LETTERS

The famous victory

"Behind a famous victory" (June 22) in West Bengal was perhaps the strong rural support base of the Left Front. The results in the different states in the recent round of Assembly elections might have been influenced by different factors, but there was one common factor - that those who were able to get the support of the rural masses won. The victory of the Left in West Bengal and the defeat of the Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam-led National Democratic Alliance in Tamil Nadu perhaps constitute a big boost to the People's Front and a cause of worry for the BJP. The Uttar Pradesh Assembly elections are crucial for the BJP as well as for the People's Front. Will it be a turning point?

A. Jacob Sahayam
Karigiri

It is true that Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee led the Left Front's campaign in West Bengal with a high degree of visibility and charm. He understood the need to teach English to schoolchildren in order to enable them to meet the challenges in the emerging world. Communism in West Bengal led the State to prosperity and to the Left Front victory in the election. On the other hand, the Left Democratic Front in Kerala failed badly and is desperately seeking reasons for the debacle. Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee realised that West Bengal lagged behind in several sectors, but E.K. Nayanar did not.

K.A. Solamon
Alappuzha

Correct figures

I would like to draw your attention to some erroneous statements in your esteemed fortnightly magazine. In the issue dated June 22, on page 4, some wrong figures have been mentioned with regard to the elections in West Bengal.

It has been mentioned in the article titled "Behind a famous victory" that 15 seats are reserved for candidates from the Scheduled Tribes in the State Assembly. The actual figure is 17. Sixteen of the seats were won by Left Front. Again, it has been mentioned that 58 seats are reserved for candidates from the Scheduled Castes. The actual figure is 59 seats. Again, it has been mentioned that 47 seats have been won by the Left Front. The correct figure is 48.

Kanti Biswas,
Minister-in-Charge, Department of Education
(Primary, Secondary and Madrassa),
Government of West Bengal
Kolkata

Editor's note: We thank the West Bengal Minister for these corrections. We stand corrected.

Palace massacre

The brutal massacre of King Birendra and the rest of the royal family of Nepal was indeed inhuman and highly condemnable ("After the massacre", June 22). King Birendra was an efficient monarch. He was totally devoted to peace and the progress of his country.

Abhijeet D. More
Nashik

R.K. Narayan

It was great reading your Cover Story "Malgudi's Creator" by N. Ram and others (June 8) about one of the greatest Indian novelists R.K. Narayan (Swami). His relationship with Frontline was as old as the magazine. Naturally your tribute to this great writer is a Collector's Item.

Bidyut Kumar Chatterjee
Faridabad

Thank you for the excellent photographic tribute to R.K. Narayan. It reminded one of a bygone era. R.K. Narayan's language had its own distinct identity. He could bring forth poignant facts in a humorous and factual manner. The smell of South Indian life pervaded his novels. When one read R.K. Narayan, one never felt that English was an alien language.

Y.K. Sheshadri
Mysore

"Malgudi's Creator" is the best tribute one could pay to the legendary author R.K. Narayan. For younger readers like me, the article by N. Ram offered important insights into the life and works of R.K. Narayan.

Ajaz Sharief
Bangalore

In a supercilious manner, C.V. Narasimhan refers to Bertrand Russell as one of the "two most unlikely awardees of the Nobel Prize for Literature".

Narasimhan seems to think of Russell only as a mathematician and a philosopher. Russell was much more than these. The limpid, lyrical prose of Russell, which cascaded in essay after essay for over fifty years, was enough to convince the Nobel Committee.

And one last word. When Narasimhan makes that comment on Bertrand Russell, it must be clearly understood that Russell is not under judgment; on the contrary, it is Narasimhan who is.

J.C.B. Abraham
Madurai

The Cover Story was an everlasting tribute to R.K. Narayan the great Indian author who carved for himself a niche among literary giants such as Dickens, Chekov and Tagore. He immortalised not only Malgudi but Mr. Sampath, Swami and the reluctant Guru of Oxford.

R. Ramasami
Tiruvannamalai

Although R.K. Narayan was a highly acclaimed writer, most of his works, except the televised version of Malgudi Days, have not reached the general public of our country. I appeal to the National Book Trust and other publishers, including The Hindu group, to publish selected works of R.K. Narayan the regional languages.

A.S.M.Khairuzzaman
Lanka, Assam

Credits

In the Photographic Tribute of the Cover Story, "Malgudi's Creator: The Life and Art of R.K. Narayan (1906-2001)", in the June 8, 2001 issue of Frontline, the photograph (on Page 67) of the writer with his mother and other members of his family is by T.S. Satyan, who has the copyright. The failure to credit this photograph, which appears above the picture of "Wicket-keeper Narayan", which is credited to T.S. Satyan, is regretted.

- Editor, Frontline

Film awards

A hue and cry is raised whenever an award is conferred on somebody for his or her achievements in the fields of art, culture or literature. Recently, when the National Film Awards were conferred on Anil Kapoor and Raveena Tandon, the sincerity, genuineness and integrity of an artist of the stature of Vyjayantimala Bali, who happened to chair the selection board, were questioned.

It is not that these selection boards always comprise men or women of letters or artists of national eminence who cannot be challenged. But never has an award or reward been given to any person without that causing some allegations of favouritism. The recent announcement of literary awards in Bihar and their subsequent cancellation are a good example of naked political favouritism of this kind.

May I, therefore, suggest that all award-giving organisations put a stop to this practice and instead contribute the money to a National Welfare Fund for helping artists or writers who would otherwise die of hunger and disease. Even the Padma awards should not have any monetary component except in the case of defence personnel who are honoured posthumously.

S.D. Pandey
Muzaffarpur

A message and the medium

I thank Parvathi Menon for her generous review of my book Politics After Television (May 11). However, I would like to clarify my argument about the press coverage of the Ram Janmabhoomi campaign.

In the context of vote bank politics, the decision to broadcast tele-epics on Doordarshan was a fateful one. The effect of televisual publicity was not simple or direct, given the deep divisions in terms of language and literacy. The broadcast's influence worked through the indigenous language (mainly Hindi) and English language print media, provoking different responses from each.

Some Hindi and English language periodicals leaned heavily towards the Janmabhoomi campaign, while others were noteworthy for their steadfast criticism. But there were differences in the use of language and in reporting conventions that divided the English and Hindi media.

Reporting conventions in the English press made it hard to distinguish between communal and merely religious support for Hindutva, whereas in the Hindi press this was a keenly felt distinction.

Consider the English language press briefly. English was a colonial language of command and it was used at many removes from indigenous culture. Post-Independence rule retained this distance in many ways. Thus English became, de facto, a symbol of transcending the limits of regional or communal views. In the press this became institutionalised in news values, that is, in the criteria of newsworthiness used to select and order facts in composing news stories. As a result, the religious and cultural appeals of a movement like Ram Janmabhoomi tended to be seen mainly in terms of law and order, as a potential threat to peace. Even if reporters had a keen sense of the campaign's emotional power, reporting conventions in the English press made it hard to grapple with the sociological fact of religious belief, except in reductive terms. This reflects the more state-centric character of the English language press in India and its limited (and elite) class base. The Hindi press, in contrast, has a rich history of anti-colonial struggle and a wider, indeed mushrooming, audience. Even if Hindutva is communal, the Hindi press could elaborate its religious claims without violating the conventions of good reporting. It was as if the English and Hindi language press belonged to two different worlds (to quote one BJP source).

The BJP actively exploited this divide, presenting the English press as a colonial hangover and as being hostile to Indian culture. In its laying of emphasis on a law-and-order response to the movement, one can retrospectively see that the English language press did not adequately engage with the cultural arguments advanced by the movement, in contrast to the Hindi press. I suggest that this was the broad structure of the print coverage. Even if there were English language newspapers that were sympathetic to the movement, and Hindi newspapers that were critical of it, a larger pattern of historical influence is discernible in how they covered it. In the end, the way in which secularism was institutionalised in the English language press was too narrow and rigid, relying as it did on its cultural distance from the indigenous language press and its appeal to the state authority. It is to be hoped that the experience of the last several years will bring the force of these lessons home to us.

Arvind Rajagopal
New York

India in the Chinese press

In the past few years, as China has been emerging as a powerful nation, its interest in its neighbourhood and the overall international scenario has gone up. This is well reflected by the number of reporters it has permanently posted in countries all over the world and the number of articles and editorials that are being published daily in its newspapers. As an important neighbour and probably the only challenge to its supremacy in the region, India is of course a country China would like to keep an eye on. The recent increase in the number of write-ups on India in the Chinese press is evidently a manifestation of the Chinese interest in and concern over Indian activities.

The same is, however, not the case with India. Although we do come across a few articles on China, there seems to be a lack of continuity. In my opinion, this is more because of the language barrier than because of any lack of interest. It is precisely with the intention of bridging this gap that I write this.

I am a post-graduate in Chinese from the Centre for Chinese and Southeast Asian Studies, Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi. In addition to the years spent in studying the language in India, I studied for one year in the Beijing Language and Culture University, China. I have visited China twice and have travelled extensively in the country. My study in Beijing included a course in the fundamentals of journalistic Chinese. I have been working with the Chinese service of All India Radio as a casual artist for translation and broadcasting since 1998 and I served as the official interpreter for the Ministry of Labour, Government of India, during the recent visit of the Vice-Minister for Labour and Social Security (China), Li Qiyan to India.

Through personal interest I have been monitoring various Chinese newspapers and web sites for the past few years. This is in addition to writing about China in the Indian and foreign media. I go through sites such as www.people daily.com.in (The People's Daily), www.xinhua.org (Xinhua News Agency), www.cyd.com.cn (China Youth Daily), www.gmdaily.com.cn (Guanming Daily), and www.bbc.co.uk/mandarin (a BBC Chinese news site) daily and it is from this experience that I observe that the number of articles in the Chinese press about India has gone up steeply. Many sites even have dedicated columns for news from India and the South Asian region. A number of these articles reflect the Chinese understanding of India and the way the Chinese look at developments around the South Asian region. In my opinion, increased access to the Chinese perspective through the media in India will definitely be of great interest.

Hari Venkatesan
New Delhi