...he
that laboureth right for love of Me
Shall
finally attain! But, if in this
Thy
faint heart fails, bring Me thy failure!
–The
Song Celestial
MR. CHURCHILL has once again taken a hand in the
old diehard game of prejudicing Indian interests. But he is no longer
surrounded by the halo of office, and even his party-men have virtually
discredited him. His latest attack on India recoiled on himself, Mr. Attlee
uttered harsher words than even Sardar Patel; he laid to rest this specter of
an ex-prime Minister meddling in Indian affairs, after the King of England had
ceased to be Emperor of India. The Government of an independent of Dominion now
asserts its lawful claim to deal with the Nizam as it deals with other
Highnesses within the borders. To imagine that the Nizam an independent
sovereign entitled to present his case before the United Nations, is to forget
the basic principles of the Indian independence Act. British paramountcy lapsed
the moment the King’s assent was given to that Act, and it was open to the
successor Government of India to enter into fresh agreements with the Indian
States. Those agreements could only lead to one result: the consolidation of
the Central Governments power, through the accession, merger, or union of the
States. If in defiance of all considerations of prudence, the Nizam persists in
intriguing, against the Indian Union, the Nehru Government must perforce take
military action to ensure peace and responsible government in an area obviously
marked out by nature to be an integral part of India. Prime Minister Attlee was
entirely correct in challenging Mr. Churchill’s thesis of a sovereign State of
Hyderabad. He has also taken the logical course of advising the Nizam to come
to terms with the Indian Government.
It is clear, however, that no settlement is
possible so long as the present regime in Hyderabad takes its orders from Kasim
Razvi and his gangsters, and the mass of Hyderabad citizens are oppressed and
treated as of no account. The collection and manufacture of arms, the
recruitment and training of men, and finally the gun-running across Karachi
must stop forthwith. The Nizam, as the latest reports from Delhi indicate, has
Commissioned Sir Mirza Ismail to start negotiations afresh, but the States
Ministry is resolved not to treat any longer with the Nizam through
intermediaries. Everything points to an early conflict, unless by a miracle the
Nizam sees sense and accedes to the Union. If Mr. Churchill’s discomfiture and
Mr. Attlee’s determined stand on the Hyderabad issue can work this miracle, Mr.
Churchill will have achieved the distinction of hastening a peaceful settlement
without ever intending it.
The first official visit of the Prime Minister to
Madras has been a great success from every point of view. Apart from his
personal charm which wins him the love of the multitude, there is always about
Pandit Nehru the statesman’s outlook which enables him to seize the essentials
of a situation and to give a clear lead where leadership is needed. The South
is torn by communal and linguistic distensions in a manner different from, but
possibly more sinister than, the North. Congressmen in office have failed to
live up to the ideals they cherished while the freedom struggle was in
progress. Cliques and groups, and the insane race for profit and preferment,
have lowered the prestige of the Congress. Add to this the widespread
discontent caused by the high prices of cloth and foodstuffs. The atmosphere
was thus charged with dull anger when Pandit Nehru came down south. He could
not alter everything during a brief three-day, visit, but he has put new
strength into men’s hearts and given them a new vision of India as a great,
united, and beneficent Power. On questions like Hyderabad which agitated the
public mind, he spoke with determination and assured South India that steps
were being taken to effect a speedy solution.
A soldier of freedom, called upon to administer
free India in the earliest and most critical stage of her career, Pandit Nehru
has justified the nation’s hopes. In national as well as in international
affairs, he has upheld the dignity of an ancient people seeking to use their
new-won freedom for the highest good of humanity. His visit was therefore like
a breath of fresh air, or a gleam of sunshine, valued more for the general
toning up of life than for any immediate, tangible results. But results must
follow, since the ground has been cleared and the seeds of wisdom sown in
profusion.
“Education through the mother-tongue,” was the
slogan of Indian nationalists some years ago, when English was the medium of
instruction at school and college all over India, and the languages of the land
were relegated to a position of inferiority. The cry was perfectly natural, and
quite in accordance with correct educational theory. These indigenous languages
are now coming into their own, thanks to the emergence of freedom. But an
unforeseen complication has arisen. A new term, ‘regional language’ has been
coined to indicate the language spoken by a majority of the population of any
area, usually a District. Thus Tamil is the ‘regional’ language of Madura
District, and Telugu that of Godavari. When Provinces are redistributed on the
basis of language, the regional language will also be the provincial language.
And wide tracts between two neighbouring Provinces must be deemed to be,
‘bi-lingual.’ But in every Province and in several Districts, there are
permanent settlers and temporary residents whose home-language is different
from the provincial or regional language. That these should acquire a working
knowledge of the regional language, so as to be able to speak it and write it,
is not open to question, for, even the temporary sojourners in a different
language area must be qualified to trade or seek service where they reside. But
the acquisition of a language for certain specific purposes is entirely
unconnected with the question of the medium of instruction at school and
college. Should science and history be taught to Tamil boys in Rajahmundry
through the medium of Telugu? Or should the Government open separate sections
in institutions, where instruction is given in a language or languages
different from the regional one? Or, in the alternative, can the particular
group be permitted to start schools, with Government’s financial assistance,
where their home-tongue is employed for purposes of instruction?
These are questions which have to be faced and
solved in the immediate future, if linguistic antagonisms are to be allayed.
Preferably they should be tackled on an all-India basis, so as to secure
uniformity in all Indian Provinces and States. The position is being rendered
difficult, by a certain type of linguistic imperialism which seeks to use
political power to crush other linguistic groups. For example, the Telugus of
Berhampore, a bi-lingual area, are told that since they are citizens of Orissa,
they cannot be permitted to run a high school where Telugu is the medium of
instruction! And even an eminent all-India patriot like Dr. Rajendra Prasad
regrets that large sections of Bengalis, living in areas arbitrarily tacked on
to Bihar have not been ‘Hindi-ised’.
A uniform India-wide solution can be achieved on
the following lines: -
1.
Where about twenty to
twenty-five per cent of the population of a town or village in any district in
India wish to adopt their home-tongue, in preference to the regional language,
as the medium of instruction, the Government must make provision for it, either
by starting separate schools or by opening separate sections in existing
schools.
2.
Where the number is
not sufficient to warrant such a claim, a group of families must be permitted
to make their own arrangements, and the Government assist them by a
grant-in-aid.
3.
In colleges and
Universities, the language of the Province will invariably be the medium of
instruction, but visiting professors must be given the option to employ English
or Hindustani, at their choice, for purposes of lecturing to students; and, by
parity of reasoning, students who migrate from other Universities must be given
similar option when they sit for examinations or answer questions in the
class-room.
A final and satisfactory scheme can only evolve
with the passage of time, but the above suggestions indicate the correct line
of approach. Where the desire to impose your language on another is absent, the
heart becomes pure and the vision clear.
Long years ago, Macaulay in his Essay on Milton elaborated
a thesis that it is much more difficult to compose great poems in an age of
advancing civilisation than in the infancy of mankind. Poetry, according to
him, came more easily to Homer than to Milton, for Milton was working against
the spirit of his age, which was essentially one of prose. Arid ergo,
Milton’s achievement as an epic poet must be deemed greater than that of Homer!
A young friend who is a research scholar in the
Department of English in the Benares University–the ‘Hindu’ may be dropped, in
anticipation of coming changes–recurs to the theme in an essay contributed to
this number of Triveni. By all standards, the present age is infinitely
more ‘civilised’ than that of Milton. Science and industry are the ruling gods,
and emotion and imagination are at a discount. This is definitely an age of
prose. Eliot’s waste Land is symptomatic of the waste land in the region
of poetry. So argues our friend, strengthening his case by a wealth of
quotation from Freud and Jung. And he laments that the great song may nevermore
return.
But is the position really so bad? And is Tagore
the last in the line of great Indian poets? Assuredly not, for there is a
fallacy underlying the present contention. The childhood of the individual and
the childhood of the race are compared. The child and the savage are ‘of
imagination compact’ and just as the ‘shades of the prison-house’ close around,
as the child grows into youth and manhood, so too is advancing humanity
deprived of the gift of wonder, of imagination, and of poetic utterance. So, we
are to believe that in an age of science dominated by prose and the prosaic in
life, Tagore wrote great verse and song just because he was akin to the child
and the savage. The innocence and the imagination of Tagore was indeed like
unto that of a child, but he was child-like only in the sense that the ‘vision
splendid’ always abided with him. Between the primal instinct of the child or
the savage, and the lofty intuition of a poet-seer like Tagore, there are all
the stages of (a) wild, uncontrolled emotion, (b) emotion chastened and
purified by reason, and (c) emotion ennobled by illumination, and equi-vision.
And every age will have its great poets who transcend these stages and arrive
at that of lofty intuition, and direct perception of the Infinite and
all-pervading Ultimate Reality. The present age, like that of Pope, may not be
congenial for the growth of the tender plant of poesy, but the world moves not
in straight lines but in cycles. And if every year brings back its spring, why
should not the great ages of poetry come back to us and the great song be sung
again? To vary the metaphor, there may be a season of drought, but the rains
must come, and with the rains, the green earth and the wild flowers and the
music and dance of a joyous humanity.
It is difficult for me to realise that Sri K.
Punnaiah, the veteran journalist, is no more. I met him in Bangalore a few
hours before he left for Bombay to attend the meeting of the standing committee
of the All-India Newspaper Editors’ Conference. He put into my hands the
typescript of his article ‘One Year After Partition’, for publication in Triveni.
He promised to write another on ‘The Achievements of the Nehru Government’
after his return from Bombay. But even before I could put into print what turns
out to be his last contribution to any periodical, I got the shocking news of
his death in Bombay. So, this is the end of the career, on earth, of my
esteemed friend and senior in the profession of journalism.
Sri Punnaiah started life as a journalist in
Bombay. He was associated with the late Sri K. Nageswara Rao in the editorship
of the Andhra Patrika, the Telugu Weekly which was later shifted to
Madras, in 1914, and became a great Daily. Sri Punnaiah was working on the
staff in the days that I was a law student in Madras. He was also editing, in
English, a fortnightly paper, Humanity, to spread the ideals of the
Brahmo Samaj. Then came his migration to Karachi as Editor of the New Times.
His lifework, however, was the building up of the Sind Observer from
small beginnings to the position of a leading nationalist paper, with an
All-India reputation for fearless advocacy of all righteous causes. Sri
Punnaiah gave more than twenty-five years of his life to the paper he loved,
and left it only when the paper changed hands with the coming of Pakistan. He
then chose Bangalore for his home, and looked forward to a life of quiet
retirement in this beautiful city. His first public appearance in Bangalore was
at the Indian Institute of Culture, Basavangudi. He spoke on ‘The Future of
Indian Journalists and as brother-journalist, presided and introduced him to a
very cultured audience. He was apprehensive that the money-power might soon
stifle independent journalism, and pleaded for the starting of papers on a
co-operative basis. Speaking of the capitalists of who are acquiring control
over newspapers, he said: “They will employ you and pay you fat salaries; they
will feed you and groom you. And then, they will ride you!” That was the
voice of a working journalist, giving the word of warning.
His last days were clouded by domestic calamities
in quick Succession, but he bore them all like a hero. As he told me during our
last meeting, “Yes, strength has been given to me. ‘It is the result of forty
years of Brahmoism.”
His was a dedicated spirit.
1 July 31.