An open letter to ms.Sonia gandhi from Gnani sankaran, Chennai

Dear Ms.Sonia Gandhi,

This is a letter of request from a concerned citizen about who our next president of india should be.

and since you are in a position to influence that decision as the leader of the ruling coalition, i am addressing you to consider the following issues.

1.Dr.Kalam, in my view , has failed to earn a second nomination. He was functioning more as a public relations officer for himself and did not rie to the level of a concerned conscience keeper of the country.

2.We know that there are several aspirants, particularly among the aged and senile ex- politicians of all hues from different parties trying to lobby for support. In one stroke,all of them can be rejected, irrespective of their ideologies since they are all incapable of bringing a freshness of approach to the office of the President of India.

3. Freshness of approach is what we badly need today in Indian polity and government. Let me define what it does not mean first. The powerful corporate sector or the India Inc. as it proudly calls itself, defines this freshness as government being pro- business even at the cost of people. On the other hand, the freshness that is needed today after nearly two decades of liberal economic policy, is to look at people not as consumers , or as vote banks but primarily as people needing human dignity and rights of livelihood. We need a judicious mix of Gandhi and Nehru here.

4. The office of the Prsident of India may lack teeth but in a political environment of global and local lobbies of capitalism, the president must be the voice of the conscience of the nation. Today no aged leader either from the right or the left has that calibre or capability. Only a voice representing those who need to be empowered can be the conscience of this nation. All the president aspirants as listed in the media are only those who have over the years only empowered themselves.

5. And, that brings us to the fifty percent of the Indian population that awaits empowerment in various avenues - the women of India. Even as we are still struggling to provide them with just 33 per cent reservations in Parliament, cant we take that struggle one step forward atleast by making a woman as our next President ?

6. It may be a small step but a significant step to see the first woman president of India occupy the chair in coming July.

7. And who shall that women be ? Let us define the requisites. With both right and left parliamentary wings having become stale and outdated in their approaches, we need a person who does not carry with her any of such baggage. At the same time, she should have empathy in her heart, and clarity in her mind to guide the government towards a pro- people administration and policy making. She should be capable of understanding and respecting the cultural diversity of this vast land.

8. And I have a person to recommend to you for the top job. Ms.Mahasweta Devi, the eminent writer- activist from Eastern India. Ms.Mahasweta Devi has an impressive track record both as a writer of high literary quality and activist of untiring energy. From Sahitya Akademi to Jnanapith, from Magsesay to Padma awards, she has been presented with so many accolades which have not turned her into a passive , reticent , complacent couch potato which normally happens to ordinary mortals in such a situation.
Single handedly she has been focussing the country's attention on marginalised sections - tribals and women. She has been a huge source of inspiration through her fiction to all young readers, who want to make it big in their lives. She has made them understand that becoming big in life is not jst making money but in understanding and becoming a human being.

9. I request you to suggest her name as your party's choice. She qualifies on several counts - some of which are immediate political requirements. She will simulatanelously be the representation given to the different sections of our society - women, creative writers, non-party social activists, Bengalis and Eastern India who have not been represented at all so far in selection of our Presidents.

10. And let me clarify my vested interest in this recommendation. i am not a woman. I am not a bengali. I have never met her. I only share with her the fields of creative writing and social concern as a humble junior living in a distant part of the same country.
thanking you
with regards

Gnani Sankaran
tamil writer, journalist and theatre person
e mail : gnanisankaran@hotmail.com
mobiles: 09869046486( at mumbai )/09444024947(at chennai)

About Gnani Sankaran : Besides being a tamil journalist and writer for the last thirty three years, Gnani (53) has been a development communication activist utilizing the fields of print, theatre and television. He has directed over 40 plays and has made television serials on role of women in freedom movement and the life history of rationalist leader Periyar. He is presently a columnist with Ananda Vikatan group, the leading tamil publication.

Mahasweta Devi - - Next President of INDIA

Biography

Mahasweta Devi was born in 1926 in the city of Dacca in East Bengal (modern day Bangladesh). As an adolescent, she and her family moved to West Bengal in India. Born into a literary family, Mahasweta Devi was also influenced by her early association with Gananatya, a group who attempted to bring social and political theater to rural villages in Bengal in the 1930's and 1940's. After finishing a master's degree in English literature from Calcutta University, Devi began working as a teacher and journalist. Her first book, Jhansir Rani (The Queen of Jhansi), was published in 1956. This work also marked the beginning of a prolific literary career. In the last forty years, Devi has published twenty collections of short stories and close to a hundred novels, primarily in her native language of Bengali. She has also been a regular contributor to several literary magazines such as Bortika, a journal dedicated to the cause of oppressed communities within India. In 1984, she retired from her job as an English lecturer at a Calcutta university to concentrate on her writing. In the last decade, Devi has been the recipient of several literary prizes. She was awarded the Jnanpath, India's highest literary award in 1995. In the following year, she was one of the recipients of the Magsaysay award, considered to be the Asian equivalent of the Nobel Prize. She currently resides and works in Calcutta, India.


Major Works and Themes

Mahasweta Devi's first work, Jhansir Rani, was a fictional reconstruction of Laxmibal, the Picture of woman ruler who died fighting the British Author army in the mid-nineteenth century. Several of her other early works such as Amrita Sanchay (1964) and Andhanmalik (1967) are also set during the British colonial period. The Naxalite movement of the late 1960's and early 1970's were also an important influence in her work. Devi, in a 1983 interview, points to this movement as the first major event that she felt "an urge and an obligation to document" (Bandyopandhyay viii). This leftist militant movement, which started in the Naxalbari region of West Bengal, began as a rural revolt of landless workers and tribal people against landlords and moneylenders. In urban centers, this movement attracted participation from student groups. Devi's Hajar Churashir Ma (Mother of 1084) is the story of a upper middle class woman whose world is forever changed when her son is killed for his Naxalite beliefs. This book has recently been made into a Hindi-language movie called Hazaar Chaurasi ki Ma by director Govind Nihalani .

Another important theme in the works of Mahasweta Devi involves the position of tribal communities within India. She is a long-time champion for the political, social and economic advancement of these communities, whom she characterizes as "suffering spectators of the India that is traveling towards the twenty first century" (Imaginary Maps, xi). These concerns can be seen in works such as Aranyer Adhikar (Rights of the Forest) and anthologies such as her 1979 NairhiteMegh (Clouds in the Southwestern Sky). Aranyer Adhikar, which was published in 1977, is based on the life of Birsa Munda, a tribal freedom fighter. She has also donated the prize money from both the Jnanpath and Magsaysay awards to tribal communities and continues to use her work to further the position of these groups in India.
This activism is central to Devi's understanding of the role of a writer in society: "I think a creative writer should have a social conscience. I have a duty towards society. Yet I don't really why I do these things. The sense of duty is an obsession. I must remain accountable to myself."

Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak , who has translated two collections of Devi's stories including those in Imaginary Maps into English, suggests that this interplay of activism and literary writing in Devi's fiction can be of substantial interest to current academic discourse and practices. Spivak insists that Devi's work suggests a model in which activism and writing can reflect upon each other, providing a necessary vision of inter-nationality, and the possibility of constructing a new kind of responsibility for the cultural worker (Imaginary Maps, xxvi).

In response to the question, "What would you like to do for the rest of your life?" in a 1998 interview, Devi replied: "Fight for the tribals, downtrodden, underprivileged and write creatively if and when I find the time" (Guha). Devi is currently an editorial advisor for Budhan: The Denotified and Nomadic Tribes Rights Action Group Newletter. The newsletter is named after Budhan Sabar who was brutally killed in March 1998.