Veteran parliamentarian speaks his mind

The volume covers Era Sezhiyan's 22-year period in Parliament that witnessed major political transformations

Parliament for People:
Speeches by Era Sezhiyan
 Institute of Social Sciences,
Rs 1450

This collection of speeches by an eminent parliamentarian deserves notice not just because Parliament hits the headlines frequently these days, although mostly for wrong reasons. There are at least two other reasons why it should interest keen observers of the polity and politics of argumentative Indians.

The volume covers a 22-year period that witnessed major political transformations. Sezhiyan entered Parliament when the government was headed by Jawaharlal Nehru, a strong defender of the dignity of the institution. He served as an effective parliamentarian during the Prime Ministership of Lal Bahadur Shastri, Indira Gandhi, and Morarji Desai. He stepped into Parliament House in the year of the Sino-Indian conflict and made his exit just months before Indira Gandhi's assassination. And he was witness to the formation of the first non-Congress government in New Delhi and its ignominious, mid-term fall as well. The long years he spent in Parliament and the rich experience he gained make Sezhiyan, who is in his late 80s, eminently qualified to do what he has attempted: to produce a ‘biography' of sorts of the bicameral Parliament in the form of his recorded role as a remarkably articulate and rule-abiding member. He made his presence felt in both the Lok Sabha (1962-77) and the Rajya Sabha (1978-84), as a representative of the Dravida Munnetra Kazhgam and the Janata Party respectively.

Full report here Hindu

Book with rare Indira pics, Nehru's letters

The Visva-Bharati University is coming out with a book containing unpublished letters written by Jawaharlal Nehru to Rabindranath Tagore besides rare photographs of former Prime Minister Indira Gandhi.

The coffee table book, titled 'Three Chancellors', will depict the relationship between the Nehru-Gandhi family and the Tagores.

Congress President Sonia Gandhi personally came to the aid of Nilanjan Banerjee, the editor of the book, and mailed him some rare photographs of her late mother-in-law Indira Gandhi.

"Responding to our request, Mrs Gandhi has recently sent us 18 rare and personal photographs featuring Indira Gandhi during her student days in the Visva-Bharati," Banerjee, who works as a curator of Tagore's museum at Santiniketan, told PTI.

Full report here Times of India

Santiniketan, Tagore's dream, breathing its last?

In the twilight years of his life, Rabindranath Tagore was an extremely worried man. The future of Visva Bharati — the most precious of his creative pursuits — was at stake.

The three men to whom he revealed his thoughts — Mahatma Gandhi, Jawaharlal Nehru and Subhas Chandra Bose — assured him that his dream would be realized. On the poet's 150th birth anniversary, however, Santiniketan has lost sight of its founder's original ideals.

Sixty-nine years after his death, Visva Bharati has neither proved to be a pathmaker in educational experimentation nor does it remain a centre of excellence and achievement. A university that can boast of Indira Gandhi, Satyajit Ray and Amartya Sen among its illustrious alumni, Visva Bharati is nothing more than a "glorified Bolpur college" today, its universal flavour being a thing of the past. The university, which once attracted litterateurs, thinkers, philosophers, economists and artists from far and wide now rarely draws brilliant teachers, even as visiting faculty.

Full report here Times of India 

‘Indira Priyadarshini Gandhi’ launched at KPC

Pakistani author Azra Gorakhpuri’s Hindi book Indira Priyadarshini Gandhi was launched at the Karachi Press Club on Tuesday.

Addressing the gathering, Gorakhpuri said Pakistan was working sincerely for the improvement of Pakistan-India relations and India too had, at times, shown positive behaviour in this regard.

She said keeping in view the global situation, the two countries needed to maintain good relations with each other. Her book is a part of the peace process, she added. She also said she had met Indira first in Lucknow, then in Gorakhpur when Indira had visited her house in 1979, and again at the Gorakhpur Town Hall in a general public meeting. Highlighting the contents of her book, Gorakhpuri said it contained description of Indira’s childhood, her education, her illness in connection with lung infection, her stay in Switzerland for medical treatment, her education in London and closeness with Feroze Gandhi, her family, her marriage with Feroze, her dispute with her father Pandit Nehru on her marriage, her political career, her visit to Gorakhpuri’s house ‘Zia Manzil’, her personal relationship with Gorakhpuri’s family, her love for Sanjay Gandhi and Rajiv Gandhi, the role of Sonia Gandhi as president of the Indian National Congress, and other topics.

Full report here Daily Times

No better than a mad tea party

Be it with the ban on Satanic Verses or the forced exit of M.F. Husain, India is yet to find the golden mean between offensiveness and freedom, writes Somak Ghoshal

Indian democracy stands at a peculiarly knotty crossroads at the moment. A senior rightwing ideologue could be facing a charge of conspiracy for his alleged role in inciting the demolition of a 16th-century mosque in Ayodhya, which led to communal riots nearly two decades ago. The chief minister of a state is, at long last, being questioned by a special investigation team, appointed by the highest court in the country, for his, once again, alleged involvement in the pogrom unleashed on Muslims in Gujarat, eight years ago. A leading artist, now in his nineties, has been successfully hounded out of the country by hoodlums. In exile for several years, he has finally relinquished his Indian passport for a Qatari citizenship. A renowned Bangladeshi writer, with a fatwa hanging over her head, has been given refuge in this ‘robust’ democracy. Yet, she continues to live in fear of being physically attacked by religious fanatics. Looks like we have more reasons to feel worried about Indian democracy than to celebrate its supposed glories.

This year is, in a way, an anniversary of sorts for the failure of Indian democracy, 60 years since the Constitution came into effect. It was 35 years ago that Emergency was imposed on the country by Indira Gandhi; another 25 years have gone by since Sikhs were butchered in the wake of her assassination (little justice has been delivered on that account); and some 20 years ago, the Congress government, led by her son, Rajiv, banned Salman Rushdie’s controversial work, The Satanic Verses (1988), even before it was published in India, and much before Ayatollah Khomeini had imposed a fatwa on the author in 1989. All it took was a strong protest by a Muslim parliamentarian, Syed Shahabuddin, and, oddly, the finance ministry put an embargo on the novel. It is significant perhaps that Mrs Gandhi had taken great umbrage at Rushdie’s caricature of her in Midnight’s Children (1981), and had successfully sued him in a London court for defamation. The Rushdie affair became a landmark of sorts in the history of Indian censorship, a spark which ignited waves of intolerance in the subsequent years.

Full report here Telegraph

SAARC festival embroiled in controversy

Indian leaders skipped the South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation (SAARC) Festival of Literature on Saturday March 27 due to a stinging write-up in the festival’s souvenir against former Indian prime minister Indira Gandhi.

Indian Vice President Hamid Ansari and Foreign Secretary Nirupama Rao were supposed to address writers and academics from SAARC countries at the inaugural session. But Ansari’s secretariat drew his attention to the write-up by festival co-organiser Ajit Kaur written after Indira Gandhi’s assassination in 1984 and re-published in the souvenir the Indian vice president was supposed to release.

The state-run Indian Council for Cultural Relations Chairman Dr Karan Singh, a former union minister, attended the festival as his organisation was roped in as a co-sponsor by a non-governmental organisation (NGO), Foundation of SAARC Writers and Literature (FOSWAL). Dr Karan Singh, who is heir of the Kashmiri royal family, demanded action against Kaur for releasing the book attacking Indira Gandhi.

Ajit Kaur is a 76-year-old writer, Sahitya Akademi Award winner and president of FOSWAL, whose chairman is renowned writer Khushwant Singh while Dr Abid Hussain, former Indian ambassador to the US is the executive chairman. Kaur wrote the controversial nine-page write-up titled ‘November 1984’ and translated it to English from Punjabi. She had referred to Indira Gandhi as ‘empress’ in the write-up, which describes the ‘black and bloody days’ that stunned New Delhi on October 31, 1984.

Full report here Daily Times

'This woman suckered us', said Nixon of Indira: Book

"She suckered us. Suckered us.....this woman suckered us." So said an enraged US president Richard Nixon of Indian Prime Minister Indira Gandhi after learning that war had broken out on the subcontinent on Dec 3, 1971, and Indian forces had made a decisive push towards then East Pakistan that it recognised as Bangladesh three days later.

Nixon, who had met Gandhi just a month earlier in Washington, had sought assurances from her that India would not take any precipitate military action pending efforts by the US to find a political solution that would not "shatter the cohension of West Pakistan" and end up "overthrowing President Yahya (Khan)" who was pivotal to America's China initiative afer 22 years of diplomatic freeze.

Nixon had then made it clear to Mrs Gandhi that "nothing could be served by the disintegration of Pakistan" and even warned darkly that "it would be impossible to calculate with precision the steps which other great powers might take if India were to initiate hostilities".

Nixon's presentations were heard with "aloof indifference" by Mrs Gandhi, Secretary of State Henry Kissinger was quoted as telling author Kalyani Shankar in her just published book Nixon, Indira and India - Politics and Beyond (Macmillan/Rs. 445).

Full report here Hindustan Times