Soon after Prime Minister Modi inaugurated the 98th Marathi sahitya sammelan in New Delhi last week, the sammelan president Tara Bhawalkar delivered an eloquent speech stressing the importance of freedom of expression.
Reminded me of the speech of another eminent woman writer, Durga bai Bhagwat, in support of freedom of expression during the emergency in Karad at the sahitya sammelan which I had attended in 1975. It was memorable, later she was arrested as she continued her campaign.
I would say Tara bai’s performance was more absorbing, more lucid, more down to earth. Like Durga bai, Tara, for short, is steeped in traditional learning as well as modern thinking which makes both so relevant.
Both quoted Marx in an approving way, Durga bai said only a dozen or so people attended Marx’s funeral but his reach was so widespread, governments were afraid of his ideas and wanted to extern him.
Tara, now 84, referred to Marx’s emphasis on the importance of the control of the means of production and she also referred to poet Narayan Surve’s poem in which he says he learnt of Marx’s teachings while participating in a street procession.
This shows their liberal attitude, both were brought up on healthy teachings of progressive Sanskrit scholars, Durga bai hailed from the family of Rajaram Shastri Bhagwat and Tara spoke of her debt to Siddheshwar Shastri Chitrav and Laxmanshastri Joshi from whom she learnt a lot in her younger days. The latter had also studied Marxist thought , was a guru to Y.B. Chavan,and was the president of the Marathi sammelan held in Delhi in 1954. That makes an interesting coincidence.
Tara, a scholar of lok sahitya, folk literature, art and performance, quoted often from the ovis, poems, of women saints and ordinary women composing songs while grinding grain on stone wheels expressing liberal ideas, giving vent to the oppression women experienced. In a way they had anticipated the women’s liberation movement. One woman sang of her father selling her in marriage like a sack of sugar.
There were verses in the Vedas in which women expressed their anguish over the other woman
Some women also celebrated the lives of Gandhiji and Jawaharlal Nehru in their songs while grinding the wheel.
There were a number of events in the three day sammelan held in the Tal Katora stadium. Prithviraj Chavan, former chief minister of Maharashtra, spoke of his early education in a Marathi medium school in Delhi in the 1960s and then a big transition to California university in Berkeley where the atmosphere was very very left wing and where he learnt a lot. He comes off as one of the best of our political figures, honest, cultured, well educated.
There was also an interview of Suresh Prabhu, former railway minister. He recalled that he suddenly got a call in Mumbai and was told he has to take oath as minister in the new government of Mr Vajpayee. He had to rush and could not take his wife Uma, who was then in the Times of India office. This writer was her colleague there.
He regretted that as a Shiv Sena candidate, he had defeated long time socialist M.P. Madhu Dandavate in the Lok Sabha election in the Konkan which deprived the latter of a sure chance to become the Prime Minister , a post ultimately held by Deve Gowda.
Vidyadhar Date is a senior journalist, culture critic and author of a book on public transport
