Chennai: Striking an unblemished cautionary note against any form of religious insularity, former Governor of West Bengal, professor and eminent writer Gopalkrishna Gandhi on Saturday expressed serious concern at the voices of all types minorities in the country being ignored now.
“The minority communities of India, not just the Muslims, Christians and Sikhs, feel they have no voice, and that they are all there by the permission of the majority,” Mr Gandhi said presiding over the finale of the platinum jubilee year celebrations of the prestigious Tamil weekly journal Kalki and its group of publications here.
‘Sollalaama, Sollalaama,’ is how Mr Gandhi captured, with this evocative Tamil word, the mood of ‘hesitancy’ among the minorities in the country now, and exhorted journals like’ Kalki’, with lofty goals set by its founding personalities in the thick of India’s freedom struggle and as a ‘conscience keeper of public opinion’, must be “the voice of the voiceless and the voice of the hesitant voices.”
Observing that for “those who care for India”, being ‘God-minded’ or being influenced by religion was not just a matter of inner cleansing, Gopalkrishna Gandhi said it ought to be a larger fellow-feeling about how “conscious we are” about how we treat other people. India as a ‘Republic’ implies everyone’s voice is equal to everybody else’s voice.
Making it clear that he was not being prescriptive, Mr Gandhi said two other areas of concern, ‘Kalki’ should be nonetheless engaging in, is to “expose” the hollowness of the all-pervasive culture of money, besides reminding people on the need to have “self-imposed limits on consumption”. This was in the backdrop of the unprecedented Chennai floods in December 2015, which was “man-made”, he said.
It threw up what the combination of money power and human greed could lead to. Mr Gandhi was referring to the encroachments along and on precious water bodies that led to the great flooding.
Paying rich tributes to the founding spirits of ‘Kalki’ magazine founded in
August 1941 — ‘Kalki’ Krishnamurthy, Rajaji, Sadasivam, M.S. Subbulakshmi and Rasigamani TKC — Mr Gandhi said it was no mere coincidence that the journal’s 75th year celebrations were being held at Chennai’s ‘Kamaraj Arangam’.
While the differences between Kamaraj and Rajaji now belong to history, he
said even when they were adversaries in a political sense, they were not adversaries “in a personal sense”.
“That distinction has gone now and it is a big regret,” he added. Lauding ‘Kalki’ for standing over the years for “consistency within the atmosphere of change, not puerile consistency, but great consistency of honesty,” Mr Gandhi recalled how the magazine disapproved of Rajaji taking over as Chief Minister of then Madras state in 1952 after having occupied the highest office of Governor General of India.
Though later, ‘Kalki’ stood by Rajaji on certain issues that democracy should not mean one-party domination at the Centre, nevertheless, “we had a great Prime Minister in Jawaharlal Nehru,” said Mr Gandhi.
But “I do not think ‘Kalki’ would have gone along with Rajaji in linking the opposition to one-party rule with the capitalist class in India,” Mr Gandhi said, adding, ‘Kalki’ Krishnamurthy was a “great democratic socialist”.
Earlier, Gopalkrishna Gandhi released the special platinum jubilee volume of ‘Kalki’, and also a special issue of the magazine sponsored by the Karur Vysya Bank (KVB) on the occasion, in the presence of KVB’s CEO, Mr Venkatraman, members of the ‘Kalki’ group family including ‘Kalki’ Rajendran and others.
The birth centenary of the doyen of Carnatic music, M.S. Subbulakshmi was also part of the platinum jubilee celebrations and a special musical album ‘Forever MS’, was also released.
A galaxy of Tamil writers and speakers including Sukhi Sivam, Tirupur Krishnan, and Ms Bharathi Bhaskar were among those who recalled the contributions of ‘Kalki’ Krishnamurthy and the other founding members of the journal to the development of modern Tamil writing, fine arts and culture, even while holding steadfast to its motto of ‘Desa Nalan (national interest first)’.
