be reached atsudhanva@leftword.com.

[1] Badal Sircar, Voyages in the Theatre, New Delhi 1993, p. 37. For a detailed analysis of Sircar’s theatre till the early 1980s, see Rustom Bharucha, Rehearsals of Revolution: The Political Theatre of Bengal, Calcutta 1983. A good analysis of his later years can be found in Shayoni Mitra, ‘Badal Sircar: Scripting a Movement’, The Drama Review, 48, 3, Fall 2004. For Sircar’s influence on Kanhailal, see Rustom Bharucha, The Theatre of Kanhailal: Pebet and Memoirs of Africa, Calcutta 1992. For his influence on Samudaya, see Narendar Pani, Staging a Change, Bangalore 1979, and Rati Bartholomew, ‘Samudaya’s Jatha, Karnataka’, How, 6, 1-2, 1983.

Tagore first called Gandhi a Mahatma or a great soul. He said at “Gandhiji’s call India blossomed forth to new greatness, just as once before, in earlier times,when Buddha proclaimed the truth, of fellow feeling and compassion among all living creatures”. Gandhiji called him the Great Sentinel or Gurudev”.

To the outside world Tagore never hesitated to project Mahatma Gandhi as the spiritual soul of India. He wrote to China’s Marshal Chian Kai Sek in 1938 saying, “At this desperate age of moral upset it is only natural for us to hope that the continent which has produced two greatest men, Buddha and Christ, in the whole course of human events must still fulfill its responsibility to maintain the purest expression of character in the teeth of the scientific effrontery of the evil genius of man. Has not that expectation already shown in its first luminous streak of fulfillment in the person of Gandhi in a historical horizon obscured by centuries of …?” Chiang Kai Sek replied to the letter (concern on Japan China conflict) as “Respected Gurudev Tagore”.

A Bengali poet and a Gujrati Barister, working in South Africa. How the kinship developed?As described by Tagore’s biographer Prabhat Kumar Mukerji. In 1912-13 a Gujrati Barister Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi was busy in organizing Satyagraha in South Africa to protest against atrocities on Overseas Indians. Mutual friend of Gandhi and Tagore a British Missionary and a Poet C.F. Andrews was going to observe the movement. Tagore wrote to Andrews “You are fighting our cause in Africa alongwith Mr. Gandhi and others.

The poet and the karmayogi met for the first time on March 6, 1915. Gandhij was not quite satisfied with the Santiniketan system. He wanted the students to do their own jobs along with studies, he felt there was no need for servants, cooks, sweeper or water carriers. When Gandhiji’s desire was communicated to Tagore he agreed without any hesitation. He announced, come “sab kaje hat lagai mora”. The new system started on March 10, 1915 which Tagore declared as “Gandhi Divas” in Tagore’s Ashram. Meanwhile Gandhiji plunged into the freedom movement through his non-violent, non-cooperation movement changing Congress first 30 years’ movement of petition and constitutionalism to a movement of action. In 1921 the poet entered into a controversy with Gandhiji regarding the methods used.

He took exception to boycotting of schools and colleges and even burning of foreign clothes. In a letter to C.F. Andrews he wrote “a crowd of young students came to see me. They said if I would order them to leave schools they will obey. I was emphatic in my refusal. They went angry, doubting sincerity of my love for the motherland. Reason for my refusal “ anarchy of emptiness never tempts me”.

Inspite of their differences Tagore salutes Gandhiji’s spirit and the sea change he had brought into the lives of Indians but was unable to follow him in his steps. However, Rabindranath was not hesitant of paying his tributes to Gandhiji. He said, “He (Gandhiji) stopped at the threshold of huts of thousand of dispossessed, like one o their own.He spoke in their own language. Here was the living truth at last, not quotations from book. For this Mahatma the name given to him by the people of India is his real name”.

Rabindranath once mentioned about Gandhiji’s call for plying Charkha for half an hour every day. Tagore asked why not eight and half hours, if it could help the country, in gaining freedom or Swaraj. The two could not agree.

On May 20, 1932 Mahatmaji went on a fast in Yerwada Jail protesting against separate electoral representation for backward Hindus. Tagore sent a telegram to Gandhiji saying “it is well worth sacrificing precious life for the sake of India’s unity and her social integrity. Though we cannot anticipate what effect it may have upon rulers who may not understand its immense importance for our people, we feel certain that the supreme appeal of such self offering to the conscience of our own countrymen will not be in vain. I fervently hope that we will not callously allow such national tragedy to reach its extreme length. Our sorrowing hearts will follow your sublime penance with reverence and love. Gandhiji replied “ “have always experience God’s mercy. Very early this morning I wrote seeking your blessing if you could approve action and behold I have it in abundance in your message just received” referringto the telegram.

The same day Gandhiji wrote a letter to Gurudev Rabindranath saying “This is early morning 3 o’clock of Tuesday. I enter the fiery gate at noon – if you can bless the effort. I want it. You have been to me a true friend because you have been a candid friend often speaking your though aloud. I had looked forward to a firm opinion from you one or the other. But you have refused to criticize. Though it can now only be during my fast. I will yet prize your criticism, if your heart condemns my action. I am not too proud to make an open confession of my blunder, whatever the cost of confession, I find myself in error. If your heart approves the action I want your blessing. It will sustain me I hope I have made myself clear. My love”. A note was added by Gandhiji to this letter “Just as I was handing this o the Superintendent, I got your loving and magnificent wire. It will sustain me in the midst of the storm I am about to enter”. (Source: Rabindra Rachanawali, Vol. 14)

Worried about the health of Mahatma Gandhi, fasting in Yerwada Jail protesting against the British proposal to formulate separate electoral representation to scheduled castes, Rabindranath Tagore reached Pune to see for himself. Mahatmaji sent his son to escort Tagore inside. By that time the British Government had accepted the demand of Mahatma Gandhi and the fasting leader observing moun till afternoon that day agreed to break his fast. Kamala Nehru prepared the juice and Kasturba Gandhi offered the sip. Tagore was requested by Mahatmaji to sing a self composed song. He sang “jiban jakhan shukai e jai, karunadharai eso”. Tagore included his experience of the day into his book on Mahatma Gandhi.

In Pune on Gandhi’s birthday Tagore attended a meeting in Shivaji Mandir presided over by Madan Mohan Malaviya where he read out his written speech and gave full throated support to Mahatmaji’s untouchability abolition movement.

Mahatma Gandhi visited Tagore’s school and university in Santiniketan on four occasions – twice with Kasturba Gandhi and twice alone. In 1936 Rabindranath reached Delhi with his Dance Drama team after visiting Allahabad and Lucknow with the purpose of collecting funds for Vishwa Bharati to tide over the money crunch. Mahatma Gandhi was sad to see that his Gurudev at such an old age moving around collecting funds. Gandhiji met him and arranged the money.

In 1940, a year before Tagore’s death, Gandhi alongwith Kasturba Gandhi went to see the ailing poet, where Tagore asked him to take charge of Vishwa Bharati after his absence. In 1951 after Independence, Vishwa Bharati was taken over by the Government of India as a Central University.

Rabindranath attended a number of Congress sessions in Calcutta where he composed songs and sang. ‘Jana Gana Mana’ the National Anthem was the opening song for the second day of the Congress Session in 1911. (PIB Features)

“It is very simple to be happy, but it is very difficult to be simple.”

— Rabindranath Tagore

Rabindranath Tagore (1861-1941) was the youngest son of Debendranath Tagore, a leader of the Brahmo Samaj. Rabindranath Tagore was born in Calcutta into a wealthy and prominent family.  His grandfather had established a huge financial empire for himself.  Tagore received his early education first from tutors and then at a variety of schools. Among them were Bengal Academy where he studied history and culture. and then  University College, London, where he studied law but left a year later for unlikeness of the weather.

In his mature years, in addition to his many-sided literary activities, he managed the family estates, a project which brought him into close touch with people and increased his interest in social reforms. He also started an experimental school at Shantiniketan where he tried his Upanishadic ideals of education.

Tagore had early success as a writer in his native Bengal. With  translations of some of his poems he became rapidly known in the West. In fact his fame attained  luminous height, taking him across continents on lecture tours and tours of friendship. For the world he became the voice of India’s spiritual heritage, and for India, especially for Bengal, he became a great living institution.

Although Tagore wrote successfully in all literary genres, he was first of all a poet. Among his fifty and odd volumes of poetry are Manasi (1890) [The Ideal One], Sonar Tari(1894) [The Golden Boat], Gitanjali (1910) [Song Offerings], Gitimalya (1914) [Wreath of Songs], and Balaka (1916) [The Flight of Cranes]. The English renderings of his poetry, include The Gardener (1913), Fruit-Gathering (1916), and The Fugitive (1921), Gitanjali: Song Offerings (1912), became the most acclaimed of them, contains poems from other works besides its namesake. Tagore’s reputation as a writer was established in the United States and in England after the publication of Gitanjali: Song Offerings, about divine and human love. The poems were translated into English by the author himself.

Tagore’s major plays are Raja (1910) [The King of the Dark Chamber], Dakghar(1912) [The Post Office], Achalayatan (1912) [The Immovable], Muktadhara (1922) [The Waterfall], and Raktakaravi (1926) [Red Oleanders]. He is the author of several volumes of short stories and a number of novels, among them Gora (1910), Ghare-Baire (1916) [The Home and the World], and Yogayog (1929) [Crosscurrents]. Besides these, he wrote musical dramas, dance dramas, essays of all types, travel diaries, and two autobiographies, one in his middle years and the other shortly before his death in 1941. Tagore also left numerous drawings and paintings, and songs for which he wrote the music himself.

“When one knows thee, then alien there is none, then no door is shut. Oh, grant me my prayer that I may never lose touch of the one in the play of the many.” (fromGitanjali)

A dedicated educator, Tagore established a school (1901) in his estate, Santiniketan, in Bengal, to teach a blend of Eastern and Western philosophies. In 1921 his school was expanded into an international university, Visva-Bharati. He also traveled and lectured throughout the world.  Visva-Bharati, which was dedicated to emerging Western and Indian philosophy and education  became a university in 1921.

In 1890 Tagore moved to East Bengal (now Bangladesh), where he collected local legends and folklore. Between 1893 and 1900 he wrote seven volumes of poetry, including Sonar TarI (The Golden Boat), 1894 and Khanika, 1900 and Nashtanir, (The Broken Nest) 1901, published first serially. This was a highly productive period in Tagore’s life, and earned him the rather misleading epitaph ‘The Bengali Shelley.’

The Greatest writer in modern Indian literature, Bengali poet, novelist and an early advocate of Independence for India, Tagaore won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1913 for his collection of well-known poems Gitanjali (Song Offerings). Two years later he was awarded the knighthood, but he surrendered it in 1919 as a protest against the massacre in Amritsar. Tagore’s influence over Gandhi and the founders of modern India was enormous, but his reputation in the West as a mystic has perhaps mislead his Western readers to ignore his role as a reformer and critic of colonialism.

At the age of 70 Tagore took up painting. He was also a composer, settings hundreds of poems to music. Many of his poems are actually songs, and inseparable from their music. Tagore’s ‘Our Golden Bengal’ became the national anthem of Bangladesh. His written production, still not completely collected, fills nearly 30 substantial volumes. Tagore remained a well-known and popular author in the West until the end of the 1920s.

Tagore’s short stories influenced deeply Indian Literature. ‘Punishment’, a much anthologized work, was set in a rural village. It describes the oppression of women through the tragedy of the low-caste Rui family. His major theme was humanity’s search for God and truth.

Between 1916 and 1941, Tagore published 21 collections of songs and poems and held lecture tours across Europe, America, China, Japan and Indonesia. In 1924, he inaugurated the Viswa Bharati University at Santiniketan, an All India Centre for culture.

Tagore was keenly aware of India’s socio-political condition under British rule. He supported the Swadeshi movement and had been deeply influenced by the religious renaissance of 19th century India. Tragically, between 1902 and 1907, Tagore lost his wife, son and daughter. But out of his pain emerged some of his most tender work, including Gitanjali, published in 1910. Tagore remained a true patriot, supporting the national movement and writing the lyrics of the “Jana Gana Mana”, which is India’s national anthem.

Tagore’s works are classics, renowned for their lyrical beauty and spiritual poignancy. He is remembered for his literary genius and Santiniketan remains a flourishing institute. In Tagore’s own words, “The world speaks to me in colours, my soul answers in music”. His profound symbolism, abetted by the free-flowing nature of his verse, creates a universe of haunting beauty that expresses God’s infinite love and humanity’s deep compassion for all things beautiful.

Known as “Gurudev,” poet Rabindranath Tagore was a proud inheritor of India’s spiritual heritage, to which he gave voice in his inimitable language. He was one of our noblest patriots and was always keen to promote the welfare of his countrymen, educationally, economically and politically. He was a colossus who made an outstanding contribution to the development of painting, music, dance and drama. He triumphantly toured many countries of the world carrying the message of renascent India. (PIB Features)

*Freelance Writer

**In the memory of 150^th Birth Anniversary of Rabindranath Tagore (1861-19)

The founder of onetime famous Bengal Chemicals, Ray was rightly called the ‘Father of Indian Chemistry’ and among his path-breaking works was ‘The History of Hindu Chemistry’. A man of firm conviction and visionary zeal, Ray truly symbolized the best synthesis of Indian tradition, philosophy and a modern scientific outlook. Someone cherishing the spirit of extreme self-denial, like that of Mahatma Gandhi, Ray did leave a lasting impression on the Father of the Nation himself.

It was not without good reason, Gandhiji once said, “It is difficult to believe that the man in simple Indian dress wearing simple manners could possibly be the great scientist and professor.” According to many scholars and experts on the life and works of P C Ray, his best works obviously include the irreplaceable autobiography entitled ‘Life and Experiences of a Bengali Chemist’ in two volumes.

The book portrays multifaceted quality of the man as much his intellect insights as the autobiography besides throwing lights on his life and times also talks about the intellectual history of Bengal in particular and India in general. Someone who went onto emerge as the founder of Indian school of chemistry, it only talks about the intellectual greatness of Ray as one finds across somewhere that Acharya himself once said that he came into the world of Chemistry by ‘accident’.

This ironical twist could be well appreciated as his activities and interest also concerned with other vital spheres of human interest and life —educational reform, industrial development, employment generation, poverty alleviation, economic freedom and political advancement of India. A social reformer to the core, he was a great critique of the prevailing caste system in the Hindu society and in his Presidential address to the Indian National Social Conference in 1917 he gave a revolutionary appeal to the masses to fight the menace of caste system.

Many may not know, Acharya P C Ray was also one of the first ardent advocates of the use of the mother tongue as medium of instruction in schools and colleges. Therefore, it was natural that in recognition of his contribution towards the advancement and enrichment of Bengali language, he was elected the President of the then prestigious Bangiya Sahitya Parishad (1931-34).

A voracious reader of literature, history and biography, besides science and especially the Chemistry, Ray could read at least half-a-dozen languages – nevertheless his favourites being English classics. He was proficient in Persian and English languages and had also workable knowledge of Sanskrit and Arabic besides being a great patron of Bengali. He had also acquired a fair knowledge of Latin and Greek.

With an inherent artistic inclination, he could also play violin. As someone not merely confining to bookish knowledge, he did rightly admit in his autobiography that “the prescribed text-books never satisfied my craving. I was a voracious devourer of books and, when I was barely 12 years old, I sometimes used to get up at 3 or 4 o’clock in the morning so that I might pore over the contents of a favourite author without disturbance”.

As stated above history and biographies left fascinating influence on him. The young P C Ray used to be enchanted with the life and works of the likes of Newton, Galileo and Benjamin Franklin – though in his own admission he did not understand much the value of their contributions then. Mid-way in his educational career, Ray’s father Harish Chandra also faced financial problems. However, that did not deter Ray to pursue his studies.

Initially, he took admission in a low-fees college Metropolitan Institute, ran under the tutelage of Ishwar Chandra Banerjee(Vidyasagar). After a few years in 1882, he appeared for a scholarship to study overseas and sailed for England to join the elite and prestigious Cambridge.

Under the title of scholarship, he was one of the first Gilchrist Scholars. In England, Ray had befriended another compatriot and a budding scientist from Bengal; Jagdish Chandra Bose.

In England he joined the University of Edinburgh as a student in the BSc class. Ray completed his BSc in 1885 and subsequently Dsc in 1887 for his work “Conjugated Sulphates of the Copper-magnesium Group: A Study of Isomorphous Mixtures and Molecular Combinations.” He was also awarded the Hope Prize Scholarship and elected Vice President of the Chemical Society of the Edinburgh University. He returned to India in 1888 with a determined zeal to pursue his researches in chemistry and share his knowledge on science and the subject with the countrymen.

In Calcutta, now Kolkata, despite general shortcomings for chemistry education then, only Presidency College gave the opportunities. In his own words, Ray later wrote, “the Presidency College was the only institution where systematic courses of lectures illustrated with experiments were given.”

Along the same time, the role of the Indian Association for the Cultivation of Science, founded by Dr. Mahendralal Sircar in 1876, also turned crucially helpful as arrangements were made for courses of lecture in Chemistry and Physics. Ray had formally joined the Presidency College as an assistant professor and later the University College of Science.

Though he had joined the government-run college, Ray did not compromise a bit on his national commitment. His admirers rightly say that in more ways than one, Acharya’s contributions for India’s Independence in the context of Kolkata would be always remembered. He also supported the Non-cooperation Movement and was in regular contact with the top leaders of the Indian National Congress including Mahatma Gandhi and the likes of Gopal Krishna Gokhale. He was also responsible for ensuring the first visit of Mahatma Gandhi to Calcutta.

Notwithstanding all these social and national pre-occupations, Acharya P C Ray pursued his research with a single minded determination. And while preparing ‘water soluable mercurous nitrate’ as an intermediate, Ray conducted systematic chemical analysis of a number of rare Indian minerals with the object of discovering in them some of the missing elements in Mendeleev’s Periodic Table. In the process he could ‘discover’ and isolate Mercurous Nitrite in 1896, which brought him international recognition. Till then, Mercurous Nitrite was known only as a compound.

“The discovery of Mercurous Nitrite opened a new chapter in my life,” Acharya wrote later. Another notable contribution made by Ray was the synthesis of ammonium nitrite in pure form. In the ultimate analysis, one can wrap up saying that Acharya P C Ray truly symbolized a unique synthesis of civilizational and cultural heritage along with a modern scientific outlook. Many years back, talking of the Acharya, Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru once said, “His frail figure, his ardent patriotism, his scholarship and his simplicity impressed me greatly in my youth”.

Well, the personalities like P C Ray – even after 150 years – can always be inspirational for the youth of India in taking the country towards days of greater glories. (PIB Features)

Wisden, regarded as the Bible of cricket, has named Indian batting maestro Sachin Tendulkar as the leading cricketer in the world for the year 2010.

The iconic batsman became the seventh recipient of the Wisden award after team mate Virender Sehwag, Australians Ricky Ponting and Shane Warne,England’s Andrew Flintoff, Sri Lanka’s Muttiah Muralitharan and South African Jacques Kallis.

The 148th edition of Wisden Cricketers’ Almanack was launched Wednesday and it was the first time that Tendulkar has won the award since it started in 2004.In 2007, Wisden had identified Tendulkar as the player to have won such an award for 1998 – had it been instituted then.Tendulkar, who realised his long-cherished dream when Indiawon the World Cup earlier this month in Mumbai, has also been named in Wisden’s 2009 Test XI, at his accustomed number four position.Sehwag, who took the honour in the last two years, has also found a place in Wisden’s 2009 Test XI, forming an attacking opening partnership with Bangladesh’s Tamim Iqbal.The 37-year-old Tendulkar scored more than 1500 Test runs, including seven centuries in the year 2010 averaging 78.

In February, he became the first in world cricket to score a double-hundred in One-day Internationals, while in December he became the first man to score 50 Test tons, both landmarks achieved against the best pace attack in world cricket — South Africa.Tendulkar’s citation read: “Wisden acknowledges his greatness by naming him as the Leading Cricketer in the World for 2010.”Wisden, this year, named just four cricketers — Eoin Morgan, Chris Read, Jonathan Trott and Tamim Iqbal — instead of the usual five. Tamim became the first Bangladeshi to secure an honour that dates back to 1889.

Five Indian players — Sehwag, Tendulkar, Mahendra Singh Dhoni, VVS Laxman and Zaheer Khan — made it to Wisden’s 2009 Test list.

For the first time since Wisden Test XI began in 2008, there was no room for an Australian while only two of England’s cricketers — James Anderson and Graeme Swann — made it to the final eleven.

The panel that picked the Test team comprised of former players Ian Bishop, Ramiz Raja and Ian Chappell and Wisden’s editor Scyld Berry.

Dr Reddy believes in keeping a low profile and he preferred to be in background till Dr Singh fell ill. As the head of the Prime Minister’s health panel, he was thrust into the limelight. He has been quoted as saying the “PM’s physician should always be available but never visible”. The Prime Minister’s Office, however, decided to change that when it was decided that Dr Reddy would be the single point of contact for media briefings during the PM’s stay in hospital.

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He was a well-known politician and an eminent jurist. Ambedkar’s efforts to eradicate the social evils like untouchablity and caste restrictions were remarkable. Dr. B.R.Ambedkar a great scholar, Lawyer and freedom fighter along with hundreds of thousands of Mahar’s an untouchable caste, converted to Buddhism and changed the face of Buddhism in India. Dr. Ambedkar’s conversion was a symbolic protest to the oppressions of caste inequality.

Bhimrao Ambedkar experienced caste discrimination right from the childhood. After his retirement from the Indian Army, Bhimrao’sfather settled in Satara Maharashtra. Bhimrao was enrolled in the local school. Here, he had to sit on the floor in one corner in the classroom and the teachers would not touch his notebooks. In spite of these hardships, Bhimrao continued his studies and passed his Matriculation examination from Bombay University with flying colours in 1908. Bhim Rao Ambedkar joined the Elphinstone College for further education. In 1912, he graduated in Political Science and Economics from Bombay University and got a job in Baroda. In 1913, Bhimrao Ambedkar lost his father. In the same year Maharaja of Baroda awarded scholarship to Bhim Rao Ambedkar and sent him to America for further studies. Bhimrao reached New York in July 1913.  He immersed himself in the studies and attained a degree in Master of Arts and a Doctorate in Philosophy from ColumbiaUniversity in 1916 for his thesis “National Dividend for India: A Historical and Analytical Study.”  From America, Dr.Ambedkar proceeded toLondon to study economics and political science. The Maharaja also convened many meetings and conferences of the “untouchables” whichBhimrao addressed. In September 1920, after accumulating sufficient funds, Ambedkar went back to London to complete his studies. He became a barrister and got a Doctorate in science.

In 1947, when India became Independent, the first Prime Minister Pt. Jawaharlal Nehru, invited Dr. Bhimrao Ambedkar, who had been elected as a Member of the Constituent Assembly from Bengal, to join his Cabinet as a Law Minister. The Constituent Assembly entrusted the job of drafting the Constitution to a committee and Dr. Ambedkar was elected as Chairman of this Drafting Committee. In February 1948, Dr.Ambedkar presented the Draft Constitution before the people of India; it was adopted on November 26, 1949. In 1950, Ambedkar traveled toSri Lanka to attend a convention of Buddhist scholars and monks. After his return he decided to write a book on Buddhism and soon, converted himself to Buddhism.  Ambedkar founded the Bharatiya Bauddha Mahasabha In 1955. His book “The Buddha and His Dhamma” was published posthumously.

On May 24, 1956, on the occasion of Buddha Jayanti, he declared in Bombay, that he would adopt Buddhism. On 0ctober 14, 1956 he embraced Buddhism along with many of his followers. On October 14, 1956 Ambedkar organized a public ceremony to convert around five lakhof his supporters into Buddhism.                                                      In his speech on the Eve of the great conversion at Nagpur Dr. Ambedkarsaid that Buddhism can serve not only this country, India, but the whole World at this juncture in the world affairs; Buddhism is indispensable for world peace you must pledge today that you, the followers of Buddha, will not only work to liberate yourself, but will try to elevate your country and the world in general.

Ambedkar traveled to Kathmandu to attend the Fourth World Buddhist Conference. He completed his final manuscript, “The Buddha or Karl Marx” on December 2, 1956. Dr. Ambedkar dedicated himself to the propagation of the Buddhist faith in India. He wrote a book on Buddhism titled “Buddha and His Dhamma” explaining its tenets in simple language to the common man. His another book is “Revolution and Counter Revolution in India”. He made the provision for the study of Pali in the Indian Constitution.

Ambedkar’s whole life and mission was a practical contribution to humanistic Buddhist education in India and not just intellectual and philosophical. Though he was not a Buddhist by birth but by practice and at heart he was a Buddhist. (PIB Features)

Advisor, Food Security, MS Swami nadhan Research Foundation,

Visiting Professor, Tata Institute of Social Sciences, Mumbai

Dr. Balasaheb Ambedkar was among the most outstanding intellectuals of India in the twentieth century in the best sense of the word. The late Paul Baran, an eminent Marxist economist, had made a distinction in one of his essays between an‘intellect worker’ and an intellectual. The former is one who uses intellect for making a living whereas the latter is one who uses intellect for critical analysis and social transformation. Ambedkar fits Baran’s definition of an intellectual very well. He is also an outstanding example of what Gramsci called an organic intellectual who represents and articulates the interest of an entire social class. It is a great privilege for me to be here to deliver the Dr. Ambedkar Endowment Lecture at this esteemed institution. I wish to express my sincere thanks to the Vice Chancellor and the University for their kind invitation.

While Ambedkar is justly famous for being the architect of India’s constitution, and for being a doughty champion of the interests of the scheduled castes, his views on a number of crucial issues pertaining to economic development are not so well known. the economic reforms in India under way since 1991 are incompatible with Ambedkar’s vision of economic development and social justice.  Ambedkar was a strong proponent of land reforms and of a prominent role for the state in economic development. He recognized the inequities in an unfettered capitalist economy. His views on these issues are to be found scattered in several writings, of which the most important are his essay entitled ‘Small holdings in India and their remedies’, and a piece entitled ‘States and Minorities’. In these two writings, Ambedkar elaborates his views on land reforms and on the kind of economic order best suited to the needs of the people.

Ambedkar stresses the need for thoroughgoing land reforms, noting that smallness or largeness of an agricultural holding is not a function of its physical extent alone, but is determined by the intensity of cultivation as reflected in the amounts of productive investment made on the land and the amounts of all other inputs used, including labour. He also stresses the need for industrialization, so as to move surplus labour from agriculture to other productive occupations, accompanied by large capital investments in agriculture to raise yields. He sees the State as having to play an extremely important role in such transformation of agriculture, and advocates the nationalization of land, followed by the State leasing out land to groups of cultivators, who are to be encouraged to form cooperatives for pursuit of agriculture.

Intervening in a discussion in the Bombay Legislative Council on October 10, 1927, Ambedkar argues that the solution to our agrarian question “… lies not in increasing the size of farms, but in having intensive cultivation that is employing more capital and more labour on the farms such as we have.”{These and all subsequent quotations of Ambedkar are taken from Government of Maharashtra (1979)}. Further on, he says “… the better method is to introduce co-operative agriculture and to compel owners of small stripe to join in cultivation.“

During the process of framing the Constitution of the Republic of India, Ambedkar proposed to include certain provisions on fundamental rights, and specifically proposed a clause to the effect that the State shall provide ‘… protection against economic exploitation’.  Among other things, this clause proposed that:

• Key industries shall be owned and run by the State
• Basic but non-key industries shall be owned by theState and run by the State or by Corporations established by the State

• Agriculture shall be a State Industry, and be organized by the State taking over all land and letting it out  for cultivation in suitable standard sizes to residents of the villages to be cultivated as collective farms by groups of families.

Ambedkar provided, as part of his proposals, detailed explanatory notes on the measures to protect the citizen against economic exploitation.  He stated:

“ The main purpose behind the clause is to put an obligation on the State to plan the economic life of the people on lines which would lead to highest point of productivity without closing every avenue to private enterprise, and also provide for the equitable distribution of wealth.  The plan sent out in the clause proposes State ownership in agriculture with a collectivized method of cultivation and a modified form of State socialism in the field of industry.  It places squarely on the shoulders of the State  the obligation to supply capital necessary for agriculture as well as for industry.“

Recognising the importance of insurance in providing the State with ‘… the resources necessary for financing its economic planning, in the absence of which it would have to resort to borrowing from the money market at high rates of interest,’ Ambedkar also proposed nationalization of insurance.  He categorically stated: ‘ State socialism is essential for the rapid industrialization of India.  Private enterprise cannot do it and if it did, it would produce those inequalities of wealth which private capitalism has produced in Europe and which should a warning to Indians.’

Anticipating the possible criticisms against his proposals as going too far, Ambedkar argued that political democracy implies that ‘… the individual should not be required to relinquish any of his constitutional rights as a condition precedent to the receipt of a privilege’ and that ‘… the state shall not delegate powers to private persons to govern others.’ Ambedkar points out that ‘ the system of social economy based on private enterprise and pursuit of personal gain violates these requirements.’

Responding to the libertarian argument that ‘ where the state refrains from intervention in private affairs – economic and social – the residue is liberty’, Ambedkar says: ‘ It is true that where the state refrains from intervention, What remains is liberty.  To whom and for whom is this liberty?  Obviously this liberty is liberty to the landlords to increase rents, for capitalists to increase hours of work and reduce rate of wages.’  Further, ‘… in an economic system employing armies of workers, producing goods  en masse at regular intervals, some one must make rules so that workers will work and the wheels of industry run on.  If the state does not do it, the private employer will.  In other words, what is called liberty from the control of the state is another name for the dictatorship of the private employer.’

Note: This was only an introduction to a full article by the author on the same subject.

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Gagarin’s Life

Yuri Gagarin is most famously known for being the first human to orbit the Earth. This timeline has been created to celebrate his life in general.

In the 34 years of his life, Gagarin had a childhood, brothers and a sister. He grew up during the second world war and witnessed dreadful events. He left home at 15 to further his education instead of becoming a farmer or carpenter, like his father. Then trained beyond the limits of many men to travel in space. After the flight he was a worldwide celebrity as well as a husband and father of two girls.  His entire life was just as amazing as the 108 minutes that made him famous!

This timeline will always be a ‘work in progress’ and will be updated with new/reliable information.

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Mr. Gagarin became the first human being to travel into space on 12 April 1961 when he orbited the Earth on the Vostok-1 spacecraft in a flight lasting 108 minutes.

“Fifty years have passed since that amazing voyage, but the legend of Gagarin’s courage and journey to the ‘final frontier’ continues to be a source of inspiration for space exploration for peoples and nations around the world,” stated Kiyo Akasaka, Under-Secretary-General for Communications and Public Information.

Addressing the opening of the photo exhibit at UN Headquarters in New York, Mr. Akasaka noted that when Mr. Gagarin – known as “the Columbus of the Cosmos” – travelled into outer space, the space race that raged in the 1950s and 1960s showed no signs of abating.

“It was the height of the Cold War, the Berlin Wall was built, and who at that time could have imagined that, one day, more than 15 nations would work together in humanity’s permanent space outpost – the International Space Station,” he said.

Yet, Mr. Akasaka added, even before Mr. Gagarin opened the cosmos to humankind, the UN had already included outer space on its agenda – in 1958. The following year, in 1959, the UN General Assembly set up the Committee on the Peaceful Uses of Outer Space.

Over the past 50 years, the Vienna-based Committee has developed five treaties and five principles governing the use of outer space. It has also helped States to develop their capabilities to use space technology for sustainable development.

The 70-member body is supported by the UN Office for Outer Space Affairs, which is headed by Mazlan Othman. Among the Office’s many responsibilities are assisting countries in using space technology for development, and maintaining the Register of Objects Launched into Outer Space.

“It is thanks to the pioneering work of cosmonauts, astronauts, and scientists, and to today’s international cooperation that we can increasingly benefit from space science and space applications for the well-being of humanity and development,” noted Mr. Akasaka.

During its special session, the Assembly adopted a resolution declaring 12 April as the International Day of Human Space Flight.

Assembly President Joseph Deiss said that the Day will not only pay tribute to the courage of Mr. Gagarin but also provide an opportunity to reflect on the contribution of his expedition, noting that space science has led to developments in areas such as meteorology, agriculture, satellite navigation and telecommunications, biology and physics.

The session also featured remarks from astronauts Dmitry Kondratiev of the Russian federal space agency, Catherine Coleman of NASA and Paolo Nespoli of the European space agency, all of whom were speaking from the International Space Station.

As part of the commemoration, the Post of Russia and the UN Postal Administration will issue souvenir stamps on 12 April, including one featuring an iconic image of Mr. Gagarin.

Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and Lok Sabha Speaker Meira Kumar and a host of Parliamentarians on Tuesday offered floral tributes at the statue of Babu Jagjivan Ram on his 104th birth anniversary.

Several union ministers, MPs, Secretaries-General of Lok Sabha and Rajya Sabha, T K Viswanathan and V K Agnihotri, respectively, were also present at a brief function at Parliament House on Tuesday morning.

A booklet containing the profile of Babu Jagjivan Ram, brought out by the Lok Sabha Secretariat, was presented to the dignitaries who attended the function.

The statue of Babu Jagjivan Ram was unveiled by the then President Shanker Dayal Sharma in Parliament House in August 1995.

Earlier Vice President Hamid Ansari, the Lok Sabha Speaker, Union Minister for Social Justice and Empowerment Mukul Wasnik and several members of Parliament paid floral tributes at Ram’s memorial at ‘Samta Sthal’ on the banks of Yamuna.

UPA Chairperson Sonia Gandhi attended a prayer meeting on the occasion.

A freedom fighter and a social reformer, Ram served as minister in the Union Government for a number of years and was the Defence Minister during the India-Pakistan war of 1971.

He quit the Congress in 1977 and was Deputy Prime Minister in the Janata Party government headed by Morarji Desai.

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Mullapudi Venkata Ramana and Bapu were very good friends. The duo gave Telugu Industry many classic films. Starting his career as writer with the film ‘Rakta Sambandham’ in 1962, many Memorable characters like Radha, Gopalam, Contractor (in [Muthyala Muggu]), Tutti (in [Mister Pellam]) in Modern Telugu Literature/Cinema are from this master writer’s pen. Mullapudi is also the dialogue, story and screenplay writer for many of the movies that came as a Bapu-Ramana combination. He is versatile in penning both heart-touching and rib-tickling dialogues. Ramana’s last film Sri Rama Rajyam is in the production stage.  It is a known fact that Ramana’s word and Bapu’s line are made for each other. While Ramana writes Bapu used to direct. While Ramana writes Bapu used to illustrate. One whips the pen in broad strokes, the other wields the pen in sharp words He has also penned the story for Mooga Manasulu. Ramana provided an able foil, providing script/dialogue that suited bapu’s visuals and this celebrated friendship and professional association gave many good cinemas.

Ramana who created a child character ‘Budugu’, the ‘Dennis the Menace’ of Telugu people. Ramana was a journalist before he turned full-time writer with Dagudu Moothalu. His autobiography ‘Kothi Kommachi’ has evoked great interest amongst the Telugu readers. He is awarded with prestigious Raja-Lakshmi Literary award in 1995.

Only a few Chinese records are so far discovered narrating the lives and works of Indian monks in China. One such record is the Gao Seng Chuan (Biographies of eminent monks) and another important work is the Kuang hungming chi (Seng chao’s obituaries). One of the eminent scholars was Kumarajiva, who broke political, geographical, cultural and linguistic barriers with a long cherished mission: propagation of the true spirit of Buddhism.

Kumarajiva or Jik mó luó shí in Chinese, was born in the Central Asiatic city ofKucha. He was the son of an Indian Brahmin and a Kuchean princess. His father’s name was Kumarayana and his mother’s name was “Jiva”. Jiva could clearly recognize penetrating intelligence of her son. She became determined to give him the best available philosophical and spiritual training. Thus Kumarajiva learnt the vast literature of Abhidharma at a tender age. When he was seven years old, his mother became a Buddhist nun, and he began to spend his life following her and studying the Buddhist doctrine in Kucha, Kashmir andKashgarh under eminent scholars. He was ordained in the royal palace in Kucha at the age of twenty. In Kashgarh he got converted from Hinayana to Mahayana Buddhism. He was a brilliant monk and thoroughly versed in the Buddhist learning of the schools then current in northern India. In AD 379 Kumarajiva’s fame spread into China, and efforts were made to bring him there. Fu Chien, the former Ch’in Emperor, was so eager to have him at his court that, as certain sources suggest, he sent his general Lü Kuang to conquer Kucha in AD 384 in order to bring Kumarajiva to China. Lü Kuang captured Kumarajiva and kept him as a captive in the Western Kingdom of the latter Liang for seventeen years, first humiliating him and forcing him to break his vows of celibacy and then using him as an official at his court. The long span of captivity gave Kumarajiva an opportunity to learn Chinese more thoroughly.

The rulers of the Later Ch’in dynasty, the Yao family was trying hard to  bringKumarajiva to Ch’ang-an. But lu Kuang kept on refusing to release him. Eventually an army was sent and Kumarajiva was brought to Ch’ang-an in 402 with a warm welcome by the rulers. Soon he took up translation work that was sponsored by the state.   Yao Hsingbestowed on him the title of “Teacher of the Nation” (rajaguru). He presided over a team of Chinese specialists before an audience of hundreds of monks. Within a few years he translated 54 texts from Sanskrit into Chinese in about 300 volumes.

Some of the important texts attributed to Kumarajiva are- Diamond sutra, AmitabhaSutra, Lotus Sutra, Vimalakirtinirdesa Sutra, Mulamadhyamakarika and Astasahasrika-prajnaparamita Sutra.

To critically study and evaluate the contribution of Kumarajiva in enhancement of Indo-Chinese cultural relations and other related issues, the Indira Gandhi National Center for the Arts has organized an International Seminar and exhibition.

The Seminar is valuable because generations after generations acknowledge his brilliance, wisdom, proficiency in Sanskrit and Chinese languages and above all his obeisance to the sacred voice. Kumarajiva along with Dharmaraksa and Hsuan-tsang is the master who stands out by his preeminence virtue and by spreading the subtle philosophical systems of Buddhism. The process was begun by Dharmaraksa who was a Yueh-chih which found its full flowering in Kumarajiva and culmination in Hsuan-tsang. Kumarajiva remains central to practical Buddhism in East Asia. He has bequeathed to us a casket of sacred sutras as the most authoritative presentations by creating pure, boundless and unthinkable versions. The impact of his works can still be felt in almost all the schools/sects of Mahayana Buddhism inEast Asia. (PIB Features)

Born on 4th February, 1922 at Gadag in Dharwad district of Karnataka, Joshi got a boost to his career during a concert in Pune in January 1946 on the occasion of the 60th birthday of his guru Sawai Gandharva. He was 87.

What distinguished him from the ordinary was his powerful voice, amazing breath control, fine musical sensibility and unwavering grasp of the fundamentals that made him the supreme Hindustani vocalist, representing a subtle fusion of intelligence and passion that imparted life and excitement to his music.
In the forays he made outside the classical fold, Joshi lent is voice as a “dhrupad” singer for a Bengali film based on the life of Tansen and later sang as a playback singer for Marathi film “Gulacha Ganapati”, produced and directed by celebrated Marathi humorist “Pu La” Deshpande in addition to Hindi movies “Basant Bahar” and “Bhairavi”.
But it was his ‘Sant Vani’ recitals, which bore the flair of Marathi ‘Bhakti Sangeet’ that added immensely to his popularity in both Maharashtra and Karnataka which have had a long succession of saint-poets.

He was honoured with the Padma Shri (1972), Sangeet Natak Akademi award for Hindustani vocal music (1975), Padma Bhushan (1985) and Madhya Pradesh government’s “Tansen Samman” in 1992. Bharat Ratna was bestowed on him in 2008. The maestro’s last surprise public performance that regaled the audience was during 2007 ‘Sawai Gandharva’ annual music festival which he himself had started to commemorate the memory of his guru.

Noted philosopher J Krishnamurthy had once said ‘love is like a river’. The music of Bhimsen Joshi is also like a river – ever flowing with beautiful bends. His music is also like a rain – robust during downpour and enchanting like rain drops. The legendary exponent of the Kirana Gharana is known for his mellifluous voice, dazzling ‘taans’ and an incredible breath-control. The doyen, through his amazing absorption of the soul of various gayaki styles has created a unique blend, adding his own introspective aesthetic sense. Bhimsen Joshi mesmerizes audience with his vocal renditions. Born in a conservative school master’s family in Gadag town of erstwhile Dharwad district in Karnataka on February 4, 1922, Bhimsen Joshi, showed inclination towards music, early in his childhood. The washerman of the house was in a way his first music guru. According to the family folklore, Bhimsen Joshi would often be seen standing in front of a music shop in the main street of Gadag, listening to ‘Fagwa Brij Dekhan Ko’ a Raag Basant composition rendered by Ustad Abdul Karim Khan, the founder father of the Kirana Gharana.

Dharwad was then part of the Bombay state and prevalent form of music was Hindustani. Bhimsen Joshi was fascinated by the khayal form of singing. In those days, khayal was principally taught in the Guru-Shishya parampara or the master – disciple tradition. In 1933, the eleven year old Bhimsen left home on his own in search of a guru. He spent three years in Gwalior, Lucknow and Rampur, all renowned centres of Hindustani music, searching for an ideal teacher. For a brief period, Bhimsen Joshi was the disciple of Ustad Hafiz Ali Khan, the most prized musician of Gwalior and father of Ustad Amjad Ali Khan, who taught him the rudiments of Raag Puriya and Raag Maarwa. Ultimately, his father Gururajacharya Joshi succeeded in tracking him down and brought young Bhimsen back home.

In 1936, Rambhau Kundgolkar, better known as Sawai Gandharva, agreed to take Bhimsen Joshi as his shishya and imparted rigorous music training for four years. The teacher taught him the nuances of khayal gayaki and Bhimsen Joshi perfected the patterns of Raag Multani and Raag Todi while performing the errands in the Guru’s house. After four years, he left his Guru and set out on his own.

At the age of 20, Bhimsen Joshi released his first album which was a collection of devotional songs in Hindi and Kannada. His first live performance was held in Pune in 1946 to mark the shashtabdipoorti (60 years) of his guru Sawai Gandharva. He has never looked back since then.

Kannada audience got the taste of Joshi’s talent, when he rendered D R Bendre’s poem, ‘Uttara Dhuva Dim.. Dakhana Dhruva Ku” for HMV. His rendition of Purandara Dasa’s “Bhagyada Lakshmi Baaramma” is still among the most favourite devotional songs in Kannada as are his Marathi abhangs in Maharashtra. The great success of these recordings made Bhimsen Joshi a popular singer. Soon, he began to get invitations to perform at various cities and towns of present day Karnataka and Maharashtra.

He bought a huge car to travel around. Bombay to Belgaum to Sholapur to Bangalore to Hyderabad to Nagpur to Raipur… the journeys continued unending and he became an expert driver. The spread of his fame and popularity beyond the boundaries of Karnataka and Maharashtra brought him invitations from far off places like Jalandhar, Jammu, Srinagar, Delhi, Calcutta and Guwahati. He soon realized the car had its limitations – it moved in a vilambit taal. Panditji switched to air travel – thus giving an opportunity for his friends to remark “the disciple of Sawai Gandharva has become a ‘Hawai’ Gandharva.”

In 1970, Pandit Bhimsen Joshi rendered Sant Vani – a synthesis of works of Kabir Das and Purandara Dasa, which brought laurels and critical acclaim. He also rendered ever green numbers “Piya to manata nahee,” a thumri, “ Jo bhaje Hari ko sada,” a bhajan, and the most enchanting thumri – “Piya ke milan ki aas.”

Bhimsen Joshi’s rendition of ‘Mile Sur Mera Tumhara’ along with other doyens of music—Balamurali Krishna and Lata Mangeshkar virtually became an unofficial national anthem in in the late 80s, capturing hearts of millions of Indians even as the song was beamed on Doordarshan to countless homes. For over four decades Pandit Bhimsen Joshi has led the renaissance of Indian classical music with the passion and power of a one man chorus. His seemingly effortless performances hide hours of relentless riyaz. He has added his own distinctive style, adapting characteristics from other gharanas to create a unique vocal idiom.

Pandit ji had once remarked “an unsympathetic teacher and rigorous riyaz with a bit of luck thrown in makes a good singer.’ Fortunately or unfortunately, Bhimsen Joshi had all three of them. But his gratitude for his gurus remains rock solid. He has started an annual classical musical festival called Sawai Gandharva Music Festival in the memory of his guru. This festival is held in Pune every December.

Bharat Ratna has made Pandit ji happy and expectedly he has dedicated it as a tribute to the Kirana Gharana. He, however, said that the one person he remembered most when he received the news of Bharat Ratna was his disciple and wife Vatsala. “She played an important role in all my activities, including the Sawai Gandharva Music Festival. She loved music and took a lot of efforts to ensure that the festival reached the stature that it enjoys today.”

Speaking about the future of classical music Bhimsen Joshi said “young people have lots of technique, little emotion. They learn khayal in the morning, ghazal in the afternoon, natyasangeet in the evening, want to perform at night,” Pandit Joshi had observed. The statement reflects the lifetime experience of a dedicated and sincere artiste. It also explains why Panditji has survived others in life and in music, and weathered criticism and nightmares, to remain one of India’s most admired artistes.

Eminent Mohinyattam exponent Kalamandalam Hemalatha has entered the Guinness Book of World Record for the’ longest dance marathon.’

Hemalatha set the mark, erasing the record of Hyderabad- based Vettikotta Yadagiri, through her 123-hour performance staged in Thrissur in September2010.

The certificate, received by Hemalatha, said ” the longest marathon by an individual was 123 hours and 15 minutes achieved by Kalamandalam Hemalatha.”

“More than a personal achievement, I consider this as a recognition of Mohiniyattam, the unique dance form of Kerala”, Hemalatha said.

“When I embarked on the mission, there were criticism from certain quarters that this was cheap stunt which marred the beauty and elegance of Mohiniyattam. But I was convinced start from the right that mine is a humble attempt to know the world about this performing tradtion unique to Kerala”, she said.

Hemalalatha compelted the record-making performance in her second attempt after she had to call of her first bid after 64 hours of dancing as she fell ill on the stage.

The artist, who now runs a dance school in Thrissur, said the Guinness honour came as an inspiration to launch programmes to instil interest in Kerala dance forms among youngsters.

She said planned to embark on a one-month-old all-Kerala relay from January 26 to create health and physical fitness awareness among women and children.

She would be touching hundreds of schools, grass root level NGOs, reading and youth clubs on her way to take the message.

Scarcity of food articles during migration and at high altitudes has been the bane of these nomadic people. The problem is expected to get more or less mitigated by extending PDS cover to them.

Currently a sizeable population of Gujjars and Bakerwals of Jammu and Kashmir are engaged in seasonal migration from the upper reaches of the Northwestern Himalayas to the foothills and plains of Jammu division. They are a common sight on various highways and roads moving along with their herds of livestock during these days History.

It is believed that Gujjars and Bakerwals were basically Rajputs who are said to have migrated for various reasons from Kathiawad region of Gujarat to Kashmir. Kalhana in his history of ancient Kashmir, Raj Tarangni, mentions about these people living on the borders of Kashmir in 9th and 10th centuries. It is said that some centuries ago they adopted the Muslim faith. They divided into two professionally different sects of Gujjars and Bakerwals. They remained in oblivion till 17th century when Gujjars became high officials in Poonch. One of these officials Rah-Ullah Khan even established Sango dynasty of Gujjars in 18th century in the area but it remained short-lived.

Population

The Gujjars and Bakerwals, the third largest ethnic group in Jammu and Kashmir, constitute more than 20 per cent population of the State. They are the state’s most populous Scheduled Tribe having a population of 7,63,806 as per the 2001 census. They are mostly concentrated in border districts of Rajouri and Poonch followed by Anantnag, Udhampur and Doda districts. Inter-marriages are common between Bakerwals and Gujjars.

Gujjars together with Bakerwals continue to be a unique community with their own social, cultural and linguistic identities. They spend most of the summer season in the picturesque upper reaches of Pir Panchal ranges relishing natural life in lush green meadows and pastures. However, living in far-flung and difficult areas has affected their cultural, economic and political empowerment and had led to their backwardness.

Lifestyle

Gujjars are mostly herdsmen of buffaloes, many of them possessing minor pieces of land on the mountain foothills. Many of them own barrack-type shelters made of wooden logs called ‘Dhokes’ on the upper reaches. Bakerwals, who belong to the same ethnic stock, largely depend on sheep and goats for their livelihood.

Being landless and houseless, they live nomadic lives moving with their baggage on horses and flock of goats and sheep guarded by ferocious dogs in search of green pastures. Pt. Jawahar Lal Nehru on seeing a group of Bakerwals at Pahalgam in south Kashmir instantly described them as the ‘king of jungles’.

The Central Government notified the Gujjars and Bakerwals in Jammu and Kashmir as Scheduled Tribes in 1991. This has greatly helped them in their educational and economic empowerment by providing equal opportunities and avenues with special privileges of reservation, so that they could fight their economic, social and political backwardness. The Government has been prioritising the education of these nomadic communities at the grass-roots level to arm their children with education and knowledge to enable them to avail the benefit of reservation. Gujjar and Bakerwal hostels at the District level with free boarding and lodging facilities up to 12th class have been provided. Many more are in the pipeline. The Gujjar and Bakerwal students are also benefiting from the Girls hostels and model schools set up in educationally backward areas. Each of the 4,206 SC and ST girl students were given 3,000 rupees scholarship sanctioned by the Centre during the last financial year. It is possible to avail the reservation provided for them in employment and vocational institutions only with their educational empowerment.

Moreover, this has also helped in preserving the Gujjar identity. Decades of efforts to promote Gojri language both at official and non-official levels have made remarkable contribution. Gojri has been introduced in school curriculum upto 12th standard. Besides the Jammu and Kashmir Cultural Academy and Gojri programmes of Radio Kashmir, the sustained contribution of non-governmental organisations like the Gurjar Desh Charitable Turst, Tribal Foundation, Gujjar Centre for Cultural Heritage and other Gojri organisations have made significant contribution in preserving and promoting the ethnic and linguistic identity of Gujjars in Jammu and Kashmir.

But that is not the case with their counterparts in Pak Occupied Kashmir (PoK). With the opening of LoC in Poonch and Uri sectors for people to people contact since November 2005, the visit of the members of Gujjar community living in PoK to meet their relatives on the Indian side of the LoC has been a revelation. One of the visitors Abdul Ghani from Trar Khal in PoK has said, “I am immensely pleased to see my relatives working on significant positions in the government and holding important positions in the political parties in Jammu and Kashmir”. Another visitor Choudhary Mohammad Sharief, a Gujjar also from Trar Khal, has said “The symbols of our culture like folk songs, folk music, traditions and age old rituals are missing on our side which are well visible in Jammu and Kashmir.”

The Gujjars and Bakerwals are brave and courageous people and always helped the Indian Army. In 1965, a Gujjar Mohd. Din of Tosemaidan area near Tangmarg in Kashmir valley was the first to inform the authorities of Pakistani infiltrators’ presence. Lauding their role UPA Chairperson Sonia Gandhi has said “The Gujjars have already fought during 1965 and 1971 wars and today they are fighting militancy and subversion in Jammu & Kashmir.” (PIB Features)

]]> http://indiacurrentaffairs.org/the-gujjars-and-bakerwals-of-jk-m-l-dhar/feed/ 4 http://indiacurrentaffairs.org/pandit-jawaharlal-nehru-an-indelible-impression-on-indian-lives-vishwa-nath-tripathi/ http://indiacurrentaffairs.org/pandit-jawaharlal-nehru-an-indelible-impression-on-indian-lives-vishwa-nath-tripathi/#comments Sat, 13 Nov 2010 06:57:50 +0000 India Current Affairs http://indiacurrentaffairs.org/?p=14555 Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru, the first Prime Minister of India, has left an indelible impression on different aspects of our lives. He was an apostle of humanity, peace and architect of modern India.

Unity

Pandit Nehru’s vision on unity had been formed during the hard and tumultuous years of the freedom struggle. In the Discovery of India, he wrote, “some kind of a dream of unity has occupied the mind of India since the dawn of civilization. That unity was not conceived as something imposed from outside, a standardization of externals or even of belief. It was something deeper and, within its fold, the widest tolerance of belief and custom was practiced and every variety acknowledged and even encouraged”.  After Independence, he toured throughout the length and breadth of the country carrying the message of love, communal harmony and unity of India.

Communal Harmony

Pandit Nehru felt sad by the communal conflicts which marred the society’s harmony. He strove his utmost to remove the fanaticism which led to communal strife. He cautioned the people that “We must be on our guard against the disruptive tendencies in the country which raise their heads wherever an occasion offers itself. Among these disruptive tendencies are some which come under the name of communalism”. He further said, “Communalism is the badge of a backward nation, not of the modern age”.

In a broadcast to the Nation on 26^th March, 1964, Panditji said, “Ever since the distant past, it has been the proud privilege of the people of India to live in harmony with one another. That has been the basis of India’s culture. Long ago, the Buddha taught us this lesson. From the days of Ashoka, 2300 years ago, this aspect of our thought has been repeatedly declared and practiced. In our own day, Mahatma Gandhi laid great stress on it and indeed lost his life because he laid stress on communal goodwill and harmony. We have, therefore, a precious heritage to keep up, and we cannot allow ourselves to act contrary to it”.

Speaking about Nationalism Pandit Nehru observed, “ Nationalism does not mean Hindu nationalism, Muslim nationalism or Sikh nationalism. As soon as you speak of Hindu, Sikh or Muslim you do not speak for India. Each person has to ask himself the question. What do I want to make of India, one country, one nation…a fragmented and divided nation without any strength or endurance, ready to break to pieces at the slightestshock. Each person has to answer this question. Separateness has always been the weakness of India. Fissiparous tendencies, whether they belong to Hindus, Muslims, Sikhs, Christians or others, are very dangerous and wrong tendencies. They belong to petty and backward minds. No one who understands the spirit of the times can think in terms of communalism”.

Lesson of History

Pandit Nehru had studied history deeply. He had analysed the causes of the rise and fall of civilization. Speaking at Trichur in December, 1955, he pointed out that “We have before us lessons of history. We have seen how, repeatedly in spite of our many virtues and our great abilities, we have fallen in the race of the nations, and because of this lack of unity amongst us the entire community of India has been separated into castes and creeds which do not pull together. Therefore, I lay stress everywhere on the unity of India and on our need to fight communalism, provincialism, separatism, stateism and casteism”.

Remembering Pandit Nehru is to remember his message of national unity and integration. Panditji said “the main thing we have to keep in mind is the emotional integration of India. We must guard against being swept away by momentary passion, whether it is religion misapplied to politics or communalism or provincialism or casteism. We have to build up this great country into a mighty nation, mighty not in the ordinary sense of the word, that is having great armies and all that, but mighty in thought, mighty in action, mighty in culture, and mighty in its peaceful service of humanity”. (PIB Features)

*Freelance Writer

** Source: Discovery of India Book &  Jawaharlal Nehru Speeches

]]> http://indiacurrentaffairs.org/pandit-jawaharlal-nehru-an-indelible-impression-on-indian-lives-vishwa-nath-tripathi/feed/ 0 http://indiacurrentaffairs.org/victor-kiernan-and-the-left-in-india-prakash-karat/ http://indiacurrentaffairs.org/victor-kiernan-and-the-left-in-india-prakash-karat/#comments Mon, 01 Nov 2010 05:40:11 +0000 India Current Affairs http://indiacurrentaffairs.org/?p=14176 Victor Kiernan lived in India from 1938 to 1946.  It may be  true as Eric Hobsbawm has said that “Unexpectedly India drew him away for several years from the major themes on which his reputation will probably rest”.

But his long stay in India was fortunate for us in the Indian subcontinent.  Without his being there, there would not have been the first translations of Iqbal and Faiz Ahmad Faiz into English, nor would we have got his essays on “Marx on India” and his perceptive writings on the relationship between British imperialism and its foremost colony.

The seven years that Kiernan spent in India was the entire period of the Second World War, it saw the rise of the nationalist movement to its peak and it was the period when the fledgling Communist Party struck roots in some parts of the country.  Within a year of Kiernan’s departure, India became independent and Pakistan was formed.

The late 1930s and the early 40s were  significant for the Communist movement in India.   Though the Party was founded in 1920 in Tashkent, it actually began functioning in 1934-35 after the release of the Meerut detenue.

Kiernan reached India four years after the Party headquarters began working from Bombay. He struck up a friendship with P.C. Joshi, the General Secretary of the Party.

In that period, just as in the subsequent two decades, the Communists and Left in India struggled to comprehend certain core issues theoretically.  Among these issues were:

• the nature of the Indian bourgeoisie;
• its relationship with regard to imperialism (of collusion and collision);
• its relationship with landlordism; and
• the nature of the participation of the Party in a parliamentary democratic set-up and the structure of the Party.

Victor Kiernan had the opportunity to consider and analyse some of these issues given his position as the friend of the Party and also a member of the CPGB.

Kiernan was critical of the Party’s initial stand on the war which it had characterized as an imperialist war and had came out in total opposition to it.  The Party was illegalized in 1939.  Kiernan felt that the Party leadership had failed to anticipate the looming war against the Soviet Union and the danger posed by fascism.

Later, he was also critical of the stand that the Party took from November 1941 of going to the other extreme and declaring support for the war effort after characterizing the war as a People’s War.

It was a correct decision to come out  in solidarity with the worldwide struggle against Nazism and Japanese militarism.  The Party while disassociating itself from the 1942 Quit India movement called for the release of the Congress leadership and the formation of a government for national unity. But the Party erred in standing against the 1942 movement. It failed to integrate the international contradiction, i.e. the fight against fascism, with the national contradiction, i.e. the fight for national independence.

The understanding about the Indian bourgeoisie at various periods determined the attitude and the strategy and tactics pursued by the Party towards the Congress party and the national movement led by it.

Marxists at that time, Kiernan included, did not think much of the Indian bourgeoisie. The prevailing view was that in the sea of pre-capitalist relations and feudalism, the hot house growth of a fledgling capitalist class under colonialism did not auger well for a healthy and rapid growth of capitalism.

Kiernan was of the view that “Marx underestimated the invisible barriers, the dead weight of the past, and gave too much credit to capitalism as an irresistible transforming force: in reality, it and after it socialism, has been profoundly affected by local backgrounds.”  (Imperialism and its Contradictions, page 62)

Kiernan also cited Nehru, who said soon after independence, that “Indian capitalists were proving `totally inadequate’,  they have no vision, no grit, no capacity to do anything big.”  Kiernan comments wryly “After another thirty years one of India’s foremost industries is still astrology”

Capitalism in India has proved surprisingly resilient and is rapidly proliferating.  The bane of the Indian Left has been the trend to underestimate this class and write it off as no consequence.  The varieties of the ultra-Left in India including the current crop of Maoists are symptomatic of this trend.

The other school of thought has  actually looked up to the bourgeoisie.  There was a Left nationalist trend within the Communist Party before independence. Some of the friends of Victor Kiernan (and some of them were from Cambridge) represented this trend within the  Party.  They saw the national  bourgeoisie and the national movement powered by it as a progressive phenomenon.   After independence, when this bourgeoisie began to wield State power, a section of the Left allowed itself to get co-opted and forged an alliance with the “progressive national bourgeoisie”, something that was promoted by the erstwhile Soviet Communist Party.

It took four decades for the Communist Party to recognize the dual character of the Indian  bourgeoisie which had its inbuilt conflicts and collusion with imperialist finance capital.  The Indian capitalist class has grown enormously under the  neo-liberal dispensation. Its potential, which was always under-rated, is being seen in full flow. But as Victor Kiernan pointed out, this is a capitalism which has been profoundly affected by “local background”.

Kiernan had commented in his book “Imperialism and its Contradictions” about the progress of capitalism in India.  He had said, “In addition, there have been remarkable increases in both agricultural and industrial production. India has not fundamentally broken with its own social order, however, and still faces problems seemingly insoluble within the  existing framework.” (Page 134)

There is a need to study the capitalist class in India. A Marxian analysis of the Indian bourgeoisie needs to be comprehensive and updated. I hope some of the scholars present here today and others would undertake such studies.

This brings us to how both in theory and practice, class structure in India is influenced by and integrated with structures of hierarchy, discrimination and oppression that are particular to Indian society reflected for instance, in caste, tribe and gender oppression and in the exclusion of whole geographical regions from freedom and  development.

The bulk of the support for the Communist Party even today comes from the movement areas (or outcrops of movement areas) where mainly in the 1941 to 1948 period the Communists succeeded in bringing together and leading the two main historical currents of people’s struggles.  The struggle against the colonial power and the struggle of the rural masses for freedom from exploitation.  Thus where the Communists brought the anti-imperialist and anti-landlord movements together and gave leadership to this united struggle, they gained mass support.  Tebhaga (Bengal), North Malabar (Kerala), tribal struggle (Tripura) and the Telangana struggle were such instances.

Kiernan was a  friend and supporter of the Communist Party.   But he did not refrain from critical analysis and noting the weaknesses prevalent at that time.  Being a frequent visitor to the Party headquarter in Bombay, Kiernan bemoaned the lack of interest in theory among the leaders and cadres of the Party. They all were business-like and practical.  Kiernan noted that this was probably a reaction to the endless, aimless  philosophical discussions and political gossip  indulged  in by coffee house going intellectuals.

Kiernan notes that, “In eight years, I never once heard any point of theory seriously discussed”.  While this may have been partially true with regard to the atmosphere in the Party headquarters,  there were shoots of theory and practice springing up where the Party was engaged in organizing the workers and peasants.  In Kerala, for instance, EMS Namboodiripad had already written his seminal piece on the Nationality Question in Kerala and applied the method of  historical  materialism to the development of Kerala society.  However, there is a deficiency considering the fact that the Communist movement in India is one of the few places where it has a mass base and millions of adherents.  The Communists are leading governments in three states which has a combined population of around  120 million people.  The Communists have gained valuable experience working in a parliamentary system.  They have sought to theorise this experience and set out  a perspective of working in a multi-party system under socialism.

Later, Kiernan himself wrote to me to say that he was probably in retrospect too harsh on the Communist Party of those times.  He admired the dedication and the sacrifices made by the Communist leaders and cadres of that generation.  The 1940s was the period when the Communists worked among the people, organized struggles and made immense sacrifices.   Many of them spent years in jail including the British Communist Ben Bradley (whose name was mentioned in the earlier session) who was imprisoned alongwith other Communist leaders in the Meerut conspiracy case.

The Left in India Today

The Communists are continuing the struggle for land reforms which is essential for the elimination of  rural poverty.  In this sense, the Communists are pursuing the agenda of the 1940s when the struggle for land was taken up.  The removal of exploitative land relations requires not just the fight against landlordism but the caste, social and gender oppression embedded  in the system.

The neo-liberal capitalism has intensified exploitation and resulted in sharp inequalities.  According to the latest report in Forbes magazine, there are  69 billionaires in dollar terms in 2010 in India compared to 52 in 2009.  This is one-third more.  The rate of growth of billionaires is increasing.  There are some forms of primitive accumulation of capital going on.   The Left is fighting against the neo-liberal economic policies and is advocating alternative policies.

The Left is striving to unite people  by countering communal politics and identity politics based on caste.

The advent of neo-liberal policies were accompanied by a shift in India’s foreign policy. The ruling classes in India have forged a strategic alliance with the United States of America.   This has its impact on domestic policies too.  As against this growing dependence on America, the Left parties are working for a independent foreign policy which will truly serve the interests of the country.

I had brought out a volume of the  writings of Victor Kiernan on India on the occasion of his 90^th birthday.  Next year, we in the sub-continent in India and Pakistan are going to observe the birth centenary of Faiz Ahmad Faiz, one of the greatest poets of the sub-continent in the 20^th century. On this occasion, we should be able to bring out Kiernan’s translation of the poems of Faiz which is not in print today.  There are also his articles and interviews about  Faiz which should all be compiled.  This will be a way to bring the work of Victor Kiernan, a genuine friend of India, to a new generation in the sub-continent.

Source : Paper Presented by Prakash Karat on “Victor Kiernan and the Left in India” at the Conference in Honour of Victor Kiernan, Cambridge University October 22, 2010

]]> http://indiacurrentaffairs.org/victor-kiernan-and-the-left-in-india-prakash-karat/feed/ 1 http://indiacurrentaffairs.org/sachin-tendulkar-again-no-1-test-batsman/ http://indiacurrentaffairs.org/sachin-tendulkar-again-no-1-test-batsman/#comments Sat, 16 Oct 2010 07:03:46 +0000 India Current Affairs http://indiacurrentaffairs.org/?p=13567 Sachin Tendukar has reclaimed the number one position in the Test rankings after eight years, following his successful run in the just concluded Test series against Australia.

Tendulkar was the highest run-getter with 403 runs in the two-match series, which India won 2-0. Tendulkar also scored his sixth double hundred and was adjudged Man-of-the-series.

The Indian batting legend has now 891 rating points, according to the latest ICC rankings list.  Virender Sehwag is the next best Indian at number three with 819 points, behind Sri Lankan Kumar Sangakkara (874).

It is the first time in eight years that Tendulkar has topped the batting table. The last time he achieved the number one rank was in August 2002 when he scored 193 in his 99th Test to help India beat England by an innings and 46 runs at Headingley.

Overall, it is the ninth time that Tendulkar has claimed the number-one ranking which he first achieved in his 33rd Test on 18 November 1994 after scoring 34 and 85 against the West Indies in the Mumbai Test which India won by 96 runs.

Tendulkar had entered in the two-Test series in fourth position on 809 ratings points. But in the two Tests, he collected 82 ratings points thanks to his series aggregate of 430 runs.

Australia captain Ricky Ponting is the other batsman from inside the top 20 to make an upward movement. The Tasmanian scored 77 and 72, and was rewarded with a jump of three places which puts him in 16th position.

However, Ponting’s vice-captain Michael Clarke and opener Simon Katich have failed to retain their positions. Clarke has fallen five places to 13th while Katich has slipped two places to 14th.

For India, Rahul Dravid has retained his 22nd position and VVS Laxman has stayed in eighth spot despite missing the Test but Murali Vijay has jumped 29 places to 57th position after scoring 139 and 37. In the rankings for Test bowlers, Zaheer Khan, Harbhajan Singh and Ben Hilfenhaus have gained one place each.

Zaheer now sits in fourth position after match figures of 4-125, Harbhajan rises to eighth places after figures of 6-211 while Hilfenhaus is now in 19th place after claiming 2-104 in the match.

The bowling rankings are led by Dale Steyn of South Africawith England off-spinner Graeme Swann in second position.

There is no change in the top five in the rankings for all rounders. Jacques Kallis of South Africa leads the pack withNew Zealand captain Daniel Vettori in second position.

]]> http://indiacurrentaffairs.org/sachin-tendulkar-again-no-1-test-batsman/feed/ 0 http://indiacurrentaffairs.org/rabindranath-tagore-a-versatile-genius/ http://indiacurrentaffairs.org/rabindranath-tagore-a-versatile-genius/#comments Sat, 09 Oct 2010 05:03:29 +0000 India Current Affairs http://indiacurrentaffairs.org/?p=13269 Rabindranath Tagore, the creator of our National Anthem “Jana Gana Mana” which inspired millions of Indians to fight for Independence, still rekindles in us the same spirit of daring, of joining the great cause of freedom.

Into the old, renowned and highly respected family, Rabindranath was born, between half past two and three on the morning of Monday, May 7, 1861, in the Jorasanko mansion in Calcutta. He was his parents” fourteenth and last child.Although his mother died when he was very young, the life of his nationalist father inspired him greatly. He expressed the sentiments of his countrymen through poems, songs, essays, speeches and plays since the tender age.

Born Litterateur

Only for a very little while did Tagore receive regular schooling outside his home. He attended the Oriental Seminary and later the Bengal Academy for a few days. But their uncongenial atmosphere wearied him; he turned his back on schools for ever . In 1874 – his thirteenth year – he studied at St.Xavier’s High School for a while; but he was never a regular pupil of any institution whatever. Educating himself only under private tutors only, he became proficient in Bengali, Sanskrit, English, History, Mathematics and Science.

He began to write when he was just eight and his work appeared in print before he was 15. He was greatly inspired by Bankim Chandra Chatterjee’s Bangadarshan.

Rabindranath was sent to England to become a barrister. Instead he found solace in studying French and German to read some of the poets of these languages in original. His compelling interest in literature developed him into a versatile artist.

Poet of the People

Calamities in his personal life made a permanent impact on his sensitive mind. He lost his beloved wife in 1902 and the same year he lost his second daughter and, very soon, one of his sons. But he overcame his sufferings quickly and let his feelings show the way through poetry to bring hope and solace to other people.

Tagore’s fertile poetry assumed many forms but he was the master of short poems which could be set to music and sung by villagers and the boatmen on the Ganga. In his verses he expressed his desire to amalgamate himself with the humanity at large by communicating with it in its own language. While helping to manage his family estate, young Rabindranath came into deep contact with the labourers. He understood the needs and difficulties of the peasants. This exposure gave a new turn to his thinking. He conceived that the problem of India was social rather than civil or political.

The earliest glimpses of his deep love for humanity in Kadi O Kamal where he expresses his desire “not to leave the beautiful world” and preferred to live among the ordinary people. Katha O Kahani consists of a number of poems which bear eloquent testimony to the poet’s sympathy for the oppressed. Through Gitanjali, Tagore warns people not to look down upon any one as inferior. There are references to the plight of the struggling humanity in Patraput, Senjuti and Prantik.

The partition of Bengal in 1905 shook him to the roots. Tagore marched through the streets of Calcutta reciting his poem “Rakhi” with Tilak and Aurobindo for a holy mass dip in the Ganga and tied rakhi to the people as a symbol of the unbreakable unity of Bengal. The orator in the poet was roused. The partition found him in the vortex of political turmoil in the country.

By this time Tagore had attained popularity as a poet in Bengal. But it was Gitanjali, written between 1907-1910, that brought him world fame. In 1913, the Nobel Prize came his way as the acknowledgement of his being a world poet when the English version of Gitanjali translated by the poet himself, reached all over. He was the first Asian to attain this distinction and it was the first time when a poet who wrote in an entirely “foreign” language was awarded by the Royal Swedish Academy.

A Nationalist to the Core

The fundamental tenet of Tagore’s political philosophy was self-reliance. It is by taking his stand on this principle that he first made a place for the Bengali language in political discourses. He had to face much criticism to establish that the country’s affairs must be discussed in its own languages only. The revolutionary idea of the mother tongue as the medium of instruction was his brain child. Rabindranath was the intellectual leader of the Swadeshi Movement.

As early as 1904, the poet drew up a complete scheme for the reorganisation of villages with the revival of cottage industries to help remove poverty. His idea of national regeneration through a comprehensive scheme of rural reconstruction is his signal contribution to constructive politics. His well-known work Swadeshi Samaj was published in 1904.

To arouse patriotic feelings among the youth, he wrote and composed many songs. They had been tuned in the baul style. One of his most popular numbers “Ekla Chalo Re” was composed during this period. Tagore composed the National Anthem “Jana Gana Mana” in 1912 and sang it first at his residence in the presence of Gandhiji, Tilak, Pandit Madan Mohan Malviya, Lajpat Rai and others.

In 1920, Gandhiji started non-cooperation movement. It was Rabindranath who first conceived the idea of using only Indian goods and discard the foreign ones. Many of his other ideas concerning social uplift were translated into practice by Gandhiji. He asked national leaders to concentrate on the inferior rural India as the villages alone held the key to the country”s progress. He visualised this years before it was acceptedas a national policy by the country’s leaders.

Tagore was an ardent votary of internationalism. To put his idea of universal humanity into practice, he started a university, Vishva Bharati, on December 23, 1921 – a unique centre of learning where one could train oneself as a citizen of the world. A number of scholars from Britain and Harvard came to join Tagore.

A Versatile Artist

Since his childhood, Tagore was very much influenced by the baul – the folk devotional songs of Bengal. The feeling behind these mystic songs had led him to compose his poems at the tender age of 13. The 1886 Congress session in Calcutta, began with a song which Tagore had himself composed. In 1896 he set it to music and sang Bankim Chandra’s “Vande Matram” which was to be the rallying point of patriotic fervour.

He also introduced a new note in Indian music. His songs gave expression to the moods of the flowing moments of life.He solemnised the union between the lyric and the melody. His music captured the hearts of millions in the form of Rabindra Sangeet. He composed more than two thousand poems.

In the last decade of his life, Tagore suddenly took to painting. About 3,000 pieces of his art are still preserved in his home and at Shanti Niketan.

Tagore’s mind was ever alert and he kept his interests and his amazing talents alive till the very end. The end came on August 7, 1941 in the same old Jorasanko house where he had first opened his eyes eighty years and three months ago. His death marked the end of an era. Tagore would always be remembered for his poems, short stories, plays, novels and music. In all these spheres, he occupies the highest place in Bengali literature. But, above all, he was a prince among patriots. India is proud to have its national anthem composed by the great poet of this century.

For More Reading. .

• RAVINDRANATH TAGORE : A POETIC GENIUS -Nikhil Bhattacharya
• REMEMBERING THE LEGEND – KABIGURU RABINDRANATH TAGORE -Nirendra Dev
• ‘Sanskriti Express’ – A Tribute from Indian Railways to Kaviguru Rabindranath Tagore – H.C.Kunwar

RIL Chairman Mukesh Ambani has topped Forbes magazine’s list of the 100 richest Indians for the third year in-a-row, pipping billionaires like L N Mittal and Azim Premji with a net worth of USD 27 billion.

As per the Forbes research study, the combined net worth of India’s 100 richest people rose to USD 300 billion this year from USD 276 billion last year, driven by the country’s booming economy and a rally in the stock market.

According to the Forbes India Rich List, there are 69 billionaires this year, compared to 52 last year.

Ambani was followed by the steel baron Lakshmi Mittal, who retained his second position in the list with a net worth of USD 26.1 billion.

However, the wealth of both of these billionaires is believed to have slipped by 15 percent from the previous amount.

Mukesh’s younger sibling Anil Ambani lost the third spot on the list to IT major Wipro and fell to sixth rank.

Premji’s wealth has increased to USD 17.6 billion from USD 14.9 billion last year, taking him to the third spot from the fourth place last year.

Fourth on the list was Essar Energy brothers Shashi and Ravi Ruia with a net worth of USD 15 billion, bolstered by the company’s IPO in London, which raised USD 1.85 billion.

(DD-30.9)

Five women features on Forbes India Rich List

As many as five women have made it to Forbes Indiamagazine’s list of the 100 richest Indians this year, including O P Jindal Group chairperson Savitri Jindal, who surpassed billionaire Anil Ambani to attain fifth position in the list.

Jindal was the richest lady in India for the fourth consecutive year, with a net worth of USD 14.4 billion, says the annual India Rich List compiled by business magazine Forbes.

While ADAG Chairman Ambani slipped from third position last year to sixth in the list this year, with a wealth of USD 13.3 billion, Jindal has moved up from the seventh slot to the fifth this time.

Apart from Jindal, Bennett, Coleman & Co Chairperson Indu Jain, Anu Aga of Thermax group, Biocon’s Kiran Mazumdar Shaw and Shobhana Bhartia of Hindustan Times are the other women that found a place in the list.

Jindal, who has been the chairperson of the O P Jindal Group since her husband Om Prakash’s demise in 2005, saw her wealth growing by USD 2.4 billion since November, 2009, when Forbes had last published its annual India rich list.

Among the women billionaires, Jindal is followed by Bennett, Coleman & Co Chairperson Indu Jain, who is ranked 21st, with a net worth of USD 3 billion. Jain continues to see her fortune grow, with her kitty rising by USD 600 million this year in comparison to the previous year.

Anu Aga of Thermax group bagged 51st position in the list with a net worth of USD 1.24 billion. She worked for the company from 1985, taking charge when her husband died in 1996.

Shaw and Bhartia have been ranked 75th and 76th in the list, with a net worth of USD 900 million and USD 895 million, respectively.

Notably, Vidya Murkumbi of Shree Renuka Sugars, who had featured at the 93rd spot in the list last year with a net worth of USD 490 million, did not find a place this year

The following is the Forbes list of the 25 richest people in India:

Rank Name Net Worth (in $ bln)

1 Mukesh Ambani 27

2 Lakshmi Mittal 26.1

3 Azim Premji 17.6

4 Shashi & Ravi Ruia 15

5 Savitri Jindal 14.4

6 Anil Ambani 13.3

7 Gautam Adani 10.7

8 Kushal Pal Singh 9.2

9 Sunil Mittal 8.6

10 Kumar Birla 8.5

11 Adi Godrej 7.5

12 Pallonji Mistry 6.9

13 Anil Agarwal 5.5

14 Dilip Shanghvi 5.2

15 Shiv Nadar 4.7

16 Malvinder & Shivinder Singh 4.2

17 Kalanithi Maran 4

18 G M Rao 3.5

19 Uday Kotak 3.4

20 Anand Burman 3.2

21 Indu Jain 3.1

22 Rahul Bajaj 3

23 Subhash Chandra 2.9

24 Micky Jagtiani 2.8

25 Venugopal Dhoot 2.65

“Realization of Truth is not at all possible without Ahimsa (Non-violence). That is why it has been said that Ahimsa is the supreme Dharma (Law)”.

Mahatma Gandhi, 21.11.1944

The British rule had taken its roots firmly into the Indian soil, when Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi was born. When he died, India had won complete Independence. Not only that he lived through this period but also he was one of the great freedom fighters who played a major role in achieving the much sought after goal. He achieved this with a extraordinary strategy of his own, through Satyagraha, an altogether non-violent method, full of love for everybody and devoid of hatred against any one.

Non-violence and Truth (Satya) were the two pillars of Gandhiji’s life. Non-Violence for him was a Means and Truth the God. Whatever, he achieved in life was through the non-violent means.

Gandhiji used to say that he has given nothing new to his countrymen because whatever he said had already been said by others before him. In so far as non-violence is concerned the very idea of it was propagated by Jainism in India long before Gandhiji appeared on the scene. But Gandhiji changed the prevailing concept of non-violence and put it in a different way. Encroachment on others’ rights or needs is violence for Gandhiji. If one can be satisfied with two shirts, he should not go for the third. In doing so one will encroach upon the requirement of another person.

When he reached London to participate in the deliberations of the Round Table Conference in 1932 local papers published his cartoons on their front pages. On some he was shown in loin-cloth. The next day Gandhiji told the Press that because of your country’s rule in India, the average person wears much less than this. On my part, putting more cloth over my body is committing violence over them. This kind of understanding about non-violence was never before Gandhi. He gave a social dimension to it and always insisted on minimizing one’s needs so that ahimsa may be practiced all over the country by everybody.

Gandhi reaffirmed the already existing principle of non-violence “against the drift of Western teaching and example” and rose to his tremendous moral power as a leader of his people through this reaffirmation. During the nationalist struggles of 1930, he gave to his millions of followers not merely a political tactic but a profound religious faith such as Christ gave to those early Christians who faced martyrdom for their inspired interpretation of Truth.

Gandhiji revealed to the masses a power not of rifles and machine-guns, but the power innate in each individual of the great masses. The war-haunted world has yet to realize this power. This is a unique power which, if exploited to the full, can make war impossible. The rifles and machine-guns will not destroy a man’s soul, nor a nation’s. A nation may be crushed and enslaved, but the brute force cannot stamp out the living spirit of freedom; they may succeed in driving it out of sight for a period, but in darkness and in secret, it grows to power again, and the day comes when once more it blazes forth a light to lead mankind.

To give back violence for violence is to sink to the level of the tyrant, who understands power only in terms of death and destruction; the power of non-violent methods of resistance is the power of life, of unquenchable spirit. By his teachings, Gandhiji may be said to have liberated the ‘soul’ of India.

Nationalist India in 1930 effectively demonstrated the power of non-violence as a practical political tactic; but it was also a demonstration of the triumph of the human spirit. Thousands of persons were flung into jails. They were subjected to all manner of brutalities. But this could not stop the tide of great moral renaissance surging through the Indian masses. It should be clearly understood that non-violence is closely associated with the philosophy of love and pursuit of Truth.

The fact that the International community has come to observe October 2nd as the International Day of Non-Violence, in memory of Mahatma Gandhi, ensures that generations to come would never forget the eternal message of the Mahatma.

*The Author had been the Chief Editor of The Collected Works of Mahatma Gandhi

She began her journey from Skopje, where she was born and it brought her to India in 1929. Since then she lived here, worked here for almost seven decades and became a part of India. Her association with India, the land of Buddha and of Mahatma Gandhi, the land which believes in the philosophy -  , there is no dharma higher than compassion, was deep. She embraced India as India embraced her. She came to be known as Mother Teresa of Kolkata. The people conferred on her their love, as well as their respect and she was honoured with the highest civil honour of the Bharat Ratna.

Clad in a white sari with a blue border, she and the sisters of Missionaries of Charity became a symbol of hope to many – the aged, the destitute, the unemployed, the diseased, the terminally ill, and those abandoned by their families. Nirmal Hriday – the home for the pure heart, the hospice at Shanti Nagar and Shishu Bhawan sought out these very people and gave them hope and dignity. She taught us that compassion, caring and love, are a universal language which all human beings understand, and which also ennoble human existence.

Her Mission, begun small, gradually established itself and began to grow. Often, we may feel that our efforts are miniscule as compared to the challenges that confront us, and what we are doing is just a drop in the ocean. Mother Teresa would say that the ocean would be less without that drop. As an example, she would refer to the schools started to teach poor children, and would point out that if these schools were not there, these children would be left on the streets. It is a tribute to her work, which was undertaken with the spirit of wholeheartedly giving of herself to the service of humanity, that at the time of her death, the Missionaries of Charity had over 4,000 sisters operating 610 missions in 123 countries. These included hospices, orphanages, kitchens and homes for people with HIV/AIDS, leprosy and tuberculosis. The torch she lit brought light wherever she went, wherever her ideas permeated, wherever her homes were established, wherever her nuns working selflessly touched the lives of those around them. She was a social worker to the core of her heart, attending with care and dedication to the poor, the abandoned and the dying. Gandhiji may well have been speaking of Mother Teresa, when he said that where there is pure and active love for the poor, there is God also.

Mother Teresa used the power of Love to overcome every obstacle. Her frail and small frame carried within it immense strength. Her energy was boundless. She gave great attention to the smallest of tasks that she performed. People came to her with all kinds of problems. She used to listen to them and contemplate over the solutions. Her morale and earnestness of purpose were legendary amongst those who interacted with her. Whoever met her, felt the absolute concentration and attention with which she interacted with them, giving of herself and her time freely and generously, with the consequence that she had the power to touch the lives, not only of those around her, but also those who even caught a fleeting glimpse of her. There are numerous examples of those who contributed to her cause, and those to whose lives Mother Teresa’s work gave a meaning and a purpose.

She was given many honours by many countries. Honours she wore lightly, for she retained that simplicity of spirit and humility of attitude throughout her life. In 1979, Mother Teresa was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize for her work to help the suffering humanity. Speaking on the occasion she said, “Being unwanted, unloved, uncared for, forgotten by everybody, I think that is a much greater hunger, a much greater poverty than the person who has nothing to eat”. With these words she drew attention to situations of hunger of the poor and the hunger for love, for often loneliness can be worse than physical hunger. In this context, she emphasized that it is very important to love those around us. She reminded that in our own family, we may have somebody who is feeling lonely, who is feeling sick, who is feeling worried and who would benefit from us giving them companionship and understanding, by simply pausing to listen, by giving of ourselves, by nursing the sick. This is so true in today’s world.

In the rush of our busy lives, we often find that we have little time for people around us, our loved ones, our parents and grandparents and all those who love us. We need to bring a greater balance in our lives. This can happen if we follow the path of love, compassion and harmony. the prayer which Mother Teresa used to recite everyday:-

Lord, make me a channel of your peace,

Where there is hatred, I may bring love

Where there is despair, I may bring hope,

Where there is darkness, I may bring light

And where there is sadness, I may bring joy.

Mother Teresa left a deep impact on the world. Her death was mourned across the world. Her funeral was attended by people from all walks of life, the rich and the poor alike, deeply bereaved with the passing away of their most revered Mother. She has shown us the way of living our life more humanely and meaningfully.

******

Source: Excerpts from the Speech of the President of India, Shrimati Pratibha Devisingh Patil at the Birth Centenary Celebrations of Bharat Ratna Mother Teresa

]]> http://indiacurrentaffairs.org/centenary-tribute-to-mother-teresa-president-of-india-shrimati-pratibha-devisingh-patil/feed/ 1 http://indiacurrentaffairs.org/jose-saramago-what-he-did-why-he-matters-r-indu/ http://indiacurrentaffairs.org/jose-saramago-what-he-did-why-he-matters-r-indu/#comments Sun, 11 Jul 2010 07:23:32 +0000 India Current Affairs http://indiacurrentaffairs.org/?p=7246 In his Nobel Prize acceptance speech, Jose Saramago declared, “In this half-century, obviously governments have not morally done for human rights all that they should. The injustices multiply, the inequalities get worse, the ignorance grows, and the misery expands. This same schizophrenic humanity that has the capacity to send instruments to a planet to study the composition of its rocks can with indifference note the deaths of millions of people from starvation.

To go to Mars seems easier than going to the neighbour. Nobody performs her or his duties. Governments do not, because they do not know, they are not able or they do not wish, or because they are not permitted by those who effectively govern the world: The multinational and pluricontinental companies whose power – absolutely non-democratic – reduce to next to nothing what is left of the ideal of democracy…It is not to be expected that governments in the next 50 years will do it. Let us common citizens therefore speak up…Perhaps the world could turn a little better.”

On June 18 2010, Saramago died in Lisbon. He was 87. He was a member of the Portuguese Communist Party and died a communist, whose heart always beat for the downtrodden. He was born into a family of landless peasants in 1922, some hundred kilometers to the northeast of Lisbon in Azinhaga, a small village in Portugal.

He started his life as a car mechanic, later worked as a translator, as a journalist, then as a novelist. Over the course of 60-year stint in writing, he covered the repressive Salazar dictatorship in Portugal, Franco’s fascist regime in Spain and American interference in foreign nations.  He called George W Bush a “liar emeritus”. His persistent, “hormonal communism”, he called it – like a beard that keeps growing – was formed in the period of Salazar’s fascist dictatorship with its pervasive secret police, when to be a member of the underground Communist party meant taking huge risks.

His books Baltasar and Blinunda, The Stone Raft, Gospel of Jesus Christ, Blindness, All the Names, Death at Intervals, The Cave and Cain were statements on humanism and atheism.

He said, “I’ve always considered myself a quiet non-believer, because atheism as a public militancy seemed useless to me, but now I’m changing my mind. The reactionary insolence of the Catholic Church needs to be answered with the insolence of lively intelligence, of reason, of the responsible word. We can’t let the truth to be offended everyday by the self-proclaimed representatives of god on earth, whose only real interest is power. The church doesn’t care about the destiny of souls, what it has always pursued is control over the bodies. Reason can be an ethics. Let’s use it.”

José Saramago shed new light on the interrelation – complex, dynamic and in no sense reducible to dogma – between the literary and the political, the world of the arts and the world of everyday human struggle: an interrelation of which Portugal’s Nobel laureate has become, through his labour as a writer and his practical activity, a supreme exponent for our hard times.

He always stood by the underdog and berated those who did vespers at the altar of unbridled consumption. He made god human and gave him all the follies humans have; he severed and floated nations down the sea noticing their weaknesses and cataloguing their traumas; he remade history by just inserting a single word; he stopped death in its endless tracks for months and took account of its absence narrating the spiritual and political upheaval its absence brings and, in one of his last works, sent an Indian elephant Solomon from Lisbon to Vienna, journeying humorously and meditating on society’s oddities. In his public life, as in his books, Saramago never pulled his punches and strongly opposed globalisation and its attendant problems.

For Saramago, democracy was in need of regeneration, since economic power determines political power. “I’m doubtful of democracy”, he says. “Participation in political life is insufficient. People are called in every four years, and in between, the government does what it wants. That’s not specific to Portugal”. Yet, even he is heartened by Barack Obama’s election. “It’s a beautiful moment, democracy in action, when millions were mobilised – including people who had never voted before – for a new candidate, and a black candidate at that. It’s a kind of revolution”. But alas, all the expectations this Nobel laureate had for the recent Nobel Peace prize winner, were belied and one need not harbour any doubts that if Saramago lived a little longer, he would have used his pen to denounce the present day imperial actions of the US led by president Obama.

Literature on its own will not save the world, but it is made out of multiple human experiences and sufferings and as a certain weapon, if properly used, serves its role in changing the world and making it a better place to live. The Nobel laureate eloquently denounced today’s neo-liberal society, in which to be born confers no inherent rights, as a world which is absurd; indeed Kafkaeseque, thanks to the ‘contamination of relationships by the perversion of the human’. He concluded by affirming the crucial humanist vocation of the writer: “The profession of the writer is the profession of being a man or a woman, a human being”.

This thread of humanism is found in all his writings, even when they deal with illusionary subjects. Commenting on the various reviews of his Death at Intervals, published in Britain earlier this year, Saramago says “I don’t see it as a love story. Some people read it as love winning over death, but to me, that’s pure illusion”. In his view, “the Church tried to find an explanation for the creation of the world, and they’ve been defending that idea ever since – with violence. It’s a murderous intolerance, like the Inquisition burning people who are seen to be different. The new Pope wants rigid dogma to be respected and not questioned. I’m against that. We can’t accept truth coming from other people. We must always be able to question those truths”. In fact the story of this novel was inspired by the idea of “what would happen if death took a holiday”. In this novel, when people in a landlocked country stop dying, a clandestine mafia in league with a crisis government takes the moribund across the border to be buried. Death, here personified as a woman, is being kept from her job by a love affair with a cellist. Unfortunately, death kept its time with Saramago and robbed him from us, thus ending his love affair with humanity.

His novel The Elephant’s Journey, which is stated as a “brilliant comedy about the stupidity of humankind”, traces the travels of Solomon, an Indian elephant. It was “99 per cent pure invention”, Saramago says. “I was fascinated by the elephant’s journey as a metaphor for life. We all know we’ll die, but not the circumstances”. This is indeed true even for him, as it is for all of us. He was 40 pages into the book when he was rushed to hospital last winter with a respiratory illness, he recalls: “They were reluctant to take me because I was in such a serious condition”. Chuckling, he adds: “they didn’t want to be the hospital where José Saramago died”. Allowed home, he immediately resumed writing. “What I find surprising and strange is that there’s a lot of humour in the book – it makes people laugh. No one would guess how I was feeling”.

José Saramago’s vast, remarkable, and unique literary work will remain a milestone in the history of Portuguese literature, in which his is one of the most prominent names. He was the only Portuguese writer to receive the Nobel Prize in the field of literature in 1998 for the most outstanding work in an ideal direction.

José Saramago was a member of the Portuguese Communist Party since 1969 and his death represents a loss for the entire Communist movement – more for the Party which he chose as his own until his final days. He helped to build the April 1974 Revolution as an active participant in the resistance to fascism. He continued this activity after the Day of Liberation with his engagement in the revolutionary process that profoundly transformed Portugal. As with his novels, refusing to be restrained within traditional boundaries, Saramago was never afraid to express his political views. His opposition to the European Union is well documented, as his commitment to the Palestinian cause and opposition to Israeli Zionism.

Saramago said, “We’re not short of movements proclaiming that a different world is possible, but unless we can coordinate them into an international movement, capitalism just laughs at all these little organisations.” Saramago was an inspiration. His death matters to millions. The real tribute to Saramago, thus, should be by strengthening the movements against imperialism on a global scale.

Some other famous personalities here. . .

1. NORMAN BORLAUG : ‘ FATHER OF THE GREEN REVOLUTION’ – Manish Desai
2. Dr.VIKRAM SARABHAI : A SCIENTIST WHO DARED TO DREAM – Dr Subodh Mahanti
3. GANDHI’S GOSPEL OF NON-VIOLENCE – R.P.Dhasmana
4. SANGEET RATNA – Bhimsen Joshi
5. RAVINDRANATH TAGORE : A POETIC GENIUS -Nikhil Bhattacharya
6. JYOTI BASU: THE UNFORGETTABLE LEGACY
7. THE LEFT FRONT HAS PROVIDED AN ALTERNATIVE MODEL OF GOVERNMENT-Jyoti Basu’s exclusive interview to ‘Frontline’.
8. MOULANA ABUL KALAM AZAD : EDUCATIONIST & SCHOLAR EXTRAORDINARY – K. K. Khullar
9. JAWAHARLAL NEHRU THE BUILDER OF MODERN INDIA – Mohd.Yousuf Ganaie
10. AVUL PAKIR JAINULABDEEN ABDUL KALAM – FATHER OF INDIAN MISSILE TECHNOLOGY
11. 60 years of Indian Republic : DR.AMBEDKAR AND INDIA’S NEOLIBERAL ECONOMIC REFORMS. -Prof.Venkatesh Athreya
12. REMEMBERING THE LEGEND – KABIGURU RABINDRANATH TAGORE -Nirendra Dev
13. KAMAL HAASAN: 50 YEARS IN CINEMA

]]> http://indiacurrentaffairs.org/jose-saramago-what-he-did-why-he-matters-r-indu/feed/ 0 http://indiacurrentaffairs.org/remembering-the-legend-%e2%80%93-kabiguru-rabindranath-tagore-nirendra-dev/ http://indiacurrentaffairs.org/remembering-the-legend-%e2%80%93-kabiguru-rabindranath-tagore-nirendra-dev/#comments Thu, 03 Jun 2010 06:30:02 +0000 India Current Affairs http://indiacurrentaffairs.org/?p=6409 Rabindranath Tagore attained early success in literature in his native Bengal. Though successful in all literary genres, he was first of all a great poet. With his translations of some of his poems he also became rapidly famous in the west. Among his fifty and odd popular volumes of poetry are the likes of Manasi (1890) [The Ideal One], Sonar Tari (1894) [The Golden Boat], and Gitanjali (1910), which fetched him the Nobel prize for literature in 1913.

Besides being a great literatuer, those moderately informed about the life and works of the great son of India cannot doubt the greatness of this towering figure of human civilization. He loved his country and the countrymen; but he always had wider view of things and wanted the country, still under colonial rule, to grow, shedding certain narrow trappings.

A true champion of universal brotherhood, it is in this context, his masterpiece poem ‘Where the Mind is without fear’ and the para-phrases like “that freedom of heaven” and “narrow domestic walls” needs to be understood. Similarly, his penning of immortal words, ‘…… into that freedom of heaven/ Let my country awake’ are also equally significant.

A nationalist and a true friend and philosopher guide to Mahatma Gandhi, Tagore was also against the excessive stress on nationality and the vices of ‘narrow nationalism”. It is in this context, he underlined the importance of realization of cosmopolitan humanism. The phrase “Badh Bhenge dao (Break all barriers)” should be understood in this spirit. It only speaks of the borderless genius of the man that two countries India and Bangladesh have their respective national anthems penned by him. While India took up Jana Gana Mana as the national anthem, Bangladesh chose to opt for ‘Amar Shonar Bangla ….. (My Golden Bengal) in the seventies as its national anthem.

In his concepts of war and imperialism, Tagore condemned the barbaric manifestations of imperialistic arrogance and racial and nationalistic chauvinism. It is not without good reason that he diagnosed war as a result of aggressive nationalism, arms race, glorification of power and other such national vanity.

Today’s World, which is torn apart in many compartments and living under a constant fear of a devastating nuclear war in one corner of the globe or the other, there is rightful realization to make it a global village. More than anything else perhaps, the prescriptions from Tagore on universal brotherhood can be better understood.

The glimpses of his humanitarian touch find reflection in is his work like ‘The Daak Ghar’ (The Post Office). Similarly, his celebrated short story ‘The Child’s Return’ only shows his ability to discover the body and soul of his characters. Tagore succeeded in discovering the physical bodies of his protagonists and gave them heart and soul. In Nastaneer (The Broken Nest), later described as Tagore’s best work of fiction by the translator Mary M Lago, the plot deals with the life and times of a housewife born much ahead of her time. The film maestro Satyajit Ray later made a celebrated film ‘Charulata’ in 1964.

Again, it was his immense love for the countrymen and obviously, the foresightedness and commitment to education in India that he founded Vishwa Bharati University in Shantiniketan in 1901.

The partition of Bengal in 1905 had unnerved him and catapulted him to the peak of national cause. The episode had also brought him closer to the freedom fighters and he made an immense contribution in ensuring communal amity between Hindus and Muslims in particular when he used the cultural festivals like Rakhi and urged population from all religions to tie Rakhi on each other’s arms as a symbol of brotherhood.

His love for humanity and society – more than anything else – came for focus when he also took up the cause of widow remarriage. He also practiced what he prescribed and as a fitting example of that in 1910, he got his son to marry a young widow Pratima Devi. The same year his collection ‘Gitanjali’ was written in Bengali and later the English version published in 1912. He was awarded Noble prize for literature in 1913 and knighted in 1915. But that his heart bled for the nation and the countrymen was exemplified when in 1919, Tagore renounced knighthood condemning the indiscriminate massacre of people at now infamous Jallianwallah Bagh.

Tagore also believed in hating the crime and not the criminal. His reference to Swadeshi Samaj was to ask his people not to win liberation only from the British but also from apathy, indifference and mutual hatred. The homeland is the creation of mind and therefore his poems and his songs always laid emphasis on soul. Therefore, it is rightly said that Tagore’s method of liberation was also an intellectual movement. His goal was not only chasing out the colonial masters but also economic restructuring punctuated with emotional liberation from the British, ultimately leading to the economic and political reforms.

Scholars say, Mahatma Gandhi and Rabindranath Tagore differed in their thinking on the methodology to free India. But both however, shared a fond affinity for one another. Gandhiji called Tagore his “Gurudev” and it was Tagore who gave the title of Mahatma (Great Soul) to Gandhi. Mahatma Gandhi consulted Tagore regarding methods of liberating India regardless of the difference in opinion stating that knowing his best friend was spiritually enlightening and gave him strength to sustain in life.

It is in fitness of things that the Government has announced a nationwide programme to celebrate the 150th birth anniversary of the Nobel laureate. Truly Tagore symbolizes in more ways than one India’s rich civilization and cultural heritage. “I assure that this is the event we must celebrate appropriately – so that we are able to honour the great poet in a befitting manner,” rightly remarked the Prime Minister Dr Manmohan Singh in Parliament during the recently concluded budget session of the Parliament. A 35-member panel headed by the Prime Minister has been also set up to frame guidelines to commemorate the 150th birth anniversary of the Nobel laureate. Several nationwide programmes are being organised this year befittingly as much as the decision of the Indian Railways to run a commemorative train both in our country and also in Bangladesh. (PIB Feature)
………………………………………………………………………………………………

*Author is Special Representative with the Statesman, New Delhi.

for more reading

RAVINDRANATH TAGORE : A POETIC GENIUS -Nikhil Bhattacharya

From a humble beginning, Dr. Kalam had an unparalleled career as an Aerospace and Defence Scientist, leading the nation with a vision of “Developed India.” Dr. Kalam as an eminent Aeronautical Engineer, contributed for the development of India’s first Satellite launch vehicle SLV III, became the architect of Indian Guided Missile development programme, led to the successful Nuclear experiments and envisioned a road map for realising “Developed India” within 20 years.

A graduate from the St. Joseph’s College, Tiruchirapalli, Abdul Kalam later studied aeronautical engineering in the Madras Institute of Technology which was regarded as the crown jewel of technical education in Southern India in the fifties. After passing out as a graduate aeronautical engineer, Abdul Kalam joined the Directorate of Technical Development and Production of the Ministry of Defence.

He later joined the Indian Committee for Space Research (INCOSPAR) as a Rocket Engineer, which during the later half of 1962 had decided to set up the Equatorial Rocket Launching Station at Thumba. He became a member of team led by Prof. Vikram Sarabai which aimed at organising an integrated national space programme for the manufacture of rockets and launch vehicles indigenously.

Dr. Abdul Kalam was chosen to lead a team for the design & development of Satellite Launch Vehicle, SLV III which was successfully launched on 18^th July, 1980, injecting Rohini satellite into low earth orbit. He later became Director of ISRO Launch Vehicles/Systems and contributed for the evolution of launch vehicle configurations.

Dr. Abdul Kalam was appointed Director of the Defence Research and Development Laboratory, Hyderabad in 1982. As Director, DRDL, he was the Chief of integrated Guided Missile Development Programme and led to successful completion of Prithvi and Agni missiles. He was appointed as the Scientific Advisor to the Defence Minister, Secretary to Department of Defence Research and Development and Director General of Defence Research and Development Organisation in 1992. Many new technology projects towards building self-reliance in defence and also spin-off to society emerged during this period. Later he became the Principal Scientific Advisior to the Government of India in the rank of Cabinet Minister and served in this capacity from November 1999 till November 2001. He was primarily responsible for evolving policies, strategies and missions for generation of innovations in technology development for multiple applications through Government departments, academic institutions and industries as partners. Dr. Kalam was also the Chairman, Ex-officio of the Scientific Advisory Committee to the Cabinet (SAC-C). Dr. Kalam believes that Technology can be used as a tool for national development. In December 2001 he moved over to Anna University as Professor of Technology & Societal Transformation.

Dr. APJ abdul Kalam has been awarded Padma Bhushan in 1981, Padma Vibhushan in 1990 and Bharat Ratna in 1997.

Dr. Kalam was conferred with the degree of Doctor of Science (D.Sc. Honoris-causa) by twenty eight universities. He is the recipient of several awards including the National Design Award. Dr. Biren Roy Space Award; Prof. Y Nayudamma Memorial Gold Medal (1996) : GM Modi Award for Science (1996) : R K Firodia Award for Excellence in S&T (1996) : Veer Savarkar Award (1998) : and Indira Gandhi Award for National integration (1997).

He is a Fellow of many professional societies including Aeronautical Society of India : Astronautical Society ; Indian National Academy of Engineering ; Indian Academy of Sciences and Institution of Electronics and Telecommunication Engineers.

Dr. Kalamn is a connoisseur of classical Carnatic music. He plays veena in his leisure. He writes poetry in Tamil, his mother tongue. Seventeen of his poems were translated into English and published in 1994 as a book entitled “My Journey”. He is also the Author of three books in English – “India 2020 : A vision for the New Millennium”, “Wings of Fire : an Autobiography” and “Ignited Minds – unleashing the power within India.”

SOURCE: PIB FEATURES

“Our Earth has enough for everyone’s need but not for anyone’s greed” – This is what Mahatama Gandhi said almost a century ago and there is no doubt that this holds good today. Gandhiji’s famous Talisman that you recall the face of the poorest and the weakest man and consider whether your act is going to be of any use to him, should be our Mantra. And this talisman should be our philosophy of life if we have to achieve the larger objective of ‘Swaraj’ and inclusive growth.

Human happiness was the main criterion for Gandhiji and he thought that progress should be measured in terms of human happiness. He did not believe in the modern view of an affluent society in which material development is the sole criterion of progress. He supported the concept of ‘SARVODAYA’, the greatest good of all. His vision of Swaraj was a society in which every man would have dignified life, and equal opportunities to grow. He envisaged a society in which economic progress and social justice would go hand in hand.

As our late Prime Minister and a Gandhian, Morarji Desai wrote in an Essay “Gandhiji And the Destiny of Man” that Gandhiji demonstrated to the world the strength of man’s invincible soul when it was pitted against physical force or military might; of moral values as against material ones; and of service and sacrifice as against selfishness and acquisitiveness. He taught us the beauty of truth and the sublimity of the human spirit.

Gandhiji was not opposed to material prosperity nor did he reject the use of machines in all circumstances. He felt that machinery should save time and labour for all. He did not want man to become a slave of machines and lose his identity altogether; he wanted machines to be for man, not man for machines.

In Gandhi’s own words: “Economic equality is the master-key to non-violent independence… A non-violent system of government is clearly an impossibility so long as the wide gulf between the rich and the hungry millions persists. The contrast between the palaces of New Delhi and the miserable hovels of the poor, laboring class cannot last one day in a free India in which the poor will enjoy the same power as the richest in the land.”

As a Gandhian scholar Sunil points out in one of his recently published articles that the high consumption levels being presently practiced and espoused, cannot be available to the whole humanity. Even where available and achievable, the cult of consumerism has not made the life and society happier and healthier. It has brought its own distortions and social crises. And worse, it has brought the ecology and environment of the earth to the brink of disaster.

If we go by Gandhian view, the villages will have to made self-dependent economic units. No doubt that a significant part of the village population has to be diverted to industries. But those industries will be small unit, labour-intensive and mainly village based. Villages and small towns have to be again made centre of development. For inclusive growth, we will have to promote the industries which provide employment in rural areas and bring prosperity and basic facilities to villages.

The National Employment Rural Guarantee Scheme is a concrete step in this direction. The Scheduled Tribe and Other Traditional Forest Dwellers (Recognition of Rights) Act, 2006, has been rightly hailed as landmark legislation. However, there is a need to do much more to achieve the larger objectives like inclusive growth and to eliminate hunger and malnutrition from the country. Since Gandhi, one of the greatest leaders of mankind, was born here, we should ensure that the ‘the face of the poorest and the weakest remains at the centre of our planning and development. (PIB Features)

* Freelance Writer

Disclaimer : The views expressed by the author in this feature are entirely her own and do not necessarily reflect the views of PIB.

For More Reading. .

GANDHI’S GOSPEL OF NON-VIOLENCE – R.P.Dhasmana

]]> http://indiacurrentaffairs.org/gandhi%e2%80%99s-economic-ideas-in-today%e2%80%99s-context-ikshula/feed/ 0 http://indiacurrentaffairs.org/the-left-front-has-provided-an-alternative-model-of-government-jyoti-basu%e2%80%99s-exclusive-interview-to-%e2%80%98frontline%e2%80%99/ http://indiacurrentaffairs.org/the-left-front-has-provided-an-alternative-model-of-government-jyoti-basu%e2%80%99s-exclusive-interview-to-%e2%80%98frontline%e2%80%99/#comments Sun, 17 Jan 2010 13:29:26 +0000 India Current Affairs http://indiacurrentaffairs.org/?p=2407 The legendary Marxist leader Jyoti Basu is no more. But, he left behind a rich legacy for politics and governance of India. In an exclusive interview to ‘Frontline’ given few years ago, Jyoti Basu spoke at length about his life and times. We publish this for the benefit of our readers (Courtesy: Frontline)

Jyoti Basu, at 93, is active and engaged with the commitments that have ruled his life – Left politics and the concerns of West Bengal whose government he has headed for more than 25 years. Although he insists that he has retired from active politics, he continues to be a member of the Polit Bureau of the Communist Party of India (Marxist), he visits the party office on Alimuddin Street in Kolkata twice a week, he addresses meetings, and continues to meet comrades, friends and colleagues. Parvathi Menon met him for an extended interview over two days in his home in Kolkata. On both occasions he was in a relaxed mood, full of humour and good cheer.

The contributions of this distinguished son of modern India to the country’s political and public life are manifold. For over 60 years he has helped build and give direction to the Communist movement in India. As the longest-serving Chief Minister in India, he crafted an alternative model of pro-people government in West Bengal, which has improved the conditions of life and work for a majority of its people, and brought the Left Front government to power in six consecutive elections. This experiment is an important contribution to the theory and practice of public administration in India.

In this interview, Jyoti Basu revisits some of the important events and issues of his life and times. Excerpts:

Your political life has spanned eight decades of momentous change. Could you begin by telling our readers something about your early political influences.

Jyoti Basu: Although mine was a non-political family, I remember three events from the freedom movement that affected me and got me interested in politics. When I was sitting for the senior Cambridge examination in St. Xavier’s School in Calcutta (as Kolkata was then called) in the 1930s, Gandhiji went on a fast. He called for a popular movement, and reading the papers I felt very bad. That day I told my father, who used to drop me at school every day, I did not feel like going to school. He understood without my telling him the reason. The second event was when Subhas Chandra Bose was to address a meeting in the Calcutta Maidan. A cousin and I wore khadi clothes and went for the meeting. It did not take place. Thousands of people were gathered when a lathicharge began. Subhas Bose was arrested. We thought that since we were wearing khadi we should not run away. So we walked away and got a baton charge from an Anglo Indian sergeant. The third event that influenced me was the Chittagong Armoury raid, which took place in 1930. For one or two days Chittagong was in the hands of those who were fighting for freedom with arms. They then had to retreat and fight from the hills. At that time I had a tiff with my Anglo-Indian and British friends who were studying in St. Xavier’s, because the Jesuit fathers had circulated a leaflet condemning the incident in Chittagong. I was supporting the rebels. I did not realise at the time how much these events affected me.

Could you describe your stay in England in the 1930s as a law student – the flavour of the times and the people and events that influenced you.

I went to London in 1935, after passing my degree with honours from Presidency College. Those were stirring times of great upheaval. I got interested in politics and in the freedom movement in our country. Students in Oxford, Cambridge, and the London School of Economics were discussing all this. Communist leaders in India – Muzaffar Ahmad in particular – were in touch with the Communist Party of Great Britain, the CPGB. Later on I heard that he sent the party a message asking the CPGB not to mix with “our boys”, those who wanted to come back and work for the Communist Party in India as wholetimers, because they would then be kept under police watch. Before us, people like Hiren Mukherji and Sajjad Zaheer had decided to come back and work for the party.

We formed the All Great Britain Indian Students Federation, and the London Majlis, of which I was elected general secretary. Our job was to hold meetings, and when people like Nehru, Subhas Chandra Bose, Bhulabhai Desai, Vijaylakshmi Pandit and other leaders went to London, we held receptions in their honour. There was Krishna Menon of the India League, which we joined and became very active in.

Then there was Bhupesh Gupta, who later joined the Communist Party of India after the party split in 1964. We stayed together in the same house for quite some time and he inspired me a lot. He was part of a group of freedom fighters who believed in armed insurrection and was imprisoned in a district in Bengal, from where he passed his B.A. and got interested in Marxism. His father got him out but was told that his passport is only for England. Mohan Kumaramangalam, his sister Parvathi, and his brothers were there. They too wanted to come back and do wholetime party work, although Kumaramangalam later joined the Congress and became a Minister. Rajni Patel from Bombay, who was in England at that time, also joined the Congress and later quarreled with the Congress too! P.N. Haksar, who later became the adviser to Indira Gandhi, became a party wholetimer when he came back to India. Feroze Gandhi was there at that time. So was Indira who was very ill at that time. She sometimes used to come to our London Majlis meetings. She and Feroze were in love. They faced some trouble getting married as Nehru objected to the marriage, and agreed only after Gandhiji spoke to him.

The CPGB was small but really supported our independence. The party organised classes for us. During holidays, if we did not go abroad, students from Oxford, Cambridge and other universities used to meet. Harold Laski was there, a fine orator and speaker. So was Palme Dutt and his brother Clemens Dutt. Palme Dutt was well-informed on developments in India, and was in charge of India reporting for the Third International. It was through him that we knew what was happening there.

All these events influenced me.

In 1933, Hitler had come to power, and his slogan was `Germany today, the world tomorrow’. The Fascist Party was also born at that time in London. Abyssinia was attacked by Mussolini. His Fascist Party was formed in 1922. Japan had attacked China. In Spain there was civil war. We were very happy when Krishna Menon arranged for Nehru to go and shake hands with the Spanish Republicans. The Third International had called for the formation of an International Brigade to fight fascism in Spain. The French closed their borders and would not allow arms to be sent to Spain. Dolores Ibarruri, the general secretary of the Spanish Communist Party, was living in Paris. We in England wanted to give her a reception. However, the French government said that she would attend meetings, but would not be allowed to speak. So Nehru went to France to meet her, which inspired us a lot.

We organised a club in the East End in London, a very poor area, to teach English to illegal Bangladeshi migrants, particularly from Sylhet, who abandoned their ships and stayed on in London. They did not even know how to read and write their own language, let alone English. To get jobs, they needed at the very least to read road signs in English. Some of them even married British girls. This was a big thing for us, and we used to go every day to teach them.

Those were very exciting times. When we told Pandit Nehru – who was a little short-tempered – that many of us from different States of India believed in socialism, he said that we must first get independence and then we could think about all that. Subhas Bose, who was there for health reasons, gave lectures and met people from the CPGB. I remember when we told him that we wanted to become party wholetimers, he said it was good, though “politics is not a bed of roses”. That I understand now, after 65 years in politics.

You were on the frontlines of the action during those eventful years of the 1940s that saw the final push for independence. Would you describe those years and the role played by the Left in the winning of Independence, especially in Bengal.

I returned to Calcutta on January 1, 1940 and became a member of the party two days later. The Second World War had started in 1939. I had finished the first part of my law degree. I wrote the second part in December, and returned without waiting for my results. In Calcutta I heard that I had got through.

Our party wanted to use me to keep contact with the underground party. I used to do all kinds of work – based on the platform of the Students Federation, I used to speak at meetings, go to different places to keep contacts, and so on.

Our party knew that the Congress was leading the freedom movement everywhere, including Bengal. And so some of our top leaders – not me of course, but Muzaffar Ahmad and others – were also members of the Congress. Our party used to work amongst the peasants and the workers mostly.

When the Soviet Union was attacked by Germany in 1941, we had a lot of discussion in the party and came to the conclusion, like the CPGB, that the imperialist war had become a People’s War and we would support the Allied war effort. Our poet, Rabindranath Tagore, was alive then, and he was very upset at the attack on the Soviet Union. He had been to the Soviet Union and had been welcomed there. He was almost on his death-bed, but he said that the Soviets must never lose, as without them civilisation in the world was threatened. With his support and blessings we formed the Friends of the Soviet Union of which I was the general secretary. That platform helped us.

The British released many of us from jail because at that time we did not support the 1942 Quit India movement. We said that fascism must be defeated and we would not engage in actions that would adversely affect the war effort. Nehru and others said that they too were anti-fascist, but without freedom they could not fight fascism. The Quit India call was given by Gandhi. Our party could fortunately work legally for three or four years.

Because we did not support the 1942 movement, we got completely isolated from the people. But in 1943, the Great Bengal Famine came, and with our little organisation (when I joined, the party had only 5,000 members), we worked for the famine-stricken people in the villages and towns. Thirty lakhs died because of famine. Although our work made us popular and our strength increased, we continued to be isolated politically.

In 1944, my party asked me to do trade union work. I first worked for the port and dock union. I then started building a railway union in the Bengal Assam Railway. We built a powerful union, the B.N. Railway Workers Union. In 1946, I got elected from the Railway Constituency to the government formed by the Muslim League under Suhrawardy.

The riots of 1946, the likes of which we had never seen, broke out. August 16, 1946 was Direct Action Day. In seven or eight days thousands of people – men, women and children – had been killed. I have never seen anything like that. When Suhrawardy thought it was getting out of hand, he wanted to organise a peace committee. The Communists were in the forefront of the campaign for peace. Bhupesh Gupta and I went to his house in a jeep with red flags. Shyama Prasad Mookerjee, the leader of the Hindu Mahasabha, was there; so were Suhrawardy’s colleagues from the Muslim League whom he addressed outside while we sat in his sitting room. He came in and told us that Shyama Prasad made it clear that he would not join a peace rally if the Communists were part of it. He then laughingly told us that he and Shyama Prasad had organised the riots. About Shyama Prasad, I think it was not right.

Then Gandhiji came to Calcutta. Bhupesh and I met him and asked for his advice on how to stop the rioting. He told us that in his experience if even a small procession could be organised of Hindus, Muslims and Sikhs during riots, it usually helped to bring calm. We tried it, but within five minutes the procession had to be disbursed. People did not even listen to Gandhiji. Then the terrible Noakhali riots broke out and he rushed to East Bengal, camped there, and stopped the riots.

Then came 1947, and Independence. We had our second party congress and B.T. Ranadive became general secretary after P.C. Joshi. Mohan Kumaramangalam was also with us and spoke at the meeting. I was against the resolution passed on the political situation, which I thought was ultra-left.

The Left played a very decisive role in the freedom movement. In 1946, the naval ratings in Bombay went on strike. The British admiral said that unless the ratings joined duty within 24 hours he would bomb rebel ships from above. We had a political strike for 24 hours in the railways during this time.

Your memoirs and other histories describe the central part played by the Communist Party and its mass organisations in the struggle for food for the people. It was true of the famine years and of the struggles of the 1960s. It is a struggle that has been resumed in the 2000s. Would you comment on this aspect of Left-led struggle in India.

Although we were for some time in 1942-43 isolated politically from the people, they came to know about us through the social work we did amongst them. We tried to build little social organisations and went amongst the people, trying to get food to them and to save the sick by taking doctors to the area. We formed a doctors’ association. That paid dividends despite the fact that we were politically isolated. We were not a very powerful party, but the people appreciated our help for the famine-stricken through our work in several organisations. Thirty lakh people died in that famine.

It was not only in 1943, you took up this issue again and again.

Yes, we took it up again in 1946. By then our party was legal, and we worked in the districts. We worked through the mass organisations we strengthened after Independence – the trade unions, the Kisan Sabha, the Students Federation and women’s organisations. Sixty lakh refugees came when East Pakistan (now Bangladesh) was divided from Pakistan. Gandhi had formed a committee for [Partition] refugees, in which I was a member. We fought for them, and were imprisoned because of that. Congressman Dr. B.C. Roy asked us: “Why you are fighting? This is the Centre’s job.” Nehru had promised refugees citizenship rights but nothing much was done for East Bengal refugees. In Punjab everything was done for the 24 lakh refugees. Here it was 60 lakhs.

After the second party congress in 1948, our party was declared illegal, and all of us were suddenly arrested and detained without trial. In Bengal, there was a committee of Judges headed by the Chief Justice, and we could appeal to that. Around 44-45 Communists, myself amongst them, were in the same prison. I and a few others were released after this application we made. In 1949, I went underground again as I heard that an arrest warrant had been issued against me. After a year or so, I was arrested again. By then the Constitution had been framed, and under it we went to the High Court for legalising the party and won the case. So our party became legal. I remained an MLA [Member of the Legislative Assembly] till 1952 when the first general elections in independent India were held. Although we had no offices and our organisations were smashed, we still managed to get 28 Communists elected.

By any objective measure, the Left Front government in Bengal has registered remarkable successes in pro-people governance within the framework of the Indian Constitution. In what way has the experience of Left Front rule advanced the goals of the Communist movement in India?

The first matter on our programme was to bring in a three-tiered panchayat. We also decided on reservation for women, and the Scheduled Castes and Tribes in the panchayats. When Rajiv Gandhi was the Prime Minister he came to Calcutta for an Eastern Region Panchayats Conference. He complimented us on our panchayat system as there were no panchayats in Congress-ruled States. He complimented us on the panchayats. I asked him why he could not form panchayats in States that were under the Congress. He said that nobody would do anything about it unless he brought in Central legislation compelling the States to have panchayats. He did that before he died.

We were initially anxious about how women with no prior experience would work in the panchayats. But they picked up the work. We told our officers to implement our programme and help the thousands who had been elected as panchayat members to run panchayats, to keep accounts books, and so on. We had had six panchayat elections till then, and every time we won a huge majority.

How has the system evolved between then and now?

Seventy per cent of the people live in villages. We came into government in 1977 at a time when there were huge floods, the likes of which we have never seen. Yet, there was no influx from the villages into Kolkata, as there used to be in the past. No people from rural areas crowded railway stations in search of food or shelter in the city, because the panchayats took up their work very earnestly.

So distress-induced migration to Kolkata stopped.

Yes, for the first time. The panchayat members had already built up great experience in handling such situations of distress. That has been continuing.

We distributed about 11,00,000 acres of land to agricultural labourers and others engaged in agriculture. There was a Land Ceiling Act enacted by the Congress that they never implemented. We made changes in the Act and distributed land. It was a huge affair. That was the main achievement. We also expanded the municipalities. Now there are 126 of them. Elections to the municipalities were held a few months back and we got 85 out of 126.

What has been the impact of land reform on the lives of the peasantry?

The peasants had been demanding two-thirds of the share of the produce. So a very big movement took place in which we played a major role. Soon after the panchayats were formed, we could not find the land documents. The landlords (jotedars) had distributed land in various names, even to their cats and dogs! The Kisan Sabha helped us in this big struggle for land distribution. They said that if land documents could not be found, it did not matter, as they knew which land belonged to whom. By 1978, we had distributed surplus land and enforced the rule of two-thirds of the share. This was Operation Barga. It was a great success.

We told the police not to behave with the people in the way they did during the Congress period. We told them to respect the people. If a poor or illiterate person came to the thana [police station], they were to be asked to sit down, and their complaints recorded. That worked, and after one or two years they dared not behave with them [the people] as they did under the Congress.

With the improvement in agricultural production, thanks to land reform and the panchayats, peasants have been getting two and three crops on their land. On single-crop land a peasant family found it difficult to manage, and the members had to find other work to supplement the family’s income. This has brought a fundamental change in their situation. We were also helped by mass organisations, because we had been saying that the party alone cannot do everything, they cannot bring about change without mass organisations that we must be in contact with. So we have the biggest mass organisation of workers, peasants, middle class organisations, students and teachers.

How do you think the successes in agriculture and industry can be taken forward by the Left Front government?

Well, we are the first amongst the States in agricultural production, social forestry and fisheries. After Uttar Pradesh we have the highest potato production. In industrial development, most of the governments in Delhi discriminated against us. For 40 years there was freight equalisation of steel, iron and coal, the raw material for building factories. This means that States 2,000 miles away pay the same rate for iron and steel as West Bengal. This is all right for five to ten years as other States too need industrialisation. But later on, because of our pressure the Central government did away with that. The Planning Commission concentrated on a few States for industrial development, like Karnataka, Maharasthra and Tamil Nadu, and did not look at States like West Bengal and the small States in the north-eastern region. Industrialists who wanted to set up industry in Bengal were discouraged by the Central government. They were told that the agreement would be signed only if the industry was to be located in a State other than Bengal. So that kind of thing happened for years together.

We adopted an economic policy in which we interacted with industrialists. We told them that it is because of the workers they are making profits. We told them not to look down on the workers, but to discuss production and the objectives of production with them. We also told workers not to give up their right to strike, but to keep that as the last option. They could discuss their problems with the management, and if that failed, the government and the Labour Minister would hear their case. So in many cases strikes were averted because the government worked out tripartite agreements. Now more investments are coming and are likely to come. Our Ministers are going abroad seeking investments.

Our 1994 policy on foreign capital, which we placed before the Assembly, states that if it is in our interest, we do not mind foreign capital investment. Since this is a capitalist system, the private sector has a big role to play.

What is your policy on disinvestment in West Bengal?

We have said that profitable industries should not be disinvested. We have our State sector undertakings. There are some sick industries, abandoned by the owners. Unfortunately, we had to take them over and pay the workers, and try to revive some of them. So we have not given up all the sick industries of which I think there are about 80. Our Industries Minister is trying to see how they can be revived. If they cannot be revived, we are going to sell them if we find buyers.

We are sure that if we come back to power again, in the next five years, we will be the leading State in industrialisation in India.

There has been much discussion recently on your labour policy, especially the approach to be adopted in relation to the Information Technology labour force.

I told workers not to give up their right to strike but to use that as the ultimate weapon. We gave government employees the right to strike, a right that exists nowhere else in India for them. But not a single strike took place in these 29 years. We have conveyed this to the government we are supporting at the Centre. They want to change labour laws, particularly in the IT sector. There are so many aspects to this issue – that of foreign investment, the 24-hour work cycle on which the IT sector is based, and all that. This is new to us. The IT industry is growing very fast in the State. We now have 24,000 boys and girls working in the sector.

There is also the question of women working at night. You know there is a law against it. But we have to change that law. Women will have to work at night, although they will have to be careful and security must be provided for them. So this is of course a new area that has to be resolved.

Would you speak about the tensions of having to achieve within a bourgeois democratic framework?

There is no tension. We have learnt from experience.

Would you say that the Left Front has provided an alternative model of government for India?

The Left Front government has provided an alternative model of government. We don’t hide anything from the people. We tell them why we have been able to implement only part of our programme. Take rural electrification, for example. All villages were to be electrified, but as long as I was there, that did not happen. Those villages that did not get power have a grievance. Negative features are there, but we are looking at them and we do not hide them from the people.

In the health sector, 70 per cent of the people who need treatment come to government hospitals in West Bengal. In no other State in India will you find this. But all hospitals are not running very well. Hundreds of hospitals have been built in the villages, but our young boys and girls do not want to go to the villages. Our financial position is such that now we have to give some jobs to contractors. We do not like this very much. Or, take dearness allowance. We were unable to give dearness allowance for a few years, but now we have started doing that.

Social science scholars have pointed out that one of your important contributions to public administration has been to involve mass organisations of the people in formulating and implementing policy. Would you comment on that?

In 1977, after we were sworn in Ministers we were greeted by a huge gathering of people. They wanted me to speak so I told them in a few words that we would not rule from Writers Building alone where the Ministers sit, but would take the help of the people and the employees, for whom we had been fighting while in the Opposition. We gave the government employees the right to strike. Government employees, who had the largest mass organisation, were with us. We were initially a little anxious about the bureaucracy, but except for a few who didn’t like us at all, generally speaking we also got their help.

Government employees are the biggest trade union that we have. They have accepted our programme and we have told them that they must help us implement it. And they have been working very hard. Of course, there are some lazy people who arrive late in the office and go back early and so on, but the organisation itself is looking after that. They have been a great help to us.

What do you see as the reasons for the relatively slow growth of the Communist movement outside of the three States of West Bengal, Kerala and Tripura?

West Bengal is not India. We have three governments in the country. Tripura is a very small State of just 33 lakh people in which lots of refugees have come and the tribals have become a minority. To keep them together is a great achievement. However, in our last party congress we said that to expand we cannot depend only on these three States.

We first thought – at least I thought – that the experience of West Bengal, Kerala and Tripura would result in the automatic expansion of the party in other States. People would be enthused by the experience of these States. But unfortunately that has not happened. So now the new Polit Bureau is chalking out a programme of where we are weak, and how we must expand.

The expansion of the party and of the mass organisations are both needed.

Especially in the Hindi-speaking belt…

Not only in the Hindi belt, but also in the South. We were so strong in Andhra Pradesh, but where are we now? We have become weak in Tamil Nadu, although the party is now picking up. Similarly in Maharashtra, our trade unions were very strong. After the crisis in the textile industries, we are not that strong.

We do not take up problems of the tribals and the Scheduled Castes. The caste system is a reality and we have to deal with it, but very unfortunately we are not there in many places. We told the party congress delegates that they must take up not only all-India problems but must look into the problems of each State, the problems of the people of each State, and of the poorer sections. Even today in the Congress-ruled States, land really has not been distributed and in fact they are changing land reform laws. We said that this must be opposed.

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What explains the near total absence of women in the leadership of the Left movement, both during the freedom struggle and now? Has this historical weakness impeded the growth of the Communist movement?

Yes, that is our negative feature. We did not pay attention to that. This time in the party congress we have taken note of the importance of women not only in the panchayats but in the party leadership, and in the mass organisation leadership. In fact, our experience about their work in the panchayats is very good. They are very sincere about their work. They work at home, look after the children and then go to the office. So we should take advantage of that and see that the Women’s Reservation Bill be passed in the Parliament.

So you think this weakness is now being overcome.

Yes, I think so, as women are coming more and more into the mass organisations and the leadership of the party.

Has the communist movement in India failed to address effectively the issues of caste and caste-based oppression?

We have not paid sufficient attention to caste. Most of the working people are not organised in trade unions, not even in West Bengal. The party and trade unions together can bring about changes in the political situation and in the hold of caste. There is still untouchability in Tamil Nadu, and we have not looked into that. We are trying to correct all this.

Now that you have retired from active politics are you able to do things that you did not have time for earlier? Like bringing your memoirs up to date, for example?

At this age and with my health, I cannot do much work. What I used to do earlier I cannot do now. That is why I asked the party to relieve me of all duties, but they refused. They asked me to stay on.

So, man is born, he grows old, he dies. I am happy about West Bengal, Kerala, and Tripura, and I hope that we shall implement the programme our party has taken.

In the introduction to your memoirs you said that you wrote them to help those who are striving to make the world a better place to live in.

Yes, that is our objective, a classless society.

Is the world closer to that goal?

That will take a longer time now, of that I am sure, because of what has happened in the Soviet Union and eastern Europe. The positive side to the situation is that China, which has the largest population in the world, is working towards what the Chinese call Marxism-Leninism with Chinese characteristics. We are studying what they are actually doing. We never thought of that – one country, two systems. They are growing very fast, and although there is still unemployment in China, they look after the unemployed. But people from the villages come to the city, crowding it in search of jobs. They do not hide these problems from the people. Vietnam, which I have visited, is also doing very well.

So, we are still optimistic about our objectives. It will take time. Perhaps not in my lifetime, but later on. We hope for the best.

Jyoti Basu became a Communist while studying law in Britain. He came in contact with the British Communist party. He joined the Communist Party of India on his return in 1940. He began working in the railway trade union movement and became an important functionary of the B.A. Railroad Workers Union and the All India Railwaymen’s Federation.  In 1946,he was elected to the Bengal legislative assembly from a railway constituency.

He was the Secretary of the provincial committee of the CPI from 1953 to 1961. He became a member of the Central Committee of the CPI in 1951. When the CPI (M) was formed he became one of the founder Polit Bureau and Central Committee members, positions he continued in, till his death. He played a significant role in developing the CPI (M) in West Bengal along with Promode Dasgupta.

Jyoti Basu made his mark as the leader of the opposition in the assembly between 1957 and l967.  He was twice Deputy Chief Minister in the United Front governments between 1967 and 1970.  His role in the government in supporting the struggle for implementation of land reforms and in not allowing the police to be used against workers and peasants’ struggles was notable.

Jyoti Basu belonged to the leadership of the CPI (M) which steered the Party through the difficult days of semi-fascist terror in West Bengal in the early seventies. After the sweeping victory of the Left Front in 1977, Jyoti Basu became the Chief Minister of the Left Front government, a position he held continuously for more than 23 years, a record in the country. Under his leadership, the Left Front government embarked on land reforms on a scale unprecedented in the country; it instituted a  panchayati  raj system which was radical for its times, which gave the poor peasants and small farmers a say in running the panchayati institutions.  West Bengal became an oasis of communal harmony and secular values under his leadership. One has to recall how as Chief Minister he dealt with the situation after the assassination of Indira Gandhi in 1984 when violence against Sikhs broke out in various parts of the country, but nothing was allowed to happen in West Bengal. Similarly he dealt firmly with efforts to instigate trouble after the demolition of the Babri Masjid in 1992.

Jyoti Basu became a symbol for the Left, democratic and secular forces in the country. In West Bengal, the people adored him and respected him for his championing of their cause. He became the role model for all Communists and progressives on how to work in parliamentary institutions and serve the people. During this seven decades of work in the Communist party, he spent three and a half years in prison and two years underground.

Jyoti Basu as Chief Minister and as  a Left leader played an important role in pushing for restructuring Centre-State relations and rallying other Chief Ministers and political leaders for the cause.

He played a prominent role in bringing together Left and secular parties against the Congress government in the nineteen eighties and later against the BJP in the nineties.

Jyoti Basu was a Marxist who never wavered in his convictions. After the fall of the Soviet Union and the setbacks to socialism, he provided the leadership along with his colleagues in the Polit Bureau to make a reappraisal of the experience of building socialism and to pinpoint the errors and to correct wrong notions and understandings while remaining true to Marxism-Leninism. He was a Marxist who was not dogmatic and continued to learn from his vast experience in charting out the course for the Party.

He emerged as the pre-eminent and most popular leader of the Party, but he always worked as a disciplined member of the Party, setting an example for all. In his long career in the Party, he undertook various responsibilities including being the first editor of party organ People’s Democracy. He had a lifelong association with the trade union movement and was the Vice-President of the Centre of Indian Trade Unions since its inception in 1970.

He stepped down from the Chief Ministership in 2000 due to ill health and advanced age. But he continued to work and discharge responsibilities till the end of his life. He became the source of inspiration and a fount of advice for the Party and the Left movement in the country.  Irrespective of political affiliation, across the political spectrum, he was respected by all and accepted as a national leader.

The Left movement in the country was fortunate in having such an accomplished and dedicated leader at the helm of affairs in West Bengal and in the leadership of the CPI (M) for such a long time.  His precious legacy is there for all to cherish and nurture.

Life Sketch Of Jyoti Basu

Jyoti Basu was born on 8th July, 1914 at Kolkata. His father Nishikanta Basu and mother Hemlata Devi lived in Kolkata though their ancestral home was in village Bardi in Dhaka. Nishikanta Basu was an eminent homeopath doctor. Jyoti Basu spent his childhood in Kolkata, mostly in their house in Hindusthan Park in South Kolkata, where he lived the most part of his life too.

Jyoti Basu passed his Senior Cambridge and Intermediate from St Xaviers’ school and later was admitted in Presidency College with Honours in English. Though not an active political family, Basu’s father was supportive of the national struggle. While in school, Basu was inspired by the Chittagong armed rebellion led by Surya Sen in 1930.

In 1935, Basu went to England to study law. In a volatile international situation, during his university days, his political thoughts were shaped in ideological debates against fascism. Basu became an active member of the India League, a body of Indian students, led by V.K Krishna Menon. Among others, Bhupesh Gupta and Snehangshukanta Acharya were his friends in student days. Jyoti Basu gradually came into contact with leaders of the Communist Party of Great Britain . He began to participate in Marxist Study Circles and joined in the activities of the Communist Groups in London, Oxford, and Cambridge. He came in close contact with Harry Pollit, Rajni Palme Dutt, Ben Bradley and other leaders of CPGB. They had a great influencing role in shaping the ideas and life of young Basu. Jyoti Basu became the first secretary of London Majlis, an association of Indians. They felicitated Jawharlal Nehru in London. Basu decided that he would join the Communist Party after returning to India.

Basu returned to India in 1940 and immediately contacted the Party leaders. Though he enrolled himself as a barrister in Calcutta High Court, he never practiced simply because he was determined to become a whole timer of the Party.

Basu became the secretary of Friends of Soviet Union and Anti-Fascist Writers’ Association in Kolkata. As member of the Party, the initial task of Basu was to maintain liaison with underground Party leaders. He was entrusted responsibilities in the trade union front from 1944. In that year, Bengal Assam Railroad Workers’ Union was formed and Basu became its first secretary. Basu was elected to Bengal Provincial Assembly in 1946 from the Railway Workers constituency. Ratanlal Bramhan and Rupnarayan Roy were the other two Communists who were elected. From that day on, Basu became one of the most popular and influential legislators for decades to come. He showed how the Communists can use the legislative forums for strengthening struggles.

Basu played a very active role in stormy days of 1946-47 when Bengal witnessed the Tebhaga movement, workers strikes and even communal riots. Everywhere the struggling people got Basu by their side.

Jyoti Basu was the secretary of the West Bengal Provincial Committee of the Party from 1953 to January 1961. He was elected to Central Committee of the Communist  Party of India  in 1951. He was a member of the Polit Bureau from 1964 onwards. He was elected as a special invitee to Polit Bureau in 19th Congress of the Party in 2008.

After the country gained independence, he was elected to the assembly from Baranagar in 1952. He was elected to the West Bengal Legislative Assembly in 1952, 1957, 1962, 1967, 1969, 1971, 1977, 1982, 1987, 1991 and 1996. Though an elected member, Basu was arrested several times during the 1950s and 60s and for certain periods he went underground to evade arrest by the police.

In 1962, Jyoti Basu was one amongst the 32 members of the National Council who walked out of the meeting. When the CPI(M) was formed in 1964 as a result of the ideological struggle within the Communist movement, Basu became a member of the Polit Bureau. He was, in fact, the last surviving member of the nine members of the first Polit Bureau.

During the days of India-China border conflict, Basu, alongwith other leaders of the Party, were accused of being “agents of China” and faced attacks from the ruling class parties and the anti-Communist media.

1n 1967, Basu became the deputy Chief Minister in the first United Front Ministry and again in 1969. Jyoti Basu played an important role in intertwining the struggle and running the government. In 1970, he narrowly escaped an assassination attempt at the Patna Railway Station by the Anandmargis. In 1971, Basu’s car and public meeting were attacked by Congress men at least twice. Though CPI(M) became the single largest party in the assembly elections in 1971, the Party was refused the chance to form a ministry and Presidents’ Rule was imposed in West Bengal. The 1972 elections were rigged and Jyoti Basu was forced to boycott the elections. Basu famously declared the new assembly as “assembly of the frauds” and CPI(M) boycotted the assembly for the next five years. West Bengal faced severe repression and terror during the semi-fascist Congress regime in this period. The CPI(M) and the Left forces courageously fought the onslaught and Basu was one of the leading figures of that heroic resistance by the people.

In 1977, the Left Front Government was formed as a product of the democratic and mass struggles and Basu became the Chief Minister. He was 63 then. A new, vigorous era in his life began. The very first announcement by Basu after he was sworn in was that the government would not be run from Writers’ Building alone. The people would be very much part of it. Under Basu’s leadership, the Left Front government initiated far reaching measures in the interests of toiling people. The land reforms, decentralization through panchayats, guaranteeing trade union rights of the workers, giving widespread relief to different sections of the society, spread of education marked a radical departure in governance in our country. Under Left Front government, West Bengal witnessed excellent advancement in agriculture and later it was under his leadership that the state government took serious initiative in industrialization of the state. In office continuously for 24 years, Basu was the longest serving chief minister in the country.

One of the major contributions of Basu as Chief Minister was to raise the issue of Centre-State relations at the all India level. On the one hand, Basu led the struggle against discrimination against West Bengal and successfully built the Haldia Petro Chemicals, Bakreswar Thermal Power Station etc. On the other hand, he could mobilize other state governments and various political parties on the issue.

Jyoti Basu played a significant role in national politics and his intervention in important junctures proved to be crucial. Basu played a prominent role in mobilizing anti-Congress secular opposition forces during the regimes of Indira Gandhi ,Rajiv Gandhi and Narasimha Rao. He also played an important role in mobilizing secular forces against the BJP. In 1996, his name was proposed by the secular allies for Prime Ministership. But the CPI(M) Central Committee decided to support the government from outside.

In November 2000, Basu voluntarily retired from Chief Ministership but he continued to lead the Party in West Bengal. Despite his ill health, Basu participated in Party meetings and in election campaign in 2006 also.

Basu’s wife Kamal Basu died some years ago. He is survived by his only son Chandan and three grandchildren.

]]> http://indiacurrentaffairs.org/jyoti-basu-the-unforgettable-legacy/feed/ 0 http://indiacurrentaffairs.org/jyoti-basu-passes-away/ http://indiacurrentaffairs.org/jyoti-basu-passes-away/#comments Sun, 17 Jan 2010 07:16:44 +0000 India Current Affairs http://indiacurrentaffairs.org/?p=2392 Marxist patriarch and former West Bengal Chief Minister Jyoti Basu, who was battling for life in a hospital at Kolkata for the last fortnight, died on SundayPersonal Data of Jyoti Basu

• Born on July 8, 1914 in Calcutta.
• Educated at St. Xavier’s School and College and Presidency College, Calcutta.  B.A Honours in English, Bar at Law from Middle Temple, London.
• Initiated to Marxism and Politics while in UK. Came in close association with Harry Pollitt, Rajani Palme Dutt, Ben Bradley and other leaders of the  Communist Party of Great Britain.
• Was a member of the India League, London, a member of the Federation of Indian Students in Great Britain, Secretary of the London Majlis.
• On return to India became a member of the Communist Party of India.  As a trade-unionist, was an important functionary of the B.A. Railroad Workers’ Union and the All India Railwaymen’s Federation. He was also in the leadership of several other trade union organisations.
• Between 1952 and 1957, was Secretary of the West Bengal Provincial Committee of the Communist Party of India.
• Elected to the Bengal Legislative Assembly in 1946.

• After independence, elected to the West Bengal Legislative Assembly in 1952, 1957, 1962, 1967, 1969, 1971, 1977, 1982, 1987, 1991 and 1996.
• Was the leader of the Opposition in the West Bengal Legislative Assembly from 1957 to 1967.
• Was Deputy Chief Minister of the two United Front Governments in West Bengal in 1967 and 1969.
• Took his oath as Chief Minister of West Bengal on 21^st June, 1977.  Headed the Left Front government in the State for five consecutive terms.
• Relinquished the office of the Chief Minister on November 6, 2000.
• Member of the Central Committee and Special Invitee to the Polit Bureau of the CPI(M)

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Sahitya Akademi in 1961, the centenary year of Rabindranath Tagore, published Tagore works in transliterated form. They are original Bengali works in Devanagri script. One can read the original books via their knowledge of the Devanagri script.

The question, why this craze to know Tagore?  In literary creations, Rabindranath Tagore is looked upon as one of the greatest men of letters in the world. He coined approximately 1.5 million words to create all kinds of literature. These include about 55 books of 100 poems each, drama, dance-drama and plays numbering 47 titles, 20 novels, and 45 books of essays and volumes of letters of literary and civilisational value. Most of these were written in Bengali and English.

After World War-I, the European countries and the Latin American countries  translated Tagore’s books in their own languages. An average of 40 titles each of Tagore have been translated in English, French, Russian, Spanish, Italian, German and other languages. Details of these translations are available with UNESCO.

In the present day era of linguistic watertight compartmentalism, people wonder why there should be so much of interest in knowing Tagore, the ‘Gurudev’ of Mahatma Gandhi.   Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru, who sent his daughter Indira to Tagore’s Shantiniketan for schooling, once said: “Gurudev Rabindranath was a great poet, a great artist, a great patriot but he was, above all, a giant in a world of pigmies… Tagore and Gandhi, each in his different way, was the symbol of India, steeped in her ancient culture and drawing strength and sustenance…”.

Tagore is the only poet who composed and tuned national anthems of two free countries – India and Bangladesh. The Indian National Anthem ‘Jana Gana Mana’ (in Bengali Jono Gono Mono) was written by the Nobel Laureate. It was first sung on December 27, 1911 at the Calcutta Session of Indian National Congress and later officially adopted by the Constituent Assembly as the National Anthem on January 24, 1950.

The Sessions of Parliament begin with ‘Janaganamana’ and its closure is announced with ‘Vandemataram’.

A multi-faceted personality, Rabindranath Tagore was a man with endless qualities. He was a thinker, a teacher and an educationist. He led the cooperative movement, implemented his format of rural work and development and at later stage of his life, kept himself busy in churning international conscience and warning world leaders of  the “Crisis in Civilisation” as an anti-war thinker. In politics, he did not involve himself actively but did not remain far away.

Born on May 7, 1861 to Debendranath Tagore and Sharada Devi at Jorasanko in  West Bengal.  He did his schooling in the prestigious St. Xavier School. He has written thousands of Poems and lyrics and about 35 plays about 12 novels, numerous short stories and a mass of prose literature. He was called as ‘Vishwa Kavi’.

Besides the famous  ‘Gitanjali’ for which he won the Noble Prize in 1913,  his other well known poetic works include ‘Sonar Tari’, ‘Puravi’, ‘The cycle of the spring’, ‘The evening songs’ etc. The names of his well known novels are: ‘Gora’, ‘The wreck’, ‘Raja Rani’, ‘Ghare Baire’, ‘ Raj Rishi’ etc. ‘ Chitra’ is his famous play in verse. ‘ Kabuli Wallah’ and ‘ Kshudita Pashan’ are his famous stories.

In 1901, he founded the Vishwabharati University- earlier known as Shantiniketan at Bolepur in West Bengal. This was founded with the aim of evolving a world culture, a synthesis of eastern and western values.

Dr. Vikram Sarabhai’s name will remain inseparable from India’s space programme. It is well known that it was Dr. Sarabhai who put India on the international map in the field of space research. But he also made equally pioneering contributions in other fields such as textiles, pharmaceuticals, nuclear power, electronics and many others.

The most striking aspect of Dr. Sarabhai’s personality was the range and breadth of his interests and the way in which he transformed his ideas into institutions. Sarabhai was a creative scientist, a successful and forward looking industrialist, an innovator of the highest order, a great institution builder, and an educationist with a difference, a connoisseur of arts, an entrepreneur of social change, a pioneering management educator and more.

However, most importantly, he was a very warm human being with tremendous compassion for others. He was a man who could charm and win the hearts of all those who came in contact with him. He could instantly establish a personal rapport with those with whom he interacted. This was possible because he could convey a sense of respect and trustfulness to them and also a sense of his own trustworthiness.

A Dreamer

Dr. Sarabhai was a dreamer with a seemingly unmatched capacity for hard work. He was a visionary, who could not only see opportunities but created some where none existed. To him the object of life, as Pierre Curie (1859-1906), the French Physicist who was co-discoverer with his wife sMarie Curie (1867-1934) of polonium and radium, has observed, was “to make life a dream and to turn the dream into a reality”. What is more, Dr. Sarabhai taught many others how to dream and to work towards realising the dream. The success of India’s space programme is a testimony to this. Dr. Sarabhai was a “rare combination of an innovative scientist, forward looking industrial organiser and imaginative builder of institutions for the economic, educational and social upliftment of the country”. He had an excellent sense of economics and managerial skill. No problem was too minor to him. A large part of his time was taken up by his research activities and he continued to supervise research till his untimely death. Nineteen people did their Ph D work under his supervision. Dr.Sarabhai independently and in association with his colleagues published eighty-six research papers in national journals.

We are told that anybody, irrespective of his position in the organisation, could meet Sarabhai without any fear or feeling of inferiority and Dr. Sarabhai would always offer him/her a seat and make him/her relax and talk on equal terms. He believed in an individual’s dignity and tried hard to preserve it. He was always in search of a better and efficient way of doing things. Whatever he did, he did it creatively. He displayed extreme care and concern for the younger people. He had immense faith in their potentialities. He was always ready to provide opportunities and freedom to them.

Early Years

Dr. Vikram Sarabhai was born on August 12, 1919 into a wealthy family at Ahmedabad

“. During his childhood at his ancestral home, The Retreat at Ahmedabad, used to be visited by important people from all walks of life. This played an important role in the growth of Sarabhai’s personality. His parents were Shri. Ambalal Sarabhai and Smt. Saraladevi Sarabhai. Vikram Sarabhai had his early education in the family school started by his mother Saraladevi on the line propounded by Madam Maria Montessori. After completing his Intermediate Science examination from Gujarat College, he went to Cambridge (UK) in 1937 where he obtained his Tripos in Natural Sciences in 1940. At the outbreak of the Second World War he returned to India and joined the Indian Institute of Science at Bangalore where he took up research in cosmic rays under the supervision of C.V. Raman. He published his first research paper entitled “Time Distribution of Cosmic Rays” in the Proceedings of Indian Academy of Sciences. Sarabhai’s work on cosmic rays during the period 1940-45 included the study of the time variations of cosmic rays with Geiger-Muller counters at Bangalore and at the high level station in the Kashmir Himalayas. After the war he returned to Cambridge to work for his PhD in cosmic ray physics. In 1947, he was awarded PhD by the Cambridge University for his thesis `Cosmic Ray investigation in Tropical Latitudes’. He also carried out an accurate measurement of the cross-section for the photo fission of U-238 by 6.2 MeV y-rays which formed a part of his PhD thesis. After getting his PhD, he returned to India and continued his research in cosmic ray physics. In India he studied interplanetary space, solar-terrestrial relationships and geomagnetism.

A Great Institution Builder

Dr. Sarabhai was a great institution builder. He helped to establish a large number of institutions in diverse fields. Ahmedabad Textile Industry’s Research Association (ATIRA) was the first institution that Sarabhai helped to build. This assignment he undertook just after returning from Cambridge after obtaining a PhD in Cosmic ray physics. He had no formal training in textile technology. Formation of ATIRA was an important step towards modernising textile industry in India. At the time of establishing ATIRA there were no quality control techniques in majority of the textile mills. At ATIRA, Dr. Sarabhai created conditions for the interaction of different groups and different disciplines. While hiring personnel at ATIRA he ignored the requirement of experience. Some of the most well-known institutions established by Dr.Sarabhai are: Physical Research Laboratory (PRL), Ahmedabad; Indian Institute of Management(IIM), Ahmedabad;. Community Science Centre, Ahmedabad; Darpan Academy for Performing Arts, Ahmedabad; Vikram Sarabhai Space Centre, Thiruvananthapuram; Space Applications Centre, Ahmedabad; Faster Breeder Test Reactor (FBTR), Kalpakkam; Varaiable Energy Cyclotron Project, Calcutta; Electronics Corporation of India Limited (ECIL), Hyderabad and Uranium Corporation of India Limited (UCIL), Jaduguda, Bihar.

Science with Culture

After the death of Dr. Homi J Bhabha in January 1966, Dr. Sarabhai was asked to assume the responsibilities of the office of the Chairman, Atomic Energy Commission. Sarabhai had realised the enormous potentialities inherent in space science and technology for a wide range of social and economic development activities – communication, meterology/weather forecasting, and exploration for natural resources, to name only a few. The Physical Research Laboratory, Ahmedabad, established by Sarabhai pioneered research in space sciences and subsequently in space technology. Sarabhai also spearheaded the country’s rocket technology. He played a pioneering role in the development of satellite TV broadcasting in India.

Dr. Sarabhai was also a pioneer of the pharmaceutical industry in India. He was among the very few in the pharmaceutical industry who recognised that the highest standards of quality should be established and maintained at any cost. It was Sarabhai who first implemented Electronic Data Processing and Operations Research Techniques in the pharmaceutical industry. He played an important role in making India’s pharmaceutical industry self-reliant and self-manufacture of many drugs and equipment in the country.

Dr. Sarabhai was a man of deep cultural interests. He was interested in music, photography, archaeology, fine arts and so on. With his wife Mrinalini, he established Darpana, an institution devoted to the performing arts. His daughter, Mallika Sarabhai, grew up to be a leading exponent of Bharatanatyam and Kuchipudi.

He believed that a scientist should never shut himself up in an ivory tower or overlook the problems faced by the society in mere academic pursuit of pure science. Sarabhai was deeply concerned with the state of science education in the country. To improve the same he had established the Community Science Centre.

Dr. Sarabhai died on December 30, 1971 at Kovalam, Thiruvananthapuram, Kerala. In a befitting honour to this great Scientist, Thumba Equatorial Rocket Launching Station (TERLS) and associated space establishments at Thiruvananthapuram were renamed as the Vikram Sarabhai Space Centre which has grown into a major space research centre of the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO). In 1974, International Astronomical Union at Sydney decided that a Moon Crater BESSEL in the Sea of Serenity will be known as the Sarabhai Crater. (PIB Features)

** A Senior Scientist at Vigyan Prasar

Source : PIB features

 Early Years

“I am a product of the great depression” is how Borlaug described himself.  A great-grandson of Norwegian immigrants to the United States, Borlaug, was born in 1914 and grew up on a small farm in the northeastern corner of Iowa in a town called Cresco.  His family had a 40 hectare farm on which they grew corn, oats, maize and hay and raised pigs and cattle. Norman spent most of his time from age 7–17 on the farm, even as he attended a one room, one teacher school at New Oregon in Howard country.

Borlaug didn’t have money to go to college. But through a Great Depression era programme, known as the National Youth Administration, Borlaug was able to enroll in the University of Minnesota at Minneapolis to study forestry.  He excelled in studies and received his Ph.D in plant pathology and genetics in 1942.

From 1942 to 1944, Borlaug was employed as a microbiologist at DuPont in Wilmington.  However, following the December 7, 1941 attack on Pearl Harbor, Borlaug tried to enlist in the military, but was rejected under wartime labour regulations.

In Mexico

In 1944, many experts warned of mass starvation in developing nations where populations were expanding faster than crop production.  Borlaug began work at a Rockefeller Foundation-funded project in Mexico to increase wheat production by developing higher-yielding varieties of the crop. It involved research in genetics, plant breeding, plant pathology, entomology, agronomy, soil science, and cereal technology.  The goal of the project was to boost wheat production in Mexico, which at the time was importing a large portion of its grain.

Borlaug said that his first couple of years in  Mexico were difficult. He lacked trained scientists and equipment. Native farmers were hostile towards the wheat programme because of serious crop losses from 1939 to 1941 due to stem rust.

Wheat varieties that Borlaug worked with had tall, thin stalks. While taller wheat competed better for sunlight, they had a tendency to collapse under the weight of extra grain–a trait called lodging. To overcome this, Borlaug worked on breeding wheat with shorter and stronger stalks, that could hold on larger seed heads. Borlaug’s new semi-dwarf, disease-resistant varieties, called Pitic 62 and Penjamo 62, changed the potential yield of Mexican wheat dramatically. By 1963 wheat production in Mexico stood six times more than that of 1944.

Green Revolution in India

During 1960s, South Asia experienced severe drought condition and India had been importing wheat on a large scale from the United States. Borlaug came to India in 1963 along with Dr.Robert Glenn Anderson to replicate his Mexican success in the sub-continent. The experiments began with planting of few of the high yielding variety strains in the fields of the Indian Agricultural Research Institute at Pusa in New Delhi, under the stewardship of Dr. M S Swaminathan. These strains were subsequently planted in test plots at Ludhiana, Pantnagar, Kanpur, Pune and Indore.  The results were promising, but large scale success, however was not instant.  Cultural opposition to new agricultural techniques initially prevented Borlaug from going ahead with planting of new wheat strains in India. By 1965, when the drought situation turned alarming, the Government took the lead and allowed wheat revolution to move forward. By employing agricultural techniques he developed in Mexico, Borlaug was able to nearly double South Asian wheat harvests between 1965 and 1970.

India subsequently made a huge commitment to Mexican wheat, importing some 18,000 tonnes of seed.  By 1968, it was clear that the Indian wheat harvest was nothing short of revolutionary. It was so prolific that there was a shortage of labour to harvest it, of bullock carts to haul it to the threshing floor, of jute bags, to store it. Local governments in some areas were forced to shut down schools temporarily to use them as store houses.

United Nation’s Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) observed that in 40 years between 1961 and 2001, “India more than doubled its population, from 452 million to more than 1 billion. At the same time, it nearly tripled its grain production from 87 million tonnes to 231 million tonnes. It accomplished this feat while increasing cultivated grain acreage a scant 8 percent.”

It was in India that Norman Borlaug’s work was described as the ‘Green Revolution.’

In Africa

Africa suffered wide spread hunger and starvation through 70s and 80s.  Food and aid poured in from most developed countries into the continent, but thanks to the absence of efficient distribution system, the hungry remained empty stomach. The then Chairman of the Nippon Foundation, Ryoichi Sasakawa wondered why the methods used in Mexico and India were not extended to Africa. He called up Norman Borlaug, now leading a semi-retired life for help. He managed to convince Borlaug to help with his new effort and subsequently founded the Sasakawa Africa Association.  Borlaug later recalled, “but after I saw the terrible circumstances there, I said, ‘Let’s just start growin`”.

The success in Africa was not as spectacular as it was in India or Mexico. Those elements that allowed Borlaug’s projects to succeed, such as well-organized economies and transportation and irrigation systems, were severely lacking throughout Africa. Because of this, Borlaug’s initial projects were restricted to developed regions of the continent. Nevertheless, yields of maize, sorghum and wheat doubled between 1983 and 1985.

Nobel Prize

For his contributions to the world food supply, Borlaug was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1970. Norwegian officials notified his wife in Mexico City at 4:00 a.m., but Borlaug had already left for the test fields in the Toluca valley, about 65 kms west of Mexico City. A chauffeur took her to the fields to inform her husband. In his acceptance speech, Borlaug said “the first essential component of social justice is adequate food for all mankind. Food is the moral right of all who are born into this world. Yet, 50 per cent of the world population goes hungry.”

 Green Revolution vs Environmentalists

Borlaug’s advocacy of intensive  high-yield agriculture came under severe criticism from environmentalists in recent years.  His work faced environmental and socio-economic criticisms, including charges that his methods have created dependence on monoculture crops, unsustainable farming practices, heavy indebtedness among subsistence farmers, and high levels of cancer among those who work with agriculture chemicals.   There are also concerns about the long-term sustainability of farming practices encouraged by the Green Revolution in both the developed and the developing world

In India, the Green Revolution is blamed for the destruction of Indian crop diversity, drought vulnerability, dependence on agro-chemicals that poison soils but reap large-scale benefits mostly to the American multi-national corporations. What these critics overwhelmingly advocate is a global movement towards “organic” or “sustainable” farming practices that eschew chemicals and high technology in favour of natural fertilizers, cultivation and pest-control programmes.

Borlaug’s Reply

But Borlaug and those who followed his lead argue that older methods of sustainable farming or for that matter, organic farming, cannot produce enough food to prevent hunger in poorer regions of the world. 

Of environmental lobbyists Borlaug once said  “Most of the environmental lobbyists of the Western nations are elitists. They’ve never experienced the physical sensation of hunger. They do their lobbying from comfortable office suites in Washington or Brussels.”

On the sustainability of organic farming, Borlaug argues that the world consumes some 82 million metric tons of chemical fertilizer per annum to supply the nitrogen crucial to plant development. Replacing these nitrogen inputs would require some 3 billion tons of cattle manure. This means to produce the required amount of organic manure, the cattle population needs to increase six times to 800-900 crore heads from the current 134 crore cattle heads. Now imagine the destruction of vast swaths of wilderness to make room for grazing land.”

Biotechnology is the Future

Borlaug was also an enthusiastic proponent of biotechnology.  He believed biotech will be key in meeting the enormous demands that will strain the globe in the next 30 years. He says global food production will have to nearly double to keep pace with the projected population of 10 billion people by 2050. While biotech has yet to improve yields by any appreciable level, it shows promise in alleviating global malnourishment through the engineering of vitamin-and mineral-enhancing characteristics into cereal crops.

Unappreciated American

Despite his yeomen service to the humanity, Borlaug largely remained an un-appreciated American. The reasons for this are not difficult to understand. The beneficiaries of his innovations and energies are primarily the people from Third World countries.  Desperate hunger is an alien affliction in the United States, where malnourishment is more likely to result in obesity than flattened bellies. India though, did not forget to repay its tribute, by releasing a postage stamp in the honour of the ‘Father of the Green Revolution’, way back in 1968.

 Director (Media), Press Information Bureau, Mumbai  

 Source : PIB features