‘The Triple Stream’

...he that laboureth  right for love of Me
Shall finally attain! But, if in this
Thy faint heart fails, bring Me thy failure!
–The Song Celestial

‘The Triple Stream’ ¹

 

CHURCHlLL’S LATEST

MR. CHURCHILL has once again taken a hand in the old diehard game of prejudicing Indian interests. But he is no longer surrounded by the halo of office, and even his party-men have virtually discredited him. His latest attack on India recoiled on himself, Mr. Attlee uttered harsher words than even Sardar Patel; he laid to rest this specter of an ex-prime Minister meddling in Indian affairs, after the King of England had ceased to be Emperor of India. The Government of an independent of Dominion now asserts its lawful claim to deal with the Nizam as it deals with other Highnesses within the borders. To imagine that the Nizam an independent sovereign entitled to present his case before the United Nations, is to forget the basic principles of the Indian independence Act. British paramountcy lapsed the moment the King’s assent was given to that Act, and it was open to the successor Government of India to enter into fresh agreements with the Indian States. Those agreements could only lead to one result: the consolidation of the Central Governments power, through the accession, merger, or union of the States. If in defiance of all considerations of prudence, the Nizam persists in intriguing, against the Indian Union, the Nehru Government must perforce take military action to ensure peace and responsible government in an area obviously marked out by nature to be an integral part of India. Prime Minister Attlee was entirely correct in challenging Mr. Churchill’s thesis of a sovereign State of Hyderabad. He has also taken the logical course of advising the Nizam to come to terms with the Indian Government.

It is clear, however, that no settlement is possible so long as the present regime in Hyderabad takes its orders from Kasim Razvi and his gangsters, and the mass of Hyderabad citizens are oppressed and treated as of no account. The collection and manufacture of arms, the recruitment and training of men, and finally the gun-running across Karachi must stop forthwith. The Nizam, as the latest reports from Delhi indicate, has Commissioned Sir Mirza Ismail to start negotiations afresh, but the States Ministry is resolved not to treat any longer with the Nizam through intermediaries. Everything points to an early conflict, unless by a miracle the Nizam sees sense and accedes to the Union. If Mr. Churchill’s discomfiture and Mr. Attlee’s determined stand on the Hyderabad issue can work this miracle, Mr. Churchill will have achieved the distinction of hastening a peaceful settlement without ever intending it.

NEHRU IN MADRAS

The first official visit of the Prime Minister to Madras has been a great success from every point of view. Apart from his personal charm which wins him the love of the multitude, there is always about Pandit Nehru the statesman’s outlook which enables him to seize the essentials of a situation and to give a clear lead where leadership is needed. The South is torn by communal and linguistic distensions in a manner different from, but possibly more sinister than, the North. Congressmen in office have failed to live up to the ideals they cherished while the freedom struggle was in progress. Cliques and groups, and the insane race for profit and preferment, have lowered the prestige of the Congress. Add to this the widespread discontent caused by the high prices of cloth and foodstuffs. The atmosphere was thus charged with dull anger when Pandit Nehru came down south. He could not alter everything during a brief three-day, visit, but he has put new strength into men’s hearts and given them a new vision of India as a great, united, and beneficent Power. On questions like Hyderabad which agitated the public mind, he spoke with determination and assured South India that steps were being taken to effect a speedy solution.

A soldier of freedom, called upon to administer free India in the earliest and most critical stage of her career, Pandit Nehru has justified the nation’s hopes. In national as well as in international affairs, he has upheld the dignity of an ancient people seeking to use their new-won freedom for the highest good of humanity. His visit was therefore like a breath of fresh air, or a gleam of sunshine, valued more for the general toning up of life than for any immediate, tangible results. But results must follow, since the ground has been cleared and the seeds of wisdom sown in profusion.

MOTHER-TONGUE AND REGIONAL LANGUAGE

“Education through the mother-tongue,” was the slogan of Indian nationalists some years ago, when English was the medium of instruction at school and college all over India, and the languages of the land were relegated to a position of inferiority. The cry was perfectly natural, and quite in accordance with correct educational theory. These indigenous languages are now coming into their own, thanks to the emergence of freedom. But an unforeseen complication has arisen. A new term, ‘regional language’ has been coined to indicate the language spoken by a majority of the population of any area, usually a District. Thus Tamil is the ‘regional’ language of Madura District, and Telugu that of Godavari. When Provinces are redistributed on the basis of language, the regional language will also be the provincial language. And wide tracts between two neighbouring Provinces must be deemed to be, ‘bi-lingual.’ But in every Province and in several Districts, there are permanent settlers and temporary residents whose home-language is different from the provincial or regional language. That these should acquire a working knowledge of the regional language, so as to be able to speak it and write it, is not open to question, for, even the temporary sojourners in a different language area must be qualified to trade or seek service where they reside. But the acquisition of a language for certain specific purposes is entirely unconnected with the question of the medium of instruction at school and college. Should science and history be taught to Tamil boys in Rajahmundry through the medium of Telugu? Or should the Government open separate sections in institutions, where instruction is given in a language or languages different from the regional one? Or, in the alternative, can the particular group be permitted to start schools, with Government’s financial assistance, where their home-tongue is employed for purposes of instruction?

These are questions which have to be faced and solved in the immediate future, if linguistic antagonisms are to be allayed. Preferably they should be tackled on an all-India basis, so as to secure uniformity in all Indian Provinces and States. The position is being rendered difficult, by a certain type of linguistic imperialism which seeks to use political power to crush other linguistic groups. For example, the Telugus of Berhampore, a bi-lingual area, are told that since they are citizens of Orissa, they cannot be permitted to run a high school where Telugu is the medium of instruction! And even an eminent all-India patriot like Dr. Rajendra Prasad regrets that large sections of Bengalis, living in areas arbitrarily tacked on to Bihar have not been ‘Hindi-ised’.

A uniform India-wide solution can be achieved on the following lines: -

1.      Where about twenty to twenty-five per cent of the population of a town or village in any district in India wish to adopt their home-tongue, in preference to the regional language, as the medium of instruction, the Government must make provision for it, either by starting separate schools or by opening separate sections in existing schools.
2.      Where the number is not sufficient to warrant such a claim, a group of families must be permitted to make their own arrangements, and the Government assist them by a grant-in-aid.
3.      In colleges and Universities, the language of the Province will invariably be the medium of instruction, but visiting professors must be given the option to employ English or Hindustani, at their choice, for purposes of lecturing to students; and, by parity of reasoning, students who migrate from other Universities must be given similar option when they sit for examinations or answer questions in the class-room.

A final and satisfactory scheme can only evolve with the passage of time, but the above suggestions indicate the correct line of approach. Where the desire to impose your language on another is absent, the heart becomes pure and the vision clear.

Long years ago, Macaulay in his Essay on Milton elaborated a thesis that it is much more difficult to compose great poems in an age of advancing civilisation than in the infancy of mankind. Poetry, according to him, came more easily to Homer than to Milton, for Milton was working against the spirit of his age, which was essentially one of prose. Arid ergo, Milton’s achievement as an epic poet must be deemed greater than that of Homer!

A young friend who is a research scholar in the Department of English in the Benares University–the ‘Hindu’ may be dropped, in anticipation of coming changes–recurs to the theme in an essay contributed to this number of Triveni. By all standards, the present age is infinitely more ‘civilised’ than that of Milton. Science and industry are the ruling gods, and emotion and imagination are at a discount. This is definitely an age of prose. Eliot’s waste Land is symptomatic of the waste land in the region of poetry. So argues our friend, strengthening his case by a wealth of quotation from Freud and Jung. And he laments that the great song may nevermore return.

But is the position really so bad? And is Tagore the last in the line of great Indian poets? Assuredly not, for there is a fallacy underlying the present contention. The childhood of the individual and the childhood of the race are compared. The child and the savage are ‘of imagination compact’ and just as the ‘shades of the prison-house’ close around, as the child grows into youth and manhood, so too is advancing humanity deprived of the gift of wonder, of imagination, and of poetic utterance. So, we are to believe that in an age of science dominated by prose and the prosaic in life, Tagore wrote great verse and song just because he was akin to the child and the savage. The innocence and the imagination of Tagore was indeed like unto that of a child, but he was child-like only in the sense that the ‘vision splendid’ always abided with him. Between the primal instinct of the child or the savage, and the lofty intuition of a poet-seer like Tagore, there are all the stages of (a) wild, uncontrolled emotion, (b) emotion chastened and purified by reason, and (c) emotion ennobled by illumination, and equi-vision. And every age will have its great poets who transcend these stages and arrive at that of lofty intuition, and direct perception of the Infinite and all-pervading Ultimate Reality. The present age, like that of Pope, may not be congenial for the growth of the tender plant of poesy, but the world moves not in straight lines but in cycles. And if every year brings its spring, why should not the great ages of poetry come to us and the great song be sung again? To vary the metaphor, there may be a season of drought, but the rains must come, and with the rains, the green earth and the wild flowers and the music and dance of a joyous humanity.

A VETERAN JOURNAUST

It is difficult for me to realise that Sri K. Punnaiah, the veteran journalist, is no more. I met him in Bangalore a few hours before he left for Bombay to attend the meeting of the standing committee of the All-India Newspaper Editors’ Conference. He put into my hands the typescript of his article ‘One Year After Partition’, for publication in Triveni. He promised to write another on ‘The Achievements of the Nehru Government’ after his return from Bombay. But even before I could put into print what turns out to be his last contribution to any periodical, I got the shocking news of his death in Bombay. So, this is the end of the career, on earth, of my esteemed friend and senior in the profession of journalism.

Sri Punnaiah started life as a journalist in Bombay. He was associated with the late Sri K. Nageswara Rao in the editorship of the Andhra Patrika, the Telugu Weekly which was later shifted to Madras, in 1914, and became a great Daily. Sri Punnaiah was working on the staff in the days that I was a law student in Madras. He was also editing, in English, a fortnightly paper, Humanity, to spread the ideals of the Brahmo Samaj. Then came his migration to Karachi as Editor of the New Times. His lifework, however, was the building up of the Sind Observer from small beginnings to the position of a leading nationalist paper, with an All-India reputation for fearless advocacy of all righteous causes. Sri Punnaiah gave more than twenty-five years of his life to the paper he loved, and left it only when the paper changed hands with the coming of Pakistan. He then chose Bangalore for his home, and looked forward to a life of quiet retirement in this beautiful city. His first public appearance in Bangalore was at the Indian Institute of Culture, Basavangudi. He spoke on ‘The Future of Indian Journalists and as brother-journalist, presided and introduced him to a very cultured audience. He was apprehensive that the money-power might soon stifle independent journalism, and pleaded for the starting of papers on a co-operative basis. Speaking of the capitalists of who are acquiring control over newspapers, he said: “They will employ you and pay you fat salaries; they will feed you and groom you. And then, they will ride you!” That was the voice of a working journalist, giving the word of warning.

His last days were clouded by domestic calamities in quick Succession, but he bore them all like a hero. As he told me during our last meeting, “Yes, strength has been given to me. ‘It is the result of forty years of Brahmoism.”

His was a dedicated spirit.

¹ July 31.