Recently, Union Minister of
State for External Affairs Gen (Rtd) VK Singh shot off a request letter to Urban
Development Minister M Venkaiah Naidu to rename Akbar Road of Delhi. He
also proposed to rename it as Maharana Pratap Road. This news was flashed
and within a few hours film star Rishi Kapoor posted number of tweets
attacking Nehru-Gandhi family. Rishi Kapoor asked questions why roads, airports and government
buildings are not being named after artists. Rishi Kapoor’s tweets were
discussed at length in the Media. Points and counter points were given.
But the basic question remains unanswered as to why no importance was
given to writers and artists while naming the roads and buildings. Did you
ever see an airport or big government building named after Premchand, the
great Hindi writer or Nirala, the great Hindi poet or RK Laxman, the great
cartoonist or Bharat Ratna Ustad Bismillah Khan, the great Shehnai
maestro.
The answer is a big 'NO'.
Why this approach towards the writer and artist fraternity? We have to think
very seriously on this apathy of the ruling class towards writers
and artists. Is this the exclusive domain of politicians only? Roads in
Delhi are named after small time Netas but Tagore and Nirad Chaudhury or
Bhairappa did not get this privilege. There is Subramaniam Bharti Marg,
Amrita Shergill Marg, but is this sufficient? Only the building of Sahitya
Akademi is named as Ravindra Bhawan. Apart from that, I could not remember
any building named after any great literary personality. Is it the Netas'
privilege to get the roads named after them or their seniors in politics?
Do we have any responsibility towards our writers and artists? Is the
country not indebted to the writers and artists who made this country
great by their creative writings? Didn’t they make us hold our head high
in the world? Now the time has come for a national debate on naming the roads
and governments buildings.
When we analyse the
apathy of the political class towards writing community, we find that after the
independence writers were given due credit and respect by the political
class. Writers were nominated to Rajya Sabha and their voices were heard
by politicians. Hindi poet Ramdhari Singh Dinkar was such a meritorious
personality that he was given the title of Rashtra Kavi. Indian language
writers were also given respect. After that, film personalities
started getting nominations in Rajya Sabha. Writers were pushed on the
back stage.
The last Hindi writer
nominated to Rajya sabha was Vidya Niwas Mishra, who was nominated by Atal
Bihari Vajpayee government. After that, sports personalities, film
personalities and journalists got nominations but not any Hindi writer.
What is the thinking of the leaders about writers could be understood by one
of the statements of minister VK Singh just before the World Hindi
Conference held at Bhopal. That was the thinking of the minister whose
Prime Minister Narendra Modi himself is a poet. That was the reflection of
the thinking of the political class about the writing community.
If we analyse the reason
behind widening of the gap between politicians and writers we reach
numerous reasons. But the root cause of this goes back to the last years of the
seventh decade. Under the influence of an ideology, writers started
sharing the dais with the politicians. This movement of not sharing
the dais with Netas were promoted by those who always see to Ajoy Bhawan
for their writings. Few years back, the living legend of Hindi
criticism Namvar Singh released the autobiography of Pappu Yadav. Namvar
Singh was lynched by many writers. By not sharing the dais with
politicians, writers with certain ideology stopped the exchange of ideas
between the two. The imported ideology also put a barrier for promotion of
our glorious culture and writings. We forgot our cultural heritage and
started propagating the imported writings. This left the Marxist writers
to follow their masters and they become their masters voice. No
Marxist poet had the courage to write like Dinkar who was free from
ideological slavery.
He wrote - Martya manav ki
Vijay ka turya hu main, Uravashi, Apne samamy ka surya hun main (I am the sun
of my time). When any writer had the guts to write these types of lines, the
strength came from the rich cultural tradition. Dinkar possessed that. His
master piece 'Sanskriti ke char adhyay' was sidelined by the imported
ideology critics.
For this sorry state of
writers, the ideology is to be blamed which was imposed on
Indian literature. When literary persons stood in favour of one political
class and for decades advocated their ideology they lost respect. This
happened in India under the patronage of Progressive and Janwadi writers
associations. This harmed the literature as well as the reputation of the
writers.
In fact, writers have to be
neutral but in the last four to five decades very often writer under
the forced influence of Marxist writers left this neutrality and became
the torch bearer of leftists. Namvar Singh, who was criticised by the
leftists for releasing the book of Pappu Yadav, was the torch bearer of
left ideology. He even fought and lost the Lok Sabha election on CPI ticket.
But that political party never cared about Namvar Singh. They were in
power for many years in West Bengal and Kerala but never thought of
sending him to Rajya Sabha. Even the mediocres were nominated but not Mr Singh.
Now the time has come to
make a policy on naming the roads, airports and government buildings.
While making this policy, the government must also take into account the
contribution of writers and artists. It would be better to form a
committee which suggests the local authorities about naming the roads,
etc. It would be better to have a nominee from literature, art
and culture in that committee. If the present government makes a policy on
naming the roads and buildings then this monopoly of naming schemes and
roads etc can be curbed, otherwise this whimsical approach continues and
angry tweets or comments will continue to come.
