Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman was in Ettayyapuram in Tamil Nadu to mark the death centenary of the iconic poet Subramania Bharati. Sitharaman spoke at the Manimandapam about the legendary poet and also launched a book about him.
In an interview with CNN-News-18, Sitharaman said she was inspired by him. While she has quoted Bharati in many of her speeches, she said his work must be introduced to the curriculum in universities to bring him to the national level. She said she was all for translations of his work as well. Sitharaman said, “That’s where I think we will have to deliberately have universities discuss what Bharati means. We should have youngsters look into everything that he has written. And on that I would think Tamil youngsters have a greater responsibility than the rest of India because you really savour every one of his words.”
Edited excerpts from the interview:
Ma’am, September 11 marks the death centenary of Subramania Bharati — the poet, reformer, freedom fighter. What relevance does he have in modern day India and particularly modern day Tamil Nadu?
If there is any writer or poet who is more relevant to India today than ever before, it’s Bharati. Because he didn’t just talk about winning freedom, he spoke about so many other things. He actually had his own picture of India. The Prime Minister today is talking about ‘vocal for local’ and is also saying that each district highlight that one product which is good for export. So, one district, one product. Bharati’s songs highlight the number of absolutely unique products in each of the states, and also look at how this can be taken forward… how Indian women can contribute… how there shouldn’t be this oppressive caste differentiation… on every aspect that modern India is about. You know in a way — struggling to find new work, being more open-minded, a progressive kind of formation — it was all dreamt by Bharati. But the songs, each one of them don’t have any small or light-weight words. They are very strong, powerful words. If you know the language, it will be like an electric shock hitting you… or lightening in the night, the brightness of which hits you. That’s the power of his songs and his ideas.
Last December Prime Minister Narendra Modi while he was praising Subramania Bharati’s acumen had said his government is inspired by Bharati’s work. At the same time, he had said he was working towards ensuring women-led empowerment. Would you expand on the idea of what role he played in the emancipation of women?
Absolutely. For in his period — the time when he lived — to have to walk even with your wife in public — it would have been alright, everybody should go together. But what is it that the two of you will have to do? That kind of thing. And it was not peculiar to any particular community but women everywhere. Alright, you might do a lot of things at home… but no public display of affection. Bharati in order to question people who said that walking with his wife, sometimes having his hand on her shoulder displayed that he treats her equally in public… despite everybody — you know — mocking him. But he didn’t allow that to worry him. But at the same time, the songs that he wrote on the women of India were not just about that kind of display. What is that woman that he is looking at? Indian women are capable of doing anything once they were determined. He saw what I would say Shakti in each one of them. Not in the usual way, you know, the way we see Durga or we see Saraswati. But he actually believed empowered women are anyway the ones who are real women. So what are we talking about empowering women? They are fully empowered. We should recognise them. And he also describes who he thinks is an Indian woman. He sees her walking — her shoulders held wide, chin up, looking everyone in to their eyes. And further he goes on to describe an Indian woman. And he also has that invocation — if women are this why would we want to have them anywhere except at an equal standing with us. So, I can recite some of those songs where he talks about the power of woman.
Please go ahead.
Nirmala Sitharaman (Recites poem in Tamil). These are words which are enough for any woman to draw strength. There are many more like this.
Bharati wrote widely on caste discrimination, equality and secularism. The opposition and Dravadian parties both have claimed his legacy. The Tamil Nadu BJP is saying that parties that have ruled the state have always placed other social reformers such as Periyar above Bharati. How do you see this politics playing out?
I would want to say that for a very long time, for decades, Bharati was not given his due, even in Tamil Nadu, whether under the British rule or post-1947. I gave an example of this today at his memorial where I spoke. Bharati’s first Manimandapam or memorial — the place in Ettayapuram I visited today, was first established in 1945. The groundwork began in 1945 and at that time too there were very few people who patronised, supported and sponsored Bharati. The founder of the famous Tamil magazine ‘Kalki’, Kalki Krishnamurthy, he was the first one who laid the foundation for the memorial and had C Rajagopalachari come and do the inauguration. And then in 1947, the memorial was completed. It was an open structure with a bust of Subramaniam Bharati inside it between four pillars. It was inaugurated by then West Bengal Governor, again Raja Ji, C Rajagopalachari. I want to mention these things because Bharati’s eyes always had that fiery flame. People who have seen him have always said that and they have also spoken about it. So everybody had noticed that fire in his eyes with which he would speak about how India has to be and what it is we have to do. That kind of outpouring is in his poetry. And the way he had to struggle after going to Pondicherry and then trying to come back. And when he wanted to come back to British India from French India he was arrested by the British and kept in prison. All the while he didn’t have any source of income. One of his children was sent off to his sister. The other child was with him when they were in Pondicherry. And to ease the pain he had taken up having ‘abeem’ as they call it in Tamil. He would go into the Mango Orchards and shout to the sky saying. ‘why is it that you wouldn’t want me to speak, O Parashakti, tell me’… and that kind of outpouring. That is why in the meeting I did say, it was what others would define as ‘sanavedna’, like when you are about to deliver a child. The excruciating pain that a woman goes through is what he felt when he was delivering each of his poems. Cutting a long story short again — when he came back to Chennai, probably by train, Raja Ji goes to receive him. (all this is well described in one of his biographies written by a very famous scholar called Premanand Kumar) She says — Raja Ji when seeing him getting off the train said: ‘what has happened to him, the eyes have lost the sparkle, the fire. It is not the same pair of eyes’. So that’s the volcanic kind of outpouring. Also, the eyes reflected the anguish with which he was saying it all. Yet he was never negative. This was graphically described in the book as an observation by Raja Ji. The thing about him is he lived only 38 years but he was so full of that force which he wanted all Indians to have and display to have this country given its due promise. Every one of his poems really comes out with that kind of force. And therefore, the question that you raised.
We are at Ettayapuram. You were at his birthplace; you were at the memorial. The memorial was of course built by MGR. Ma’am it is often that the district administration looks after the upkeep only when it is his birthday or death anniversary. Why is it that multiple governments tend to forget his contribution?… or is it that they are not able to understand his contribution?
No! Continuing to answer your last question. I am coming to this. Recognition for Bharati was not across the board for a very long time. And that is why I said Raja Ji and others felt there was somebody who was equally eminent. People will have to be aware and that is why it is important to recall the fact that Bharati died in 1921. But by 1946 — it still took a lot of time but that is the phase when all of us were struggling for the freedom movement — the 1946 foundation and the 1947 opening of the memorial here was funded by the people of Ettaiyapuram. Also there was a Elakkiya Mandiram literary circle within Ettaiyapuram which had the idea of building a memorial and in which there were many people who were associated with Bharati, even remotely. One example is — he taught Tamil in Sethupati High School in Madurai. He did it for a few months and then probably chose to write and become a journalist. That school’s students, even in 1946-47, 20 years after his death — they wouldn’t have seen him, they wouldn’t have been taught by Bharati — still wanted to contribute because he was a former teacher at the school. They all contributed for the first phase of this ‘mandapam’ which was inaugurated by Raja Ji in 1947. But again there came the phase of Bharati being forgotten. We don’t know what happened to that memorial post 1947. God knows what were the kind of activities there. It was sometime in the 1980s that this new one has come. So unfortunately, periodically we seem to forget the physical structures which remind us of Bharati and also going there to help to keep the memory alive. So, I would suggest strongly — not just in Tamil literature and teaching of Tamil in schools, Bharati will have to be discussed all over the world. Incidentally, he had great admiration for Shelley. He also took a lot of interest in English literature. He would carry around Shelley’s works in his hand for some time and people would say – ‘it’s alright what are you doing with English literature, get going with Tamil’… things like that. So he had interest in many different things.
The Tamil Nadu government has recently said they are offering money for upkeep of the house that he lived in, in Varanasi. All these efforts… would you say it is coming too little too late?
Never mind that. At least it is happening now. I would rather say at least now people have woken up to him, to that divine scholar. I purposefully use this word. Unless you have the divine grace on you, you couldn’t have used a word or a language with that kind of a potency which Bharati has used. So, he is a divine scholar. Unless you have that God-given power in you, you can’t weave words of magic which can be so potent. So, I would think these institutions or houses or memorials — all of them are equally important. There should be more studies on him, more research on him, more speaking about him, more taking his thought and questioning whether India living up to his poems. Such discussions can really enrich us on the kind of man he was.
Bharati’s stature has been no less than Tagore’s intellectually, but unlike Tagore he is not a national figure. Will your government make an effort to popularise Subramania Bharati and make him a national icon at par with Tagore?
Isn’t that what the Prime Minister is doing now? Yesterday, marking the 100th death anniversary of Bharati, PM Modi declared that he is instituting a chair in no less a place than Banaras Hindu University where Bharati himself had gone from here — all the way from this part of South India — to learn Sanskrit, English and Hindi. And then he came back to further his interest in Tamil. In Banaras Hindu University, Prime Minister has instituted a Chair called Subramania Bharati Chair for Tamil Studies, which immediately lifts the level of research and level of exposure that Bharati and Bharati-related studies can have. I am indeed very grateful to the Honourable Prime Minister for coming up with such a brilliant idea at a time when all of us are now sitting up and saying, ‘Hey yes we should know more about this great poet’.
Since we are discussing it ma’am, the Ministry of Human Resource Development instituted a national Hindi literary award in his name, and the first award was given in 1989. The last one was given in 2007 and it has been over 14 years that this award has been lying dormant. Would you say the time has come to revive it?
Of course that is enough time. And now very quickly we will have to apply our mind and see if we can revive it. I will definitely talk to the concerned ministry and see if there is anything we can do about it immediately and to revive it.
His writings are powerful and crisp, even those in verse. Those verses are more powerful than many essays. Would you say — and you are making that effort, you are talking about it, you have travelled all the way to visit this memorial on this important day — that there is a need to ensure that his works are translated into many languages?
I am all for translation, but with one little observation to give. Translations can only do some justice and not all. Okay, does that mean everybody learns Tamil? No, I am not suggesting that. For each of the songs or each of the things he has written, the publication must also carry the actual mood with which that song has been written. It has to be realised that there is a way of singing Bharati’s songs. A lot of people do it. In fact, Satyamoorthy — one of his close associates, himself a freedom fighter, a literary writer — did recognise this point that you bring forth. If Bharati was born in Bengal, he would have been regarded as highly as Rabindranath Tagore. If he was born somewhere in the English-speaking world — like Shelley, like Keats — he would have had its own standing. And Satyamoorty raises a question asking what happened. He asks why an Indian Tamil poet Bharati doesn’t get that kind of acclaim. I think it is a wrong presumption to think that Bharati was a poet of the Freedom Movement and therefore he would probably only be speaking about that. What we miss out is his thoughts on how society should bring out that latent energy which is there in each one of us for nation building. That’s where his big contribution is. And I would think therefore that translation — to make up for the fact that it can’t capture the essence of Tamil — should have a lot of annotative notes to go with each one of them. Otherwise you are not going to be able to see that this was a man who didn’t just speak about getting India free, but also spoke Mother India’s many languages. He describes her — she has so many tongues, she can converse in so many languages. I mean this celebration of Mother India is there in every one of his poems.
You have often quoted him in your speeches. And that has made a lot of people read his works out of curiosity. How do elevate him to the national spectrum, to make him part of the national consciousness?
That’s where I think we will have to deliberately have universities discuss what Bharati means. We should have youngsters look into everything that he has written. And on that I would think Tamil youngsters have a greater responsibility than the rest of India because you really savour every one of his words. It is a joy to read him even with his desperate poverty, living under oppressive British rule. The man never was pessimistic. The man never was cynical. These are qualities which we so desperately need in India today. We want people to be optimistic about what possibilities India holds for us and the way he speaks in each one of his songs. That is the essence. You should imbibe that. Elders will have to enjoy that. All of us will have to be guided by him. That kind of a visionary positivity and understanding, that all our lives are for Mother India. He never had thoughts of ‘she is inferior or he is superior’, none of that. He attributed every positivity to that mother, that is Mother India. Come on, we so desperately need that now.
I am seeing that fire that you have talked about in your own eyes when you are talking about him. What does he mean to you personally and when you are here at his birthplace on the 100th anniversary of his death?
No, actually. Today I have also gone to the house in which he temporarily lived in Puducherry. I have also gone to that house in Thiruvallikeni or Triplicane area in Chennai. There are some lines of his which are constantly there in my mind and I honestly draw a lot of inspiration from him. Come on, the power of his words and the power of every word he uttered is something that you can enjoy. For that moment it will linger in you and it is that lingering power of his words that always guides me. But above all, Marya, the thing about Bharati is that — for all the suffering he saw, for all the looking at India suffering, he hoped that India would become free. He was a very spiritual person. He believed in divine thinks happening. And I think he wanted that divine force to run through him and come out for the sake of the country. And it’s that divinity in him to which I surrender, saying I want that force to make me speak, which I take as a very big lesson. Each one of us, if we are ultimately able to see that there is some cosmic power within and we are able to invoke that, we will achieve — without harming others — unbelievable levels of glory, unbelievable levels of fulfilment. And it is that Bharati which inspires me. The man never ducked under pressure, never ducked under poverty, never ducked under mockery, never ducked under people making fun of him. He thought his mission was to spread this word about India’s potential power and he did it.
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