'NV' - Translations

Recently, I got an invite to a women's college to give a 90 minute lecture to students of Fashion Design. The subject was 'Blogging and Learning'. Let me confess upfront that the talk wasn't very successful. It was scheduled after regular class hours and the students looked very tired - and my talk failed to enthuse them. But the real problem was with my style of presentation. And only the style; content-wise, I had some solid stuff to offer - and the best part thereof was based on a journal column run by by N V Krishna Warier, indisputably, one of the very finest minds produced by 20th century Kerala. Further, reading and rereading 'NV' as part of the preparation for the talk has gone on to generate THIS very post (*). Ergo, I thank my hosts.

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NV (1916-89) emerged from humble, rural beginnings as a hugely promising Sanskrit scholar. He did rise to preeminence among Sanskritists but, in a long career, donned many more hats with panache - poet, polyglot, critic, journalist, teacher, editor, freedom-fighter, bureaucrat and politician. There was no subject he wasn't curious about. Alongside volumes of poetry and works of serious scholarship, he wrote hundreds upon hundreds of brief essays on divers topics - current affairs, political developments, history, sciences, arts, observations of life ... - in several of our weeklies. Despite their high rate of production, these essays were elegantly written literary pieces and they were later brought out in volumes with curiously 'dialectic' titles: "Challenges and Responses", "Searches and Discoveries", "Problems and Solutions", "Crises and Investigations" and so forth. Sadly, most of these collections are now unavailable and I possess but of a couple of them (bought in the eighties for our then nascent home library by Pop, who is as much of a fan of NV as I am). I present in translation a few passages. There will be a certain amount of editing and leaving out of lines and sometimes paragraphs but I have taken care not to add a word.

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This is how an article NV wrote in 1984 introduces the Khomeini regime in Iran and the rise of fundamentalist Islam:

Around one in five of the world population are adherents of Islam. There are muslims in most countries. From southern Europe to the Pacific islands stretches the so called Islamic Crescent - a broad belt of Muslim majority lands that includes parts of North Africa, the Middle East and many Asian countries. Unlike what many non-Muslims think, Islam is not monolithic and is often mixed up with many local practices and traditions. And these admixtures have led to the emergence of several sects within Islam. Among these sects, the Sunni and the Shia are most important.

Koran, the Muslim holy book, presents a relatively straightforward and unambiguous message from God delivered to mankind via His final prophet Muhammad. After the Prophet's passing, one of his successors, the Caliph Othman, standardized and prepared an official edition of the Koran and sent copies to the main mosques in all Muslim territories. This ensured that the Koran is free from textual variations.

However, within a few years of the Prophet's demise, the Shia-Sunni schism split Islam. The Sunnis aver that the spiritual and temporal authority among muslims runs through the line of Caliphs, each of whom were elected by members of Muhammad's tribe. However, the Shias view the caliphs as usurpers and believe the succession ought to run through Muhammad's son-in-law Ali and his sons Hassan and Hussein. Ali, Hassan and Hussein were all killed in the succession dispute. Shias revere them as martyrs. Shia tradition says a line of nine Imams followed Ali and sons. The ninth Imam is believed to be still living in a hidden stronghold and would reveal himself as the 'Mahdi' on the day of judgment (Qayamat). This belief in the Mahdi marks a sharp divergence of Shia tradition from the Sunni one - as does the Shia rejection as apocryphal, many oral traditions that are sacred to the Sunnis.

Leaders of the present Iranian dispensation are drawn from among Shia hardliners....

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Here is from an article written in 1983, in the aftermath of the vicious anti-Tamil riots in Colombo. The part where NV begins to introduce Sri Lanka:

The interactions and disputes between India and Sri Lanka go back thousands of years.

Many Indians identify Sri Lanka with Ravana's Lanka. However, the Sri Lankans don't think of themselves as Ravana's people; indeed, the majority of Sri Lankans are Buddhists and Buddhism does not attach much significance to the Rama legend.

Aboriginal peoples such as Vedda, who bear a certain resemblance to some Indian and Australian tribes, are found in Sri Lanka to this day but they are very few in number.

Migrations from Northern India to Sri Lanka began well before Christ. Asoka sent his son Mahindra and daughter Sanghamitra as Buddhist missionaries to Sri Lanka.... Buddhist classics written in Pali were lost in India but Sri Lankan monasteries preserved them. Indian Buddhism moved from the Hinayana school to Mahayana and religious texts came to written in Sanskrit rather than Pali. But both Pali and the Hinayana doctrine flourished in Sri Lanka and were transmitted from there to countries such as Burma.

The modern Sinhala people of Sri Lanka are descendants of immigrants from northern India who sailed south across the bay of Bengal. The Sinhala language is Aryan, like Hindi or Bengali. The Sinhala script bears curious resemblances to the modern Malayalam script. At least some among the Ezhava community of Kerala might be descended from Sinhalas who came over and settled in Kerala and it has been observed that Sinhala people often pass off as Malayalis, especially Ezhavas. Apart from patronizing Buddhism, Sinhalas also enriched Sanskrit language. The Sinhala-born Sanskrit poet Kumaradasa, the author of the classic 'Janakiharanam' is sometimes rated as an equal to the great Kalidasa; and tradition holds that Kalidasa died in Sri Lanka while visiting Kumaradasa. Sinhalas contributed substantially to Sanskrit grammar and poetics. Ayurveda was just as popular and well developed in Sri Lanka as it was in Kerala....


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Now let me give some observations about India randomly culled from essays NV wrote in the early 1980s, long before the opening up of our economy and the ensuing rabid 'monetization' - and also several years before the word 'Hindutwa' gained currency.

Many allege Indian Democracy is 'toothless'. Indeed, the two rows of teeth that Democracy ought to possess are the sense of a citizen's rights and a clear awareness of his responsibilities. Here, only the row of rights has sprouted and developed; where are the teeth of responsibilities?
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Rapid and Capital-intensive industrialization is taking place in India. And this corporatization has taken hold of not only the production of consumables and manufacturing but even agriculture. Indeed, we cultivate crops not to consume them but for sale - all crops have become cash crops. Likewise, all our educational institutions are now industrial establishments - education is now a highly sought after commodity. And when an industrializing society also takes to compulsive and massive consumption of commodities, everything becomes a sell-able commodity. Just like soap and fabrics, we produce literature, music, arts, cinema, and even religion and atheism for the market. And the driving force behind all these productions is monetary profit - quality recedes into the background. In short, we have fully bought into the concept of profit-worthiness that is inherent in corporate industrialization and made it vitally decisive even in the domain of culture.
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The majority of Indian voters are ill-educated. It is hard to get them concerned about true issues of large-scale national interest. It is a lot easier to approach them with appeals to ethnicity, tribe or caste...

Mahatma Gandhi saw in the Khilafat movement an opportunity to attract the Muslim masses to the congress. So, it was perhaps inevitable that his followers saw any issue concerning/between religions as opportunities to mobilize votes....

Our parties compete with one another in attracting and encouraging ethnic, caste and religious groups and organizations. There is no national party - congress, communist or any other - in India that has not gone for 'understandings' or 'partnerships' with ethnic organizations such as the DMKs or caste groups such as NSS or religious outfits such as the Muslim League... and no party actively works against pressure groups based on ethnicity, religion or caste. Inaugurating a Nair get-together, opening a Muslim cultural center, making the keynote address at a Pulaya meet, laying the foundation stone for a Marthoma association - ... you can easily get top political leaders and Ministers to perform all these.

However, rather oddly, most parties are strongly opposed to Hindu Revivalism. Nairs can get together as Nairs, Ezhavas as Ezhavas and Brahmins as Brahmins - every party is more than happy to encourage such gatherings. But Nairs, Ezhavas and Brahmins getting together as Hindus is anathema to all parties. The reason is that Hindus are in majority. All other groups - Nair, Ezhava, Christian, Muslim - are minorities. Even women are a minority! Minorities certainly have legitimate rights that need protection and concerns which need to be addressed. And for National parties, any minority group is welcome for collaboration. But since the label 'Hindu' indicates majority, any tendency to emphasize it should be resisted - because majoritarian communalism is an abomination.

Indian parliamentary democracy seems to have worked itself into such a weird irony....
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Part of the price India has had to pay for getting Free and Democratic is the decimation of its once abundant forest wealth.

During the British Raj, deforestation wasn't so rampant. Of course, the British exploited our forests; but there was a semblance of scientific method to their exploitation. They were particular about planting trees where forests were cleared - at least they would insist that rubber or coffee plantations replaced forests proper. And they wouldn't permit clearing forests on steep hillsides - since that would cause landslips.

However, in the decades immediately following independence, we have lost a huge chunk of our forest wealth. Himalayas are severely denuded; Kerala is little different...


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Apart from his towering intellectual achievements, NV had a formidable reputation in literary, academic and publishing circles as a sharp strategist and kingmaker. He was an adept in the acquisition and exercise of power in all its dimensions and possibilities and was just as comfortable with ambiguity and wheeling-dealing as with rigor and precision...

Here are two fragments from his obituary to C H Muhammad Koya. Note: 'CH' was for a long time Education Minister of Kerala and briefly, Chief Minister. While NV was the director of the Bhasha Institute (a plum post at the helm of a State funded literary body) and CH led the Education Ministry, they had a long and fruitful association.

"One day, I was at my office at the Bhasha Institute and the telephone rang. It was CH, the education minister. He wanted to remind me of one particular candidate who had applied for a post advertised by our Institute.

"I really can't do much, I am afraid. Selections are made by a special committee. " I responded.

"No excuses please. Please make sure this candidate is in!" said CH and his phone clicked off.

Barely a few minutes later, the phone rang again. It was again CH. This time he sounded very different: "NV, Don't bother about what I said earlier. The candidate fellow had come and was sitting right in front of me and I had no choice but to talk in that manner to you. So, just follow the proper procedure, go by merit, as you always do. Bye!"
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"On another occasion, when I visited the Secretariat, CH showed me a folder and asked me to read a particular official letter therein. The state Education Secretary had actually written to the Education Minister complaining that I, as the Bhasha Institute director was carrying on unauthorized correspondences with representatives of other state governments and that such tendencies ought to be curtailed. It wasn't pleasant reading.

I protested: "But, as per the very charter of the Institute, it is to function as an autonomous body. If required I shall write a proper response to this allegation!"

"Oh, no need for that!" said CH "I just showed the document to you. Please keep this business to yourself!"

And that was CH the Man."
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(*) Right from the time I began blogging, the sheer quality of NV's popular journal articles - and he produced them at the rate of well over one per week - has been the ideal I have looked up to as a writer and chronicler of my times. It is a real shame he is now not very well remembered by the younger crowd in Kerala, let alone read. If even one of the students in my audience felt the urge to dig around for his works, I would revise my judgment and say my talk was actually a hit.