The Agony and the Ecstasy

Triveni has lived for fifty years, and I have unabashedly borrowed a famous title to describe its uneven life of trials and triumphs. I hope the Golden jubilee is the final triumph and Triveni will live to celebrate many more jubilees. For the Silver Jubilee, I wrote an article of reminiscences; now there are no reminiscences, there is only faith and hope. I have believed in what could be called the Indian Revolution, which like all revolutions is a process, not an event. It is for scholars capable of deep research and writers of keen perception to trace the beginnings of the revolution to Ram Mohan Roy or to Gandhi. This revolution has been compounded of its own renaissances and reformations, and when the founder of Triveni, Ramakoti, with abounding confidence, called it a journal of the Indian Renaissance, he what he said and lived up to it at the cost of his health and security. He gave everything he had to the cause of the renaissance.

The very first issue of Triveni proclaimed its ideals. It would be devoted to Art, Literature and History; its main function be to interpret the Indian Renaissance in all its aspects; it would seek to draw together cultured men and women in all lands and establish a fellowship of the spirit; all movements that made for Idealism, in India as well as elsewhere, would receive particular attention; it would count upon the co-operation of all lovers of the Beautiful and True; Triveni would be the Triple Stream of love, Wisdom and Power. This shows an all-comprehending vision on the part of a man in his Thirties who thought of conquering the world like one of the giants of the first Renaissance which began with the fall of Constantinople in 1453.

This vision is relevant now more than ever. There is no response to Beauty, and Truth is no god of any kind. There is little peace among men or among nations; there is craving for political power and for no power of the spirit which a Buddha or a Gandhi had; in spite of expanding knowledge, there is no wisdom equal to it, no concern for Enlightenment. There is every ‘ism’ but not Idealism. Triveni must, therefore, live, and its founder, Ramakoti will live with it.

Ramakoti had written in September 1928, some months after the inauguration of Triveni.

Triveni seeks to interpret the Renaissance movement as reflected in the various linguistic units of India. The Editor is an Andhra, and in close touch with literary and art movements in Andhradesa. But he is anxious to publish detailed accounts of similar movements in other parts of India...He makes an earnest appeal to scholars in other linguistic areas to write about the literary and art movements with which they are familiar. Translations of poems in different Indian languages into free verse will be particularly welcome. Triveni will thus lay the foundations for that inter-provincial harmony and goodwill which is the prelude to a federation of Indian culture….

This was recalled in the Silver Jubilee number, and in the speeches made on the jubilee occasion celebrated in Bangalore. Speakers like Navaratna Ranta Rao, Masti, Balasubramania Iyer made feeling references to the founder’s prophetic vision, long before there was a Sahitya Akademi or any other Akademi to foster a vision of the coating together of Indian cultures. With Balasubramania Iyer and Chandrasekharan, Ramakoti had close affinity and in the present Editor, Bhavaraju Narasimha Rao, he has found a devoted successor. He gathered many friends and discovered and encouraged hundreds like me.

If Triveni is financially sound now and can continue to serve the Indian Renaissance, to which there can be no end, it will be serving a great purpose, in these days of cheap periodicals, politics devoid of principles and standards, and culture soiled by politics. Triveni should spread through the world, and I think in its present distraught condition, the world will realize its need for such a journal, thereby widening the scope and horizons of Triveni itself. I can easily foresee its centenary and its usefulness in the years beyond, in a world free from conflict and war, a shining mirror in a paradise of culture….