His Excellency  
Sri Surjit Singh Barnalla,
Governor of Tamil Nadu,
Raj Bhavan, Guindy,
Chennai

Dear your Excellency,

Sub: Gandhigram Rural University, Dindigal-Kasturba Gandhi Endowment Lecture-regarding

I had the honour of being invited to deliver the Kasturba Gandhi Endowment Lecture at the prestigious Gandhigram Rural University, near Dindigal, Madurai on 22nd Feb, 2008
The lecture and the interaction with the students were very interesting and the students seemed highly motivated and so the staff of the Department of Gandhian Thought and Peace Science.

The fact that I was also a friend and follower of the founders, the late Dr.G.Ramachandran was a particular friend and mentor for me as he was a student of Santiniketan and knew Tagore well enough, though I also went to Santiniketan for my education, well after some 30 years very much after Gurudev passed away, this was in the years 1955-59. After that I went to Oxford. Prof.Amartya Sen is my Santiniketan day’s friend.

Now, the purpose of this letter is request your good self to do your part to improve higher education in Tamil Nadu which while it is on the forefront is also home for all the ills and education frauds!

Now, even the PhDs are for sale!

One way to improve things is to introduce some self-regulating measures; in Bangalore University they conduct a qualifying exam for the intending students to do P.hDs!
May be some other ways could be found. Of course the nexus between the politicians and the self-financing college businessmen-turned “chancellors and vice-chancellors” is the root of all evils!

There is a delay in choosing the Vice-Chancellor to the Gandhigram University and I wonder whether any routine official-type academic or bureaucrat can do justice to the place which requires great dedication and also great drive and vision of sorts.

The hard part of the job is to find leaders in education! Anyway these are some of my thoughts that I thought I can take the liberty to share with your good self.
 
Now, I have attached herewith the article I wrote after my Gandhigram speech in my journal. Also, there is the text of the speech I gave at the university. Please kindly go through the same. Also, I have attached the letters I wrote to Vice-President, the visitor to Gandhigram and also to Gopal Gandhi who is a visitor to Visva Bharati.

I have also attached the video of my speech.

I very much like to look forward to call on your goodself during my next visit to Chennai.
With warm regards,

Yours sincerely,
V.Isvarmurti

Enclosures: Magazines & video

Mrs.Sonia Gandhi, President,
Indian National Congress,
24, Akbar Road, New Delhi

Dear Mrs.Gandhi,

Today is March 14 and it nice to write to you and congratulate you for having completed the President ship of the Congress for 10 long years.

This is a great accomplishment by any measurement and in politics this is something unusually a long innings in modern democratic society, anywhere in the world.

The day is also a moment when Congressmen of serious commitment can also look at some of the great many things that are critical for the party, the country and for the international order.

I like to draw your attention to two or three issues that agitate my mind.

One, the party’s short and long-term goals and its ideological base. As it is, the party has no ideological base or justification to continue with the sort of programmes and alliances without some deep introspection. The party is not clear as to what society it wants to bring about. Is it a liberal and secular society? It is free market economy within the larger ethical and moral basis of an equitable society? These are questions for which I don’t think the party has an answer in the current policy package as such. We seem to be mindlessly pursing a private big business-driven private sector economy where of course there is a high rate of growth, wealth creation and also some equitable distribution. But the popular perception is and it is right, that there is a skewed development with widening gap between the rich and the poor; there is a growing divide between the urban and the rural India. So, we need a new ideological formulation and this requires the top brains committed to the party. As I have said earlier, the Congress organisation is a 122 year old institution and there have been so many great many persons who adorned its ranks and we, today, can’t play with fundamental ideological issues in terms of some opportunistic talks and shallow talks.

Two, there is the question of the party’s alliances with other parties. Here too there is certain blindness on the part of the party managers and the durbaris as such. To take one example, the Congress party’s alliance in Tamil Nadu, first with ADMK and then with DMK and now too with no alternative except to fall into the trap of the DMK which has the knack of dictating terms to the Indian National Congress is quite depressing, to say the least. It is depressing for the more serious issue of aligning with a party that is a deeply anti-national, a separatist party, in fact, its separatist politics and mindset had set a trend for the other Dravidian and caste parties, even the Dalit parties talk of separatism openly.

This is a serious issue for the Indian National Congress. I say, rather bluntly: Please disengage with separatist parties. This is required in the long term goals of India. We have seen how the Kosovo’s unilateral declaration of “independence” had led to Indian separatist forces to openly talk of supporting Kosovo’s declaration. J&K politicians, even Khalistan elements, not to speak of Nagalim and other separatist forces, LTTE was bold enough to talk about it.

The Dravidian parties, more so the DMK can play mischief, if a situation arises. So, please try and form alliance with parties and forces and also bring in individuals and personalities who would guide in this area.

Also, related to the alliance building is the way the Congress is utterly unconcerned with traditions and conventions when it goes about perceiving winning elections. In Karnataka, in Bangalore, there is a simmering discontent over making the KPCC President Mr.Mallikarjun Kharge as member of the S.M.Krishna-led campaign committee. Rightly, Mr. Kharge has protested.

So, in the same way, we have to nurture the groups, social and pressure groups in the party with a deft hand and not go by arbitrary guidance and feedback.

Of course in Delhi politics, there is no definition of what morality is and what immorality is. Everyone justifies his or her action and change of beliefs and loyalties. I was in the AICC in 1967 and I know well then and now, how many who are near you, enjoy power and perks, were in the Congress all through the years!

So, you have to adopt some basic morality in going about changing people and entrusting power with people. There are a large number of older and loyal Congressmen and they are overlooked in so many appointments, be it Governors or Ambassadors. It is too much officialdom that is hurting the party’s interests in a genuine manner. This is for you to ponder over.

Third and finally, as I have repeated often in my letter to you, there must be political legitimacy and moral legitimacy in a democracy. Today, there is too much unaccountability in the system, in the party and in the government. No high Constitutional functionary bothers to even acknowledge the letters written to them. This is very dangerous. The PMO office must function as a legitimate office. So too other high offices.

The Lok Sabha Speaker, the other day had spoken out in the open about the over-reach of the judiciary in curbing the individual citizens rights. He cited the cases of Teesta Setalvad and one journalist Vijay Shekhar. Ideally, the  democratic political  system must offer protection and also welcome citizens’s  causes and the Prime Minister ideally  must be seem sensitive to individual citizens’s woes. Sadly, this is not so today. Nor the party seems to be sensitive to some grave issues. This is arbitrary politics and arbitrary governance.

There has to be certain level of transparency, certain openness and the party functionaries must be touring state capitals and must be seen as accessible to public representations.
Anyway, these are some of my thoughts and I hope the historic role of the Congress party is kept up to its high standards of the past.

With warm regards,

Yours sincerely,
V.Isvarmurti

NB: I was requested to deliver the Kasturba Gandhi Endowment Lecture at the Gandhigram Rural University, near Madurai. I have sent the video of the lecture. Please see the same.

Doordharshan under him very boring!

Private channels do much public service
They have citizen journalists, expose corruption, injustices etc
Tehelka is the high-watermark of private service capabilities that serve the larger public interest.

What public service broadcasting DD  does?
DD is supposed to be a public service broadcasting organisation. What public service it renders, now?

Public good and public wellbeing calls for a vision. A well-thought out cultural policy and a strategy, an independent service, very much like the BBC.
Our DD is not at all what it ought to be. The subject is complex and much debated.

The minimum the government can do is to introduce some quality, some independent working norms and let the teams perform with a clear mandate. Make news worth viewing. Make our classical cultures, at least music and dances, broadcast and use the very many established music seasons get an opportunity to reach the people in all geographies.

Priya Ranjan Das Munshi is one of the talented ministers in Delhi, among the crowd of very poor talent in the Cabinet!

Read the rest of this entry »

His Excellency Gopalkrishna Gandhi,
Governor,
Raj Bhavan,
Kolkatta

Dear Your Excellency Gandhi,

Sub: Visva Bharati and others

Hope you remember me.

Today I read in the Kolkatta daily, Telegraph, about the incidents at Santiniketan. Immediately I spoke to my friends there and got some idea of the happenings.

Since I had earlier visited the place along with my family a year ago and wrote about its present conditions and you were good enough to respond then.
Now, there are two things I thought I should write and share with you my thoughts.

Of course, the shooting at Santiniketan. One can rationalise that things are deteriorating in the university campuses and this cant be an exception. But my friends tell me that the new VC, Dr.Roy doesn’t stay there for long and they cited some statistics. However, the issue there might be complicated and may require some effort to improve things.

Read the rest of this entry »

Dr.Karan Singh M.P.,
Teen Murti Bhavan,
New Delhi

Dear Dr.Karan Singh,

Hope you remember me.

Here is another letter for you to read. In fact, I have attached a copy of the letter I wrote to Mrs.Sonia Gandhi on the state of the Congress and the government.

Now, as for the current peregrinations on the Indo-US nuclear deal, I feel that India is pursuing a deal that is morally unjustified and strategically dangerous for the country and the world.

And the PM went to China and come back with what assurance? Nothing. To ask China to help India to secure the US nuclear deal looks to me ridiculous. China won’t help India to become a nuclear weapon state, right?

Read the rest of this entry »

Bangalore
Date : 08.1.2008

Mrs.Sonia Gandhi,
President, Indian National Congress,
24, Akbar Road,
New Delhi

Dear Mrs.Gandhi,

Sub : Indian National Congress-its future

Let me wish you a happy new year. I also wish you  a speedy  recovery of  health.

I am sure the series of reverses in the state  elections, more so after the Gujarat verdict, must have been a troubling thought for every Congressman. As a Congressman  of long standing( I joined the party in 1961 immediately I returned to Indian from Oxford and remained so since then!) I have some special claims  to write to you this letter. Rather this kind of a blunt letter, if you think so.

I worked at the AICC when it was at the 7, Jantar Mantar Road in the later Sixties when Kamaraj was the President and Atulya Ghosh was the Treasurer and Sadiq Ali was the General Secretary. Those were all exciting times when Lalbahadur Sastri and then Indira Gandhi were nominated to succeed the void created by Panditji’s passing away.

After having been a Member of the Madras Legislative Council when I also worked closely with Kamaraj during his last years out of power I was witness to  so many happenings in the Congress party, betrayals and treachery and also belittling the greatmen and women once their “use” was over in the party.

All these things must be more now, than earlier! Today I read about your appointing some 34 Secretaries to the Congress party! I am amazed how the party works and what it accomplishes! With all these almost seemingly irreversible trends that must have caused lot of hearttburns but there is no indication so far the party is  at all reacting! So, where does the party go from here?

Read the rest of this entry »

Define your vision for India!

L.K.Advani, 80, is now named by the BJP as the next Prime Minister, if the party wins the next elections. That’s fine. In a democracy, after all, we must have an Opposition party, a strong enough and a united Opposition that is part of any vibrant democracy. Our polity is one such and widely admired all over the world.

The thoughts at a time when the major Opposition party names its Prime Ministerial candidate are likely to react immediately to the major ruling party, namely, the Congress and what it does in a similar situation. It is here there would be tremours in the Congress which has over the years has become a family party; a dynastic party whose sole aim seems to be to preserve the party as a family property and the thought of openly naming the Prime Ministerial candidate is anathema to it. Why?

It is a difficult question to answer, more so for the Congress party itself or for other parties also to see why the Congress party is so blatantly unconcerned about such niceties!

Indian democracy evolved over the past sixty years in an unusual manner that the evolution is owing to the foresight and leadership qualities of our freedom fighters, Gandhi and Nehru and others who were all men of outstanding qualities, sacrifice for the public cause was their hallmark.

Today, we see a totally different scenario. Politics has become caste and chauvinism and a strong dose of cynicism and that is why so much immorality, so much illegitimacy and so much of outward pretences and inward selfishness ness are marked in our leader’s behavioral pattern.

So, given the shortcomings that mark our polity, we have to take the brighter side of our public life and see what best we can make out of it.

It is in this sense we welcome L.K.Advani being publicly named as the BJP’s Prime Ministerial candidate. That at least would now focus on the man in question. Advani was always seen as a hardliner in the sense he pushes things a bit far to the brinkmanship, the Babrimasjid demolition is directly traced to his rath yatra and also the credit is given to him for having transformed a  rag-tag set of organisations and groups, RSS, VHP and what have you into a unified force  to emerge as a party of power when it became the first NDA  coalition under Vajpayee who won  a rare honor inside and outside India for his moderate visage and also wiser leader of much consequence. The world powers, the USA and Russia saw in Vajpayee a mature leader. So, this legacy would rub off Advani, jhoefully.

Read the rest of this entry »

Dear Meenakshi Mukeherjee,

I read with great your book review in the Economic and Political Weekly for June 2-8 2007 on A.K.Chettiar’s reminiscences of making a documentary on Mahatama Gandhi. In fact, the late A.K.Chettiar was my long time friend and mentor. I knew him for a fairly long time, since my college days in Chennai to his last years. He helped me in writing and also to get to know people at all sorts of places and countries. When I went to Santiniketan for the first time when I was hardly eighteen or so, he gave me a letter of introduction to some friend who came to receive me at the Howrah railway station! Such was his habit that whenever I sought his help there he was. He knew so many people, big and small and Issued to be amazed at his capacity to strike friendships that lasted his lifetime. He brought his unique personal charm and charisma and that you used to find in his friends too.

He was in his prime the most celebrated writer of a translucent Tamil prose style and he was the pioneer in Tamil travel writing. His books sold in thousands in those days and one classic was called, “A Tamil who is a wanderer in the world”. This narrated the worldwide admiration the Gandhi name enjoyed even long before India got freedom. He must have met almost all the Gandhi contemporaries, from Gandhi’s South African colleagues to such names like Romain Rolland and Subash Bose in Vienna and each of such encounters he brought to life in his sensitive portraits in the Tamil language.

Read the rest of this entry »

Philosophy is about our faith, our beliefs systems!

We can’t live and breathe without philosophy, you know? If not, it is time we know. Our education’s disabilities are many. One is not to have given us a belief system, a faith in our own terms of living. We don’t live, we just exist! That is how existentialism as a philosophy came about in Europe. In India itself, we don’t connect our past with our present. We have far too many experts, but all status quo-minded, all pro-establishment. What does that mean? We don’t imagine there must be intellectual independence. Unless we create a mind space, certain basic courage, how can we usher in new thinking? We imagine, our politicians, our entreprenuers, our bureuacrats, scientists or even literary men are neough? No, no!

We need original thinkers, thinkers who can dare and think differently, think afresh.

These are all the thoughts that should go into a new philosophy’s new philosophy for our times, for India, for Indian education and way of life. Our traditions must be brought update with our current challenges to new knowledge.

Read the rest of this entry »

A French priest I knew long ago

What individuals can do?

Every one of us can make a difference to the quality of life around us!

Yes, I have often wondered how individuals have done so much good. Yet, we often forget the do-gooders or under-rate their power of influence for long-term impact.Yet, we are often carried away by the individuals who are capable of doing much evil and underminse society’s values, value systems by systematic evil!

I am not thinking of the great evil doers like Hitler in history. I am thinking of evil doers, those who have so much impulse to suppress fellow citizens, in modern societies. Even in our own democracy, we encounter this phenomenon of evil doers, don’t we?

Read the rest of this entry »