8th HY Sharada Prasad memorial Lecture Introduction (15.4.2019, IIC)

Welcome to the 8th H Y Sharada Prasad Memorial Lecture being held on what would have been his 95th Birthday. I thank all of you for being here.

The Memorial Lecture, which we have tried to hold annually, celebrates the diverse engagements of Sharada Prasad – from the freedom movement to media and journalism, from language and literature, to design, music, and culture.  Previous speakers have been:

• Mukul Kesavan on “India and Republican Virtue”;
• Sanjaya Baru on “Media, Business and Government”.
• Sugata Srinivasaraju on “Negotiating Two Worlds: Bilingualism as a  Cultural Idea’’;
• Ullas Karanth, on  “Recovering Nature in a Crowded Subcontinent”.   
• Ram Guha on “The Art and Craft of Historical Biography”.
• Sriram Ramaswamy on “Mass Movements: A physicist looks at Living Matter.”
• Jairam Ramesh on Wise Counsel: Reflections on the Planning Era.

Many of you present knew Sharada Prasad, or Shouri as we called him, in his lifetime and remember him.  Some others here would probably only have heard of him as the information adviser to three Prime Ministers, particularly Indira Gandhi, but also Morarji Desai and Rajiv Gandhi.

Some others may remember him as a translator of the works of the writers RK Narayan and K Shivarama Karanth, or as an editor of the Selected Works of Jawaharlal Nehru.    Some may remember him as a  journalist who started his work life with The National Standard (Indian Express),  became one of the youngest news editors of a national daily at age 24, and, post-retirement, wrote a widely read column in The Asian Age.

What is perhaps less known is Sharada Prasad’s long and deep involvement with the world of design, which began probably well before the time that he worked with Charles and Ray Eames on the Nehru exhibition in 1964-65.   Besides that friendship, he had a long association with the National Institute of Design from the time it was set up,  finally going on to being  the chairperson of its Board in the 90s.   

Sharada Prasad had a very unsentimental approach to design — simple was good, as showed in his life and his possessions.  While he has been called the epitome of the culture of Mysore, he was decidedly unimpressed by the meretriciousness of the Mysore Palace, privately remarking that it was a  “monstrous wedding cake”.   He was no fan of ornamentation, and could be quite dismissive of the overdecorated temple architectures of his home country. 

But he was not an unalloyed worshipper of the modern either —  at Harvard, he lived in a building designed by Gropius, which he said was a remarkable exercise in creating uncomfortable living quarters could be.  For Sharada Prasad, form and function had to go together.

I am delighted that this year we have the well-known and very innovative designer, Itu Chaudhuri speaking on A Place for Design.  Itu represents an approach to design that combines good taste with a work ethic — design is not separate from your thinking, from your work, from your business.  All of those are integral aspects of being and working.   And fun.  Read Itu’s blog.

The work of his company Itu Chaudhuri Design can be seen across the country, in the packaging of a popular snack food chain.  Sometimes the cover is better than the book.  

I would like to thank Itu for agreeing to give this talk.  I should also thank two special people — Mukul Kesavan and Itu’s daughter Uttara — who persuaded him.  

Itu’s talk today is to me a natural continuation of a friendship between our parents —  his father, the famous sculptor Sankho Chaudhuri, would frequently drop in at Shouri’s office, and sometimes after a walk in the Lodhi Gardens would drop in for a chat.  (I think Itu also came occasionally — I can imagine he would have been  interested in meeting someone who was a personal friend of Mallikarjun Mansur and Gangubai Hangal).  We would also frequently meet Itu’s parents at the house of our close mutual friends, the Ranas.   I  am delighted to see Ira-ben here, after a long time.  It is also lovely that this family  friendship continues to our children’s generation. 

Please welcome Itu Chaudhuri.

7th H Y Sharada Prasad Memorial Lecture Introduction (15.4.2018)

Welcome to the Welcome to the 7th H Y Sharada Prasad Memorial Lecture being held on what would have been his 94th Birthday. I thank all of you for being here.

For the family, today is also a day of remembrance not just of Sharada Prasad, but also his brother Dr H Y Rajagopal, whom we lost 2 weeks ago. (And his sister Papu who passed away 5 years ago on the 14th).

Most people here would probably remember Sharada Prasad as the press advisor to three Prime Ministers, particularly Indira Gandhi, with whom he worked throughout her tenure, starting in January 1966 to that last fateful day in 1984. He however had a rich and productive career before (and after) that period: as a student leader and freedom fighter in the Quit India movement, as one of the youngest news editors of a national daily at age 24, and as the first Indian Nieman Fellow at Harvard in 1955-56 — I can almost hear his self-deprecating chuckle: “Little known facts about little known people’’. All this was before 1957, when he entered the labyrinths of Indian bureaucracy at the instance of US Mohan Rao, who stumped him with the poser: ‘if you could have worked for Goenka, why can’t you work for Nehru?”

The Memorial Lecture, which we have tried to hold annually, celebrates the diverse engagements of Sharada Prasad – from the freedom movement to media and journalism, from language and literature, to design, music, and culture. We have been fortunate to have had a very distinguished sequence of speakers:

• Mukul Kesavan on “India and Republican Virtue”; 
• Sanjaya Baru on “Media, Business and Government”. 
• Sugata Srinivasaraju on “Negotiating Two Worlds: Bilingualism as a Cultural Idea’’;
• Ullas Karanth, on “Recovering Nature in a Crowded Subcontinent”. 
• Ram Guha on “The Art and Craft of Historical Biography”.
• Sriram Ramaswamy on “Mass Movements: A physicist looks at Living Matter.”

Today we have Jairam Ramesh, who will talk on , who will talk on Wise Counsel:Reflections on the Planning Era.

I had a personal reason to nudge Jairam into speaking on what currently seems to be a rather unpopular idea at the moment— Planning — and an institution that has been dismantled and may soon be forgotten — the Planning Commission. I am particularly thankful to him for indulging me.

The short decade of 1957-1966 was a period of extraordinary productivity and fulfilment for Sharada Prasad. This is the period he moved to Delhi, and married Kamalamma. This is when Ravi and I were born. And this was a period when he and Kamalamma made some lifelong friends who formed our world and shaped our lives. There was a reconnection with some old friends such as the sociologist MN Srinivas, and the trio of brilliant photojournalists from Mysore: T Kasinath, TS Nagarajan and TS Satyan. There were new friends and colleagues such as Sheila Dhar and PND. 

From 1959-1966, Sharada Prasad was the Chief Editor of Yojana, the magazine of the Planning Commission. Some of my parents’ closest friendships were with the people he worked with there and their families:

• A Vaidyanathan and Shanta who were also neighbours in Patel Nagar, and whose daughters Rama and Radhika were our first friends and continue to be close;
• TN Srinivasan, whose son Sridhar was my best friend in school and still is; 
• Pitambar Pant and BhanuPant, whose sons Chandrashekhar and Dipankar were like older brothers to us when we were growing up.
• ManuShroff and Rashmi, whose son Gautam and I have played, studied, worked together almost continuously over the past 50 years…
• K S Krishnaswamy and Madura Krishnaswamy;
• and from a few years earlier, Padma Desai (and Jagdish Bhagwati).

I can also recall some others whose families we got to know:

• Arun Ghosh
• Ramdas Honavar
• Sukhomoy Chakravarty, whose daughter Charu was perhaps my most brilliant colleague at IIT.

There were other friendships, perhaps not as intimate, such as KN Raj and Sarsamma, S. Guhanand Shanta, IG and Bibi Patel, Amartya Sen, Mrinal Datta Chaudhury, Dharma and Lovraj Kumar, BS Minhas.

This was a time where we acquired a larger family. The doctors who delivered Ravi and me at St. Stephen’s Hospital, Dr Savitri Kavan and Dr Lucy Oommen became sisters to my mother and father respectively. Another neighbour was the psychoanalyst Lillian Fisher, family to us in New York and witness at my wedding to Nivedita. It was a period when Sharada Prasad was still “Shouri” to everyone close to him. It was also when the Gandhian became a Nehruvian too.

The end of this period saw Shouri’s first major venture into the world of design. In 1964-65, he worked with Charles and Ray Eames on the Nehru exhibition as the editorial consultant (the photo by Charles Eames is from that period). This assignment brought to us a new set of friends, of which I will mention only some: 

• the diplomat Nirmaljit Singh and Premalya Singh, 
• Ashoke Chatterjee, who later headed NID,
• and Mansinh Rana, the architect, and Yashwant Rana, whose sons Kshitij and Bharatwere our closest friends through the 60s and 70s.

I am not going to attempt a formal introduction of today’s speaker Jairam Ramesh. Wikipedia today doesn’t seem to leave as ``little known’’ any fact about well-known people (such as whether he was born in Chikmaglur on April 9, 1954 or 1955). Jairam did stellar work for our ecological heritage as the Union minister for Environment and Forests, a responsibility which he undertook with his customary passion, intelligence, rigorous analysis and energy. He continued in this vein when he became minister for Rural Development. How often does one see a cabinet minister drive himself to a NGO and engage for hours with those working in the field to understand the challenges of the sector? (May we have more such people in government.)

Jairam is a brilliant and meticulous writer. Last year saw two biographies of Indira Gandhi, and I wouldn’t hesitate to say that Jairam’s “A Life in Nature” was the more insightful, better written and painstakingly researched. Indeed, of all the attempts on her life, his is perhaps the one she would have most identified with. 

With reference to the subject of today’s talk, Jairam is perhaps the best qualified person to talk about Planning. He has had a long involvement with India’s planning process and economic reforms, and spent several years in the Planning Commission in various capacities. And he has the breadth of vision and historical sweep to review the institution and its impact. 

In the last year or so, he has been poring over archives in particular the PN Haksar and Pitambar Pant papers for his forthcoming book on Haksar — and these would have given him unique insights into the functioning of the Planning Commission and the people who propelled the early development of India. 

Please welcome Jairam Ramesh.

5th H Y Sharada Prasad Memorial Lecture: Introduction (16.4.2016 IIC)

 Welcome to the fifth H Y Sharada Prasad Memorial Lecture. I thank you all for joining us on this occasion, which is being held one day after what would have been Sharada Prasad’s 92nd birthday. 

For those in the audience who did not know him: Holenarasipur Yoganarasimham Sharada Prasad was a journalist, editor, freedom fighter, writer, translator, bureaucrat, teacher and cultural scholar. 

He was News Editor of the Indian Express, Bombay at the age of 24, and the first Indian Nieman Fellow at Harvard in 1955-56. He joined the Government of India in 1957 (at the injunction of U. S. Mohan Rao, who asked him if he had worked for Goenka then why he couldn’t work for Nehru), working first in the Publications Division and then succeeding Khushwant Singh as Editor of the Yojana magazine of the Planning Commission, before being picked by Indira Gandhi to join her staff. 

He was Information Adviser to three prime ministers for over 20 years from 1966. He received the Padma Bhushan in 2000, and the Indira Gandhi Award for National Integration. He served as Vice-President of ICCR and Chairman of NID. 

Sharada Prasad wrote and edited several books, one called The Book I won’t be Writing, and was an editor of the Selected Works of Jawahar Lal Nehru. He also translated RK Narayan’s Swami and Friends into Kannada, and several of K. Shivarama Karanth’s books into English. 

Sharada Prasad, or Shouri, as family and old friends called him, had a wide range of interests, and was involved with a large number of institutions. The concept behind the Memorial Lecture is to celebrate the diverse engagements of Sharada Prasad – the freedom movement, the Indian nation, media and journalism, language and literature, Kannada, Design, music, culture, nature and many other things such as mangoes. 

• Mukul Kesavan delivered the first lecture on “India and Republican Virtue”; 
• Dr Sanjaya Baru the second on “Media, Business and Government”. 
• The third lecture was delivered by Sugata Srinivasaraju on “Negotiating Two Worlds: Bilingualism as a Cultural Idea’’; 
• and the fourth was by Dr K. Ullas Karanth, on “Recovering Nature in a Crowded Subcontinent”. 

Today, India’s pre-eminent independent historian, writer and environmentalist Dr Ramachandra Guha will speak to us about “The Art and Craft of Historical Biography”.

A friend asked me some days ago: ``How you manage to get speakers one would run to hear, even if there wasn't this special Shouri connection?’’ I think it is because of who Shouri was and his ability to befriend a wide variety of people, including the finest minds and talents across generations and cultures. One such person is today’s speaker. 

Ram Guha needs little introduction to most of you, so I will spare you a long recitation of his biography (look it up on Wikipedia, it is mostly correct), other than to note that he is the recipient of 

• the Leopold-Hidy Prize of the American Society for Environmental History for 2001, 
• the RK Narayan Prize (2003), 
• the Padma Bhushan (2009), 
• the Sahitya Akademi Award for India after Gandhi (2011), and 
• the Fukuoka Asian Culture Prize (2015).

He’s written many books, of which I will list only a few:

• This Fissured Land: An Ecological History of India (OUP) (with Madhav Gadgil, 1992)
• Savaging the Civilized: Verrier Elwin, his tribals and India (University of Chicago Press; OUP) (1999)
• A Corner of a Foreign Field: An Indian history of a British sport (Picador) (2001)
• India after Gandhi: The history of the world's largest democracy (Ecco) (2007)
• Gandhi Before India (Penguin) (2013)

Instead I will try to give you an idea of my father’s friendship with Ram. In an article several years ago, Ram wrote that he first met my father at G Parthasarathi’s house, an occasion when GP mama was in full flow (probably about cricket). In that article, Ram noted: 

``When Sharada Prasad writes, if you have any sense you drop everything else and read him.’’    

If I were to guess why Ram became a friend of my father —it’s probably hinted at in these words he wrote in another article:

If I was to describe Sharada Prasad in one word, it would be “civilized”. He’s the most civilized person I know and that is embodied in his appreciation of the four great arts: music, painting and aesthetics, literature, and cricket

I first came in touch with him through the book on Karnataka that he and T.S. Satyan did in the late 1970s. It was a celebration of the State, and in it Sharada Prasad wrote: “The grace and elegance of Karnataka are expressed in the brush strokes of K.K. Hebbar and the square cuts of G.R. Vishwanath.”

In yet another article in The Hindu titled ``The Good Indian’’, Ram wrote: 

A friend of mine once described Sharada Prasad as ‘the thinking man’s Khushwant Singh’. The characterisation was accurate as well as incomplete. For the scholarship was subordinated to an integrity of character and a selfless commitment to the country that he shared with his readers. This quiet, learned, dignified,and always decent man was, above all else, an Indian.

I recall my father telling me (it was perhaps after reading a cricket-related article in the newspaper), “you know, he is not a Bengali”. And that is how we learned of an older family connection. Among my parents’ circle of friends soon after their moving to Delhi in the late 50s were people like Sheila Dhar and Ram’s aunt/cousin Dharma Kumar. But I’m convinced that even more than that, it was due to his deep admiration for Ram’s great-uncle K Swaminathan, editor of the Collected Works of Mahatma Gandhi, the 100 plus dull olive-green volumes of which occupied a prominent place in the massive bookshelves of our living room. 

The first time I recall meeting Ram was at the Nehru Memorial Library, when after a talk by him, there was a private meeting with him, BR Nanda-ji and my parents. In that conversation between them, there was a warmth and respect and the familiarity of kindred minds and equals. 

My father was a great admirer of Ram’s approach to history — of going beyond the Marxian method of ascribing events to economic and social forces alone, in recognising the extraordinary and significant roles played by individuals. And not merely the well-known, big names (the Gandhis, Tagores, Nehrus), but others, who contributed substantially and had interesting life stories, such as Verrier Elwin. And several other people who contributed to the literary and cultural richness of our nation. That is why they were such great admirers of RK Narayan, Shivaram Karanth, MS Subbulakshmi, Mallikarjun Mansur, Gangubai Hangal, DG Tendulkar, KV Subbanna (G R Vishwanath) and so on. Shouri’s own approach was to write short almost exquisite sketches about such figures; Ram’s approach is more systematic and scholarly but just as elegant. 

This is not to say that they saw eye-to-eye on every matter. My father famously did not maintain a diary for future generations to understand the inner workings of Indian politics of the 60s through the 80s at the highest levels, something that is invaluable for a historian such as Ram. 

The other thing is not something he voiced directly but hinted at a couple of times — that the environmentalist in Ram failed to acknowledge the sterling role played by Indira Gandhi in conservation and in protecting the environment, starting with what he considered one of the finest speeches on which he had worked — her 1972 Stockholm conference address, a speech that has been twisted in so many ways by so many people. Perhaps good speeches are meant to be quoted, great ones misquoted.

Ram, I’m sure Shouri would have eagerly read your book Makers of Modern India, marking it with his editor’s pencil, as well as Gandhi before India and also your upcoming book.

I’m not sure how you and he manage/managed to write so prodigiously, often over 5000 words a day. But we hope to see many more books come from your pen, to keep our Umberto Eco-esque anti-libraries full.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mesd0giZ8HM

4th H Y Sharada Prasad Memorial Lecture Introduction (15 April 2013)

It is my pleasure and privilege to welcome you to the H Y Sharada Prasad Memorial Lecture, today’s being the fourth in the series, and the first being organised by the Nehru Memorial Museum and Library. I thank you all for joining us on this occasion, which, had he been here, would have been Sharada Prasad’s 89th birthday. Also on behalf of my mother, who unfortunately cannot be here, due to her fragile physical condition.

Sharada Prasad, or Shouri, as family and old friends called him, had a wide range of interests, and was involved with a large number of institutions. I am happy that thanks to the efforts and support of Prof. Mahesh Rangarajan, we are holding this year’s lecture at one of those institutions to which he devoted a significant part of his life. And in this building designed by a dear friend of Shouri’s, Mansinh Rana, whom we lost some months ago.

Our conception of the annual Memorial Lecture was to celebrate the diverse engagements of my father – the freedom movement, the Indian nation, media and journalism, language and literature, Kannada, Design, music, culture, and so on. In 2009, Mukul Kesavan spoke on “INDIA AND REPUBLICAN VIRTUE”; then Sanjaya Baru on “MEDIA, BUSINESS AND GOVERNMENT” and last year, Sugata Srinivasaraju on “NEGOTIATING TWO WORLDS: BILINGUALISM AS A CULTURAL IDEA’’.

This year, we have the noted conservation scientist, K. Ullas Karanth, who will speak on “Recovering Nature in a Crowded Subcontinent”. 

Ullas has received the Sierra Club International Earthcare award, the Paul Getty Award for Conservation Leadership and the Padma Shri. He has written books such as The Way of the Tiger and The View from the Machan, where he emphasizes how science, knowledge of both mathematics and biology in particular (something which our education system seems to consider two different worlds), can help us understand and save our endangered environments. I knew that Ullas was instrumental in getting us to change the techniques used to count tigers, in particular using camera capture. But it was a revelation to me, when speaking with him and reading his books, that these estimation techniques were based on the solid mathematical foundations of random sampling, a tradition dating back to Laplace in the late 18th century. The other striking thing about Ullas’s viewpoint on the future of wildlife in India is that unlike most conservationists who tend to prophecy doom and gloom, he finds reasons for optimism, and sees in them opportunities for creating a sustainable action plan for conserving our environment.

There also is a personal dimension. Ullas represents for us the continuation to the next generation of a close and remarkable friendship between Shouri and Ullas’s father, the polymath Kota Shivarama Karanth. As many of you know, Shouri translated into English some of Karanth’s novels and his autobiography: The Headman of the Little Hill; Woman of Basrur; Ten Faces of a Crazy Mind.

Karanth used to stay with us whenever he visited Delhi, and was to Ravi and me, a grandfatherly figure. We used to go on long walks in the Lodhi Gardens and play ridiculous word games with him, one of which involved keeping a poker face and answering “Tomato” to any question, no matter how silly. On one of these walks he was stopped and asked by someone (who perhaps recognized him) if we were his grandchildren, to which he answered, “No, but they are grand children”. 

This year we celebrate one of Shouri’s lesser-known interests, that in Nature. In fact, the last book that Shouri wrote, sitting up long hours and combating Parkinson’s, was a coffee-table book with Ashok Dilwali, on Life and Landscapes of India, part of the 12-volume series Incredible India published by Wisdom Tree.

Shouri’s wasn’t a scholarly knowledge of plants and animals, but an easy, ingrained familiarity with the trees, flowers, birds and animals around him. He could identify a bewildering number of flowers and trees in parks such as Lodhi Gardens or Lal Bagh, and knew the names of all the birds that we saw in our garden and wherever else we went. And when in doubt, he would take care to ask someone who knew, usually his younger brother Prof. H Y Mohan Ram. To him, knowing these things was perhaps part of being a culturally rooted person. 

Two animals that fascinated my father were tigers and elephants. Perhaps this came naturally to anyone from Mysore state. There was that wicked witticism about the Wodeyar weight – maggoo idu aane, adu maharaja (child, this here is the elephant, and that is the maharaja). On a different note is Shouri’s description of Karanth: “The King Elephant of the Southern Forests”, a lone tusker who sought no followers.

And tigers. One of his favourite anecdotes relates to when they were in a convoy of cars with Indira Gandhi, driving back to Delhi through Sariska, when a majestic tiger strolled onto the road and settled himself there, making the Prime Minister wait a good 40 minutes before he sauntered off. The vahana decided what Durga should do. Ullas will tell us more about this magnificent animal.

Let me once again welcome you to the Memorial Lecture. Prof. Rangarajan, himself a conservationist of note, will now introduce Dr Ullas Karanth.

3rd H Y Sharada Prasad Memorial Lecture Introduction (IIC, 15.4.2012)

Welcome to the Third H Y Sharada Prasad Memorial Lecture. I thank you all for joining us on this occasion, which had he been here, would have been Sharada Prasad’s 88th birthday. Also on behalf of my mother, who unfortunately cannot be here, since she is confined to bed after two recent fractures. 

Throughout his life, Sharada Prasad, or Shouri as family and old friends called him, engaged with a very wide spectrum of ideas, people and institutions, which enriched his life tremendously, and to which he contributed.  Our conception of the annual Memorial Lecture was to celebrate each of these diverse engagements.  In the first lecture, Mukul Kesavan spoke on the nature of the Indian Republic and the dominant strand of the freedom and nation building enterprise of which Shouri was a part.  The second lecture was by Sanjaya Baru on the media, its business and ethics, again an institution and its issues with which Shouri was constantly involved. This year, we visit another theme in which Shouri had a lifelong involvement – language and literature, particularly his mother-tongue Kannada, its relationship with the world, and translation. Sugata Srinivasaraju will speak to us on “Negotiating Two Worlds: Bilingualism as a Cultural Idea”.

Some time ago, in another part of this Centre, Ram Guha cited Sharada Prasad for his linguidextrousness, and the importance of his contribution to both the Kannada and English literary worlds. Sitting in the audience, this was a pleasant experience, a revelation to me. For, while I knew my father knew a handful of languages, and wrote compellingly in both Kannada and English, I never associated him with a polyglot facility for picking up languages quickly– unlike say his teacher B. S. Kesavan, or his close friends from college, NV Krishna Murthi and MV Krishnaswamy. Or maybe I was unconsciously comparing him with the gold standards of multilingual dexterity set by Mysoreans such as BM Srikantiah through to AK Ramanujam.

It is about 70 years ago that Shouri began writing (in the public, publishable sense of the word), in English and in Kannada. At age 18-19, during the Quit India Movement, he maintained a diary in prison, a volume of which my mother discovered a couple of years ago, and which Sugata edited and published two years ago as “A Window on the Wall”. Rosy D’Souza, who is also with us here, translated it from English into Kannada. Around the same time in the early 40s, Shouri also translated into Kannada R. K. Narayan’s first novel “Swami and Friends”. Indeed, for many Mysoreans of that generation, Shouri’s translation was their first encounter with the charming town of Malgudi and its residents.

Most of Shouri’s later translations were in the other direction -- from Kannada to English – chiefly the novels and autobiography of his friend and true renaissance man Shivaram Karanth: Hucchu Manasina Hatthu Mukhagalu (translated as Ten Faces of a Crazy Mind), Maimanagala suhiyalli (translated as Woman of Basrur) and Kudiyara Kusu (translated as The Headman of the Little Hill). And several short stories and essays of writers like Masti Venkatesh Iyengar and others.

It is now my pleasure to introduce this evening’s speaker, Sugata Srinivasa Raju. Sugata is a journalist, writer and translator. Many of you may have seen his articles in Outlook Magazine. Prior to this he worked with The Hindustan Times, Deccan Herald and contributed to the Irish Times in Dublin.  He was also the founding faculty member of the INDIAN INSTITUTE OF JOURNALISM & NEW MEDIA in Bangalore. At 26, he was the youngest editor of ANIKETANA, a quarterly journal of Kannada language and literature in English, published by the Academy of Letters in Karnataka.

In 2000, he was awarded the British Chevening Scholarship for print journalism at the University of Westminster and between 2008 and 2010, he was an ILI Fellow of the Aspen Institute in Colorado.

Beyond sharing a journalistic gene, Sugata combined Shouri’s love for both his mother tongue with a facility with the other tongue (or what one of my parents’ professors called the Step-mother tongue).

Sugata's books include EKUSHEY FEBRUARY, a volume in Kannada published in 2004. PHOENIX AND FOUR OTHER MIME PLAYS, published in 2005, was a translation of his father's plays from the Emergency years, which won him the Karnataka Sahitya Academy translation prize. In 2008, he published KEEPING FAITH WITH THE MOTHER TONGUE - THE ANXIETIES OF A LOCAL CULTURE. Most recently, in February 2012, his book PICKLES FROM HOME- THE WORLDS OF A BILINGUAL was released. Sugata is currently working on a biography of Shivaram Karanth. I am still awaiting the release of a long overdue book on my parents’ dear friend and my “guru”, the film-maker M V Krishnaswamy or MV Kittu.

It was through MV Kittu that Sugata was introduced to my parents. And very soon became someone that Shouri in his last years used to refer to as my “new young friend”. Even in the last few months of his life, when he was frequently disoriented, Shouri’s eyes would light up on hearing that Sugata was on the phone. And I can never forget that look of pure innocent joy on his face when a packet from Sugata arrived with Ballavaru Bahalilla, the second volume of the Kannada translation of Shouri’s “The Book I Won’t be Writing”.

So let us all welcome Sugata Srinivasa Raju.

2nd H Y Sharada Prasad Memorial Lecture Introduction (IIC, 17.4.2011)

Good evening and welcome to the second HY Sharada Prasad Memorial Lecture -- Dr Sanjaya Baru will be speaking about “Media, Business and Government”. I’d like to thank all of you for coming here and sharing this moment with us – On the 15th of April, Sharada Prasad would have been 87.

Sharada Prasad, “Shouri” or “Sharada” to most of you, was a man of many facets: Freedom fighter and nationalist, journalist, editor, writer and translator, teacher, music lover, and man interested in design, in culture, inthe arts. Many recall him as an unusual man of letters. Some of us may prefer to call him a man of words, a man of few words, but words well chosen – usually understated, but often sharp, witty, playful. Gentle, he wasn’t a man full of high sentence.

While we all have our personal memories of him, the best way, we felt, to remember Shouri was to have a series of lectures, which engage with the ideas, concepts,values and institutions that were dear to him. Mukul Kesavan spoke at the first memorial lecture on India and Republican Virtue. Today we have Sanjaya Baru speaking about an institution that Shouri engaged with throughout his adult life: the media.

Sanjaya Baru needs no introduction to you all. Most of you are well aware of his expertise in both economics and the media, and his distinguished career with Times of India, Economic Times, Financial Express and now, as the editor of Business Standard. Sanjaya is heir to Shouri in many ways, not just by stepping into his shoes as Media Adviser to the Prime Minister, but also as someone who would uphold the ethics of the profession, someone who understood the calling of an editor. And when Shouri, after over 40 years of writing the report on India for the Encyclopedia Britannica Yearbook, decided that it was time to hand over that duty to someone younger who could analyse nations events, political, economic, social, it was without hesitation that he proposed Sanjaya’s name. 

The subject of Sanjaya’s talk is not merely topical, given recent events, but also one with which Shouri grappled even in the 40s and 50s, and later. Some years ago, when I asked him what he thought of the Herman-Chomsky Propaganda Model, he let out a gently dismissive cluck – that they stated the obvious, oversimplified, universalised, and above all didn’t provide a viable alternative. Sanjaya, I’m sure, will provide us a thoughtful perspective on how media, business and politics are mutually intertwined. Let us welcome Sanjaya Baru.

The Important Quality of Imran Qureshi

(At the roof garden of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York. Qureshi's Rooftop Garden Commission)

Given my predilections in art, I should have been greatly enamoured of Indian miniature paintings (whether Mughal or Rajput). After all they exhibited very modern techniques, foreshortening, flattening, bold usage of colour, abstract shapes and stylised idioms that combined tradition and modernity in radical ways. And yet I avoided them with a vehemence that surprises even me. Maybe it had to do with the smallness of scale — no large murals like a Chagall or Matisse that could overwhelm you at first sight. On reflection I think it had much more to do with the themes that these paintings were about — love scenes from the Krishna leela (which perhaps were a bit embarrassing at a particular age); religious scenes (which conflicted with the atheist posture that I had adopted); or maudlin renditions of ragas (abstract though the concept was, the personification seemed plain silly); or scenes from royal lives (which didn’t square with my republican instincts), particularly the hunting scenes (which also involved cruelty to animals). Having excluded most of these due to my youthful prejudices, all I was effectively left with were stylistic vines, vases, falcons and some nature scenes. And absent from these was a vibrant sense of life, of modern, contemporary life in particular.

Most modern Indian painters, and perhaps those from the subcontinent, have tried to use conceptual ideas, vocabularies and techniques from modern western art, while incorporating Indian themes. Just one such example is Hebbar’s line drawings of classical dancers and musicians. There have also been many novel and dramatic works that address modern Indian life. A friend of my parents, the painter Sarangan, used to use South Indian kitchen implements to press paints into stylistic depictions of Vaishnav symbols — or nudes with equal facility.

But few if any of these artists have used a traditional form and techniques from the past centuries such as those used in Mughal miniature paintings to depict quotidian, secular life. Which is what makes Imran Qureshi so significant as an artist. He presents an entirely fresh answer to the question of what constitutes a modern Miniature painting (at least in the subcontinental context). His small paintings embrace the format of the miniature — a single central figure around which there is a constellation of abstract decorative elements, foliage mainly, yielding a composition that is understood to be a significant episode in a narrative. Qureshi’s genius is to use masterly technique, a completely modern yet anachronistic central figure, and a completely secular unsentimental narrative. The Moderate Enlightenment series, particularly that of a bearded youth with bare upper body exercising with a pair of dumbbells or another pulling off his vest, is a sensuous, rich and path-breaking series of paintings. It immediately connects 21st century Pakistan, modern yet Islamicised, to an Indo-Persian traditional art form, linking the banality of everyday lower middle-class life to a 7th century ethos. And yet being figuratively secular and avoiding dramatic or religious themes.       

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I am glad I was able to see paintings from this series at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. The special exhibit was, of course, his Metropolitan Museum of Art rooftop garden commission which involved red paint spattered across the roof, as if some carnage had occurred there. But a closer look showed delicate brushwork, where the spattered paint had been feathered into leaves and petals. The overall effect, however, was underwhelming for two reasons: Upper-class New York around Central Park is too bloodless and effete and too removed from daily conflicts for the work to resonate as a socio-political statement. And to a subcontinental, the floor looked like just so much paan thook in a carefully chosen pantone shade. Blood or betel spit, “spatter either way” remarked a brilliant friend of mine.     

But the Moderate Enlightenment series of miniatures a floor below revealed a playfulness, humour and above all, terrific technique involving wasli paper, gold leaf, gouache and watercolours, acrylic paints, bleached negative images of scissors, collages with zippers and fabric (military fatigues in Artillery Pantaloons). It’s that humour, small and witty asides which seem altogether appropriate in a miniature, that make Qureshi so interesting. Rather than his larger site-specific installations that tend to be more single-minded and obvious in their message, such as the rooftop commission or And They Still Seek the Traces of Blood (though they show how he is able to apply the same precision of technique used for miniatures in large works of art too).

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