The great liberal VS Srinivasa Sastri (1869-1946): Silver Tongue Of India

                                           VS Srinivasa Sastri in 1921

While India is already in the celebration of 150th Birth Anniversary of Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi on October 2 and it forgets some of the equally important sons of this soil who had also contributed to freedom struggles.

In the 21st century, we need more people like Valangaiman Sankaranarayana Srinivasa Sastri not Gandhi!

We have many Gandhis in our everyday walk of life protesting, hunger strike, etc. But there is hardly anyone promoting constitutional methods of fighting the government's injustice done to people, environment, etc.

I am referring the great classical liberal VS Srinivasa Sastri whose 150th birth anniversary was on last Sunday. Gandhi called him as elder brother.

"Sastri was a leading statesman during the Indian independence movement"

Sastri was born ten days before Gandhi on 22nd September, 1869 at a village called Valangaiman in Kumbakonam Town in Tamil Nadu. Unlike Gandhi, Sastri was born to a poor family and rose to school teacher and later Headmaster. 

After 17 years of teaching at various schools in Tamil Nadu, he become close associate of Gopala Krishna Gokhale in 1907 as part of Servants of India Society which was working for attaining freedom from British Empire.

Gokhale passed away in 1915 and Sastri was made as President of Servants of India Society. Sastri joined Indian National Congress in 1908 and left the party in 1922 due to differences on measures for attaining freedom from British. 

In a major reforms methods differences erupted in 1918, Sastri formed National Liberal Federation of India or Liberal Party in 1919 to fight for independence through constitutional methods which was followed by both MG Ranade and Gokhale. In 1922, Sastri was president of the liberal party.

The other main leaders of Liberal Party was Dinshah Wacha, Surendranath Banarjee, Bhupendranath, Ambica Charan Mazumdar, Tej Bahadur Sapru, Pherozeshah Mehta and M.R.Jayakar. 

Sastri was the true follower of Gokhale and not Gandhi as many would think and give wrong credit. None of Gokhale's core principles are accepted by Gandhi after he arrived from South Africa in 1914.

"in a lecture hall at Stanford, .... the eminent British historian Christopher Bayly speak on the history of liberalism in India. In a section others might well have glazed over, I heard Bayly mention Sastri’s name, clubbing him with other prominent liberals of his time: Hriday Nath Kunzru, Tej Bahadur Sapru, C.Y. Chintamani. Each of them opposed Gandhi’s non-cooperation movement because they believed the only effective opposition to the British government would come from within the constitutional process, that is, with certain deference for the law." More here.

Like Gokhale, Sastri strive from poor family to national figure after leaving the teaching profession. Both had every kind of parallels in their life and contribution to the freedom struggles through constitutional measures rather than revolutionary and direct action methods followed by Tilak etc.

Sastri was known for his masterful use of English oratory skills and diplomatic leadership role in different countries across the Empire. He was even called "The silver-tongued orator".

Sastri helped several poor students for their education. Sastri was Vice Chancellor of Annamalai University between 1935-1940. He faced the first Hindi agitation of students when Rajaji was Premier of Madras Presidency and introduced Hindi as one of the language in all the schools in the Presidency.

The following are some of the most fascinating readings about Sastri's life and contribution to India's Freedom Movements.

V.S.Srinivasa Sastri - A Political Bioigraphy

by

 

Rao, P. Kodanda

SILVER TONGUED SRINIVASA SASTRY by K. Gopalakrishna Murthy

V. S. SRINIVASA SASTRI: Hero as a Gentleman by Dr. D. ANJANEYULU

Letters of Srinivasa Sastri

The Indian Express news report on Sastri passing away

Most of Sastri's works are maintained at Gokhale Institute of Politics and Economics 

The Right Honorable Sir V S Srinivasa Sastri: Diplomat, Politician, Liberal

Battlingstage fright: Why the urge to perform in public sometimes triumphs over the'butterflies'

A Diplomat, A Speech and A Bomb: Srinivasa Sastriin South Africa

The Challenges of Erode City

I have new article published in The Kathir Times, a online publication. I have never read anyone written the below lines or anything like that in the past. This is something ignored by everybody in the mainstream public debate. And may be conveniently ignored for their vested interests!

"The Dravidian ideology cannot stop the army of labourers who are moving in large numbers since the last two decades from north to south for education and employment opportunities. How people in Tamil Nadu are employing Hindi speaking labourers in industries from the north without even knowing the Hindi language is interesting? Partially, it’s done through bigoted managers, contractors, and modern bonded labourer systems! But it is ironic that some of the Tamils like Hindi speaking labourers but not the Hindi language."

Global Water Crisis and Local Community Antidotes

The Kathir Times has published my new article as titled above, the following are the concluding paras of the article:

"Though, India’s Niti Aayog’s Reports on Water Management has been strongly emphasizing the need for local community-led intervention for rejuvenation of bodies and creating a new one wherever feasible. However, it did not spell out the roadmap for financing and enabling the local community-led organizations across the country.

During the last few years, there have been several community-based interventions for rejuvenation of water bodies in Tamil Nadu which have helped to increase access to water for not just drinking but also for irrigation and other utilities. The efforts of Siruthuli, an NGO working last 16 years in reviving several water bodies in the Coimbatore district. Similarly, the efforts of the Olirum Erodu Foundation and Erodai Trust in Erode district, Environmentalist Foundation of India in Chennai, People’s Forum in Salem, Vettri Trust in Tiruppur and more recently the Olirum Krishnagiri Foundation in Krishnagiri have all done tremendous works to improve the groundwater table.

Moreover, the Madurai based Dhan Foundation has been pioneering the water management systems covering 2000 tanks and104 watersheds across all south Indian states in the last two decades. The community-based approaches are more sustainable for improving access to water for all segments by improving the groundwater table. Further, these models of community-led rejuvenation of water bodies were effectively stakeholders driven involving the local community, farmers, philanthropists and close coordination with government officials. We need to scale up these models across the States and country to effectively implement the water conservation intervention to improve the groundwater tables." 

Why remember Sharad Joshi?

"After meeting Sharad Joshi, my entire view and way of respecting politicians had changed. Because of him, I started understanding leaders, not from their words or speeches, but the impact their thoughts on society." More here.

I had privilege of meeting Shri Sharad Joshi ji for few times in Delhi on different occasions between 2009 and 2014. He shared some of his early thoughts about MK Gandhi and the life span of any committed professionals who aspire to contribute to the society. He gave me a draft article in English which was published in Hindi in Danic Bhaskar.

Many do not know that Shri Joshi ji was an IAS Officer and left the service very early to become farmer! His columns published in The Business Line was must read for many years.

His articles are at here.

MK Gandhi@150

Author Ramachandra Guha has given a long interview with a list of five important books about Mahatma Gandhi's life and works in UK, SA and India. Though, the list of book and the interview is good narrative is good but I would like to add in the list the tiny book based on speeches of Osho who was close friend of Gandhi's eldest Son Harilal Gandhi. Also Osho has spoken about the other side of Gandhi's life and works which is unknown among masses.

I am not against Gandhi's life and works but I am very curies to know his entire life in totality. I am not that person to believe only one side story of any human being living or lived or will be living on this earth. Human life is so complicated with wire of millions things but one need not worry about all of things about a man or a woman.

Certainly, it is very strange to celebrate about one person who was never a benefactor for long march of attaining independence life India's freedom. There are whole lot of others who were equally contributed to the freedom struggles. I mean the entire works of first generation of Indian classical liberals (1850-1915) were ignored in the Independent India. This is the period where Gandhi was not in India fully. The great works of Ranade, Gokhale, Srinivasa Sastri, Tilak, etc.

Oshos views on Gandhi are at 1, 2, 3, 4.

Dharma -Individual social responsibility

Author Gurcharan Das has very interesting article in the Times of India about functions of capitalism and revisit of Corporate Social Responsibility in India. What interest me more is the below para:

"Although two decades have passed since the reforms of 1991, capitalism is still trying to find a comfortable home. Indians still believe that the market mostly helps the rich. They do not distinguish between being pro-market and pro-business. Being pro-market is to believe in competition, which helps keep prices low, raises the quality of products, and serves everyone. Being pro-business is to allow politicians to distort the market through excessive intervention, resulting in ‘crony capitalism’. The result of this confusion is the timidity of reform, excessive number of dysfunctional public sector companies, and a nation that is not performing to potential."