Nayantara Sahgal's Invitation To Lit Meet Withdrawn, Draws Criticism // Nayantara Sahgal’s speech for Marathi Sahitya Sammelan: In some cases, our duty to hurt sentiments

Nayantara Sahgal's Invitation To Lit Meet Withdrawn, Draws Criticism
Political leaders and authors on Monday condemned the decision of the organisers of the All India Marathi Literary Meet to withdraw the invitation extended to noted author Nayantara Sahgal.
The decision to withdraw the invitation to Sahgal (91), who was earlier at the forefront of the “award wapsi” campaign, was taken after the MNS threatened to disrupt the function, the organisers said on Sunday. Maharashtra Navnirman Sena (MNS) chief Raj Thackeray issued a statement on Monday, admitting that one of his local party workers had opposed Sahgal’s presence at the literary meet. However, he added that “as the party chief, I am not against inviting her”.

“If Sahgal’s presence at the All India Literary Meet is transcending into a cultural exchange, I or my party will not oppose it,” Thackeray said, adding that he regretted the annoyance caused to the supporters of such literary events. Sahgal, a noted English-language author, was to inaugurate the 92nd literary meet on January 11 in the presence of Maharashtra Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis in Yavatmal district. Mumbai Congress chief Sanjay Nirupam criticised the decision to cancel Sahgal’s invitation, alleging that it was done at the behest of the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP)... read more:
https://www.huffingtonpost.in/entry/nayantara-sahgals-invitation-to-lit-meet-withdrawn-draws-criticism_in_5c332b7fe4b0d75a9832baf4?utm_hp_ref=in-homepage

Nayantara Sahgal’s speech for Sahitya Sammelan: In some cases, our duty to hurt sentiments
Written by Nayantara Sahgal
This is an emotional moment for me and I feel privileged to be here with you. I feel I am standing in the shadow of great Maharashtrians – Mahadev Govind Ranade who founded this sammelan, and whose name is part of the modern history of our country, and the distinguished Marathi writers who have chaired its conventions, and all the writers who have taken part in its sessions and whose writing has enriched the great creative enterprise known as Indian literature.

It is also an emotional moment for me because of my own connection with Maharashtra through my father, Ranjit Sitaram Pandit. I would like to tell you a little about him. He was a Sanskrit scholar from a family of distinguished Sanskrit scholars and he translated three Sanskrit classics into English: Mudra Rakshasa, Kalidas’s Ritusamhara and Rajtarangini. Rajtarangini is the twelfth-century history of the kings of Kashmir by Kalhana, and it had a special fascination for my father because his two great loves were Sanskrit and Kashmir. He worked on this translation during two of his jail terms during British rule and dedicated it to his Kashmiri father-in-law Pandit Motilal Nehru. His brother-in-law, Jawaharlal Nehru, wrote an introduction to this work when it was published. I am deeply grateful to Dr Aruna Dhere and Shri Prashant Talnikar for their great labour of translating this massive history into my father’s, and their own, native tongue, Marathi. I know that nothing would have made him happier.


Both my parents took part in the national movement for freedom under Mahatma Gandhi. My mother, Vijaya Lakshmi Pandit, was imprisoned three times and my father four times. During his fourth imprisonment he fell seriously ill in the terrible conditions and environment of Bareilly jail, and was given no medical treatment and my mother was not informed how very ill he was. Yet he had refused to ask for his release. When she was finally informed of his condition she was allowed to have a twenty-minute interview with him. It took place, according to the rule, in the office of the jail superintendent and under his watchful eye, which gave a political prisoner no privacy with his visitor. 

It shocked my mother to see him brought in on a stretcher. His head had been shaved and his body was emaciated. She almost broke down at the sight of him but somehow she held back her tears because she knew he would not want her to cry in front of the jailer. He told her why he wouldn’t ask for the favour of being released. He said “I have fought with the lions, Gandhi and Nehru. Do you want me to behave like a jackal now?” She knew she couldn’t change his mind so she controlled herself and sat near the stretcher and held his hand, and gave him news of home and the children, and what was growing in the garden he loved. When the government released him at last, it was only to die about three weeks later. Many years later, after independence, my mother was India’s High Commissioner in Britain and sat next to Prime Minister Winston Churchill at a lunch, and he said to her, “We killed your husband, didn’t we?” It was an admission that took her by surprise... read more:
https://indianexpress.com/article/opinion/nayantara-sehgal-marathi-sahitya-sammelan-speech-5527383/


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