9th H Y Sharada Prasad Memorial Lecture (Gopal Gandhi)

 Welcome to the 9th H Y Sharada Prasad Memorial Lecture, which we are holding — in person — on what would have been his 98th birthday, after a pandemic-induced hiatus. Thank you all for coming here. 

Many of you present knew Sharada Prasad, or Shouri as we called him, in his lifetime. Others may only have known of him as the information adviser to three Prime Ministers, particularly Indira Gandhi. (I’d like to say here that if you need more information about him, please ask me; please don’t look up the Wikipedia article about him; it is — as Geoff Boycott would say — “roobish”) 

My father had several other facets to him: a student leader who went to jail during the Quit India movement, an editor and journalist, a writer, a translator (particularly of the works of Shivaram Karanth and RK Narayan), a teacher, someone deeply interested in music, culture, design, and nature, and someone involved in the cultural institutions of the nation, such as NID and ICCR. 

The Memorial Lecture is intended to celebrates these diverse engagements. And I can think of no better person who embodies all these engagements than today’s speaker, Shri Gopalkrishna Gandhi. (Gopal-ji: Thank you for agreeing to deliver this lecture.) 

While email is generally a tedious medium, corresponding with Gopal-ji is to savour culture and scholarship at its best. I have had this pleasure — when serving as a typist to my father about his encounter with Harilal Gandhi on 30th January 1948, or a few years ago, about an intriguing photograph I found on the web of Gandhiji and HO Ally on their voyage to England. Gopal-ji should need no introduction to anyone here. 

The bio-sketch given is characteristically understated: that he teaches at Ashoka University, writes occasionally for newpapers, has held “administrative, diplomatic and Constitutional positions”, … and “has attempted two translations” — Vikram Seth’s A Suitable Boy into Hindi, and GU Pope’s rendering of the classic Tirukkural into contemporary English. 

The theme of Gopal-ji’s lecture today concerns the preeminent Indian personality of the 20th century, and the principal influence on both my parents: Gandhiji. “Sharada Prasad was a Gandhian first, and then a Nehruvian”, both temporally and temperamentally. The main figure of his formative years from whom he imbibed his values was his maternal grandfather Vajapeyam Venkatasubbiah of the Servants of India Society in Madras, and an associate of Gopalkrishna Gokhale. My father got to meet Gandhiji a couple of times, thanks to his friendship with Kanti Harilal Gandhi. (My mother Kamalamma, whose centenary was in February, also courted arrest in 1942. In 1948, at age 26, she was the official court interpreter for Shankar Kishtayya in the Mahatma Gandhi murder trial at Red Fort). 

Gopal-ji’s talk deals with a very significant period of Gandhiji’s life — his first prison sentence in India from 1922 to 1924 (coincidentally the years of birth of my parents) following a remarkable trial (or non-trial) for sedition that took place a hundred years ago. 

Please welcome Shri Gopalkrishna Gandhi.