मेघदूत: "नीचैर्गच्छत्युपरि दशा चक्रनेमिक्रमेण"

समर्थ शिष्या अक्का : "स्वामीच्या कृपाप्रसादे हे सर्व नश्वर आहे असे समजले. पण या नश्वरात तमाशा बहुत आहे."

G C Lichtenberg: “It is as if our languages were confounded: when we want a thought, they bring us a word; when we ask for a word, they give us a dash; and when we expect a dash, there comes a piece of bawdy.”

C. P. Cavafy: "I’d rather look at things than speak about them."

Martin Amis: “Gogol is funny, Tolstoy in his merciless clarity is funny, and Dostoyevsky, funnily enough, is very funny indeed; moreover, the final generation of Russian literature, before it was destroyed by Lenin and Stalin, remained emphatically comic — Bunin, Bely, Bulgakov, Zamyatin. The novel is comic because life is comic (until the inevitable tragedy of the fifth act);...”

सदानंद रेगे: "... पण तुकारामाची गाथा ज्या धुंदीनं आजपर्यंत वाचली जात होती ती धुंदी माझ्याकडे नाहीय. ती मला येऊच शकत नाही याचं कारण स्वभावतःच मी नास्तिक आहे."

".. त्यामुळं आपण त्या दारिद्र्याच्या अनुभवापलीकडे जाऊच शकत नाही. तुम्ही जर अलीकडची सगळी पुस्तके पाहिलीत...तर त्यांच्यामध्ये त्याच्याखेरीज दुसरं काही नाहीच आहे. म्हणजे माणसांच्या नात्यानात्यांतील जी सूक्ष्मता आहे ती क्वचित चितारलेली तुम्हाला दिसेल. कारण हा जो अनुभव आहे... आपले जे अनुभव आहेत ते ढोबळ प्रकारचे आहेत....."

Kenneth Goldsmith: "In 1969 the conceptual artist Douglas Huebler wrote, “The world is full of objects, more or less interesting; I do not wish to add any more.”1 I’ve come to embrace Huebler’s ideas, though it might be retooled as “The world is full of texts, more or less interesting; I do not wish to add any more.” It seems an appropriate response to a new condition in writing today: faced with an unprecedented amount of available text, the problem is not needing to write more of it; instead, we must learn to negotiate the vast quantity that exists. How I make my way through this thicket of information—how I manage it, how I parse it, how I organize and distribute it—is what distinguishes my writing from yours."

Tom Wolfe: "The first line of the doctors’ Hippocratic oath is ‘First, do no harm.’ And I think for the writers it would be: ‘First, entertain.’"

विलास सारंग: "… . . 1000 नंतर ज्या प्रकारची संस्कृती रुढ झाली , त्यामध्ये साधारणत्व विश्वात्मकता हे गुण प्राय: लुप्त झाले...आपली संस्कृती अकाली विश्वात्मक साधारणतेला मुकली आहे."

Thursday, September 03, 2009

Why did liberal D G Godse sketch for V D Savarkar's book?

V D Savarkar: "I have no quarrel with Mr Jinnah's two-nation theory. We Hindus are a nation by ourselves and it is a historical fact that Hindus and Muslims are two nations."

In early 1970's, I read '१८५७ चे स्वातंत्र्यसमर', लेखक: स्वातंत्र्यवीर विनायक दामोदर सावरकर ('1857's War of Independence' by Swatantryaveer Vinayak Damodar Savarkar, first published in English in 1909 in Great Britain).

I really liked it. In the past, the book had moved the likes of Bhagat Singh and Subhas Chandra Bose.

In 2007, it was published again. I came across it on August 28 2009.

I am trying to re-read parts of it. I am not liking it.

The best part of the book is wonderful line drawings made by D G Godse (द ग गोडसे). They probably were not there in the edition I had read earlier. Godse made them for the book's 1947 edition that was published by Phoenix publication, Mumbai.

Here are two of the drawings:
They just sum up what in the end 1857 was: Hangings and shootings.

D G Godse, as I knew him, was a die-hard liberal, a great proponent of composite culture of India. All of his literary work reflect that. The two-nation theory would be Godse's worst nightmare.

Then, why did he draw for Savarkar's book?

One possible reason: Savarkar's rabid anti-Muslim views were formed much time after, post-Andaman, he wrote this book. Maybe this was Godse's way of appreciating a part of Savarkar. The same part Bhagat Singh and Subhas Chandra Bose had highly appreciated earlier.

[Most intellectuals of Maharashtra have struggled with the dilemmas Savarkar poses. Even great historian Y D Phadke (य. दि. फडके) couldn't escape them.]

Second possible reason: Godse could work with authors he did not really like. For instance, there was no love lost between Vishram Bedekar (विश्राम बेडेकर) and him but he created the beautiful cover of Bedekar's award winning book: 'एक झाड आणि दोन पक्षी', १९८६ (Ek Zad Ani Don Pakshi, 1986). BTW- For me, the cover is better than the rest of the book!

Returning to 1857...

Geoffrey Moorhouse:

"...There was savagery on all sides in 1857, while at home Lord Palmerston wanted to see Delhi deleted from the map in reprisal for what had happened there. Atrocities against the British were also committed at Kanpur, where women and children were butchered without mercy, too, which guaranteed the appalling retribution that followed when the rebellion was put down.John Nicholson, who became a cult figure among his native troops (they thought he was an incarnation of Vishnu) and his fellow countrymen, proposed "a bill for the flaying alive, impalement or burning of the murderers of the [British] women and children of Delhi"; and one of his soldiers (a Quaker, no less) habitually bayonetted sepoys while chanting Psalm 116. That's the one that begins "I am well pleased: that the Lord hath heard the voice of my prayer"..."

(November 11, 2006, The Guardian)

Khushwant Singh:

"Indian scholars are not the only falsifiers of events. British historians indulged in it with equal zeal. Take, for instance, the Revolt of 1857. While the British call it the Sepoy Mutiny, Indians describe it as the First War of Independence. In fact, it was more than a mutiny of some sepoys of the forces of the East India Company. And it was by no means a war of independence waged by oppressed Indians.

A vast majority of Indians were opposed to it and large numbers of Indians helped to suppress it. Its Muslim supporters wanted to restore Mughal rule and bullied a reluctant Bahadur Shah Zafar to become their leader. Even the poet, Asadullah Khan Ghalib, kept a respectable distance from them. Hindus who rose in rebellion were led by their erstwhile rulers who had been ousted by the British. The credit for making 1857 the year of India’s First War of Independence goes largely to the pseudo-historian, Jawaharlal Nehru..."

Mr. Singh is wrong. It was not Nehru. It was Vinayak Damodar Savarkar who made 1857 the year of India’s First War of Independence.