The Tribune, Chandigarh, India

PERSPECTIVE

From Swaraj to Poorna Swaraj
The indomitable courage and sacrifice of Bhagat Singh and his comrades will continue to inspire people
by Chaman Lal

EXEMPLARY ROLE MODELS: (from L to R) Bhagat Singh, Chandrasekhar Azad, Bejoy Sinha, Shiv Verma and Surendra Pandey. Illustrations: Sandeep Joshi

ON November 17, 1928, Lala Lajpat Rai, the tallest leader of the freedom movement from Punjab, died due to the blows given by D.S.P Saunders at the order given by S.P. Lahore Scott on October 30, when he was leading a massive protest march of people against the Simon Commission. Lala ji declared in his now famous speech the same evening: “Every blow on my body will prove to be the last kneel in the coffin of British rule in India.”

On November 29, 1928, in a memorial meeting held in Calcutta to mourn the death of Lala Lajpat Rai, Basanti Devi, widow of radical nationalist C.R. Dass, in anguish put a question to Indian youths: “I quake with shame and disgrace. Do the youth and manhood of the country still exist? Does it feel the shame and disgrace of it? A woman of the land demands a clear answer to it.” (Quoted in Kamlesh Mohan’s book, Militant Nationalism in India).

C.R. Dass and Basanti Devi were known for their soft corner for the revolutionaries in Bengal and the Hindustan Socialist Republican Association (HSRA) formed two months ago at Delhi’s Ferozeshah Kotla ground. Led by Bhagat Singh, the latter could not ignore the call given by Basanti Devi. Though HSRA had decided to go in for mass movements and renounce violent methods like killing of officials etc., they could not let the British colonial regime get away with killing the tallest leader with whom revolutionaries had many differences.

Consequently, on December 17, 1928, a month after Lala ji’s death, D.S.P. Saunders was lying in front of the Lahore SSP’s office in the same place, shot dead by revolutionaries. Jai Gopal gave the indication and Rajguru did not even wink in shooting him down from his motorcycle. Bhagat Singh realised in seconds that he was not the targeted man — J.A. Scott — and he promptly told this to Chandershekhar Azad overseeing the operation. But once Rajguru shot him, Bhagat Singh saw to it that he did not survive and further shot him.

Azad’s warning

The other British constables ran away, but Chanan Singh did not stop following the revolutionaries despite Chandershekhar Azad’s explicit warning to him not to do so as they were fighting for Indian freedom. Chanan Singh bore the bullet of Azad to die with the oppressive British officer.

How Bhagat Singh, Rajguru, Jai Gopal etc. escaped is a known story now. However, what is little known is the role of Bhagat Singh’s young comrades. They were Pt. Kishori Lal (born in 1909) and Prem Dutt Verma (born on September 19, 1911). Verma was not even 18 years of age when he was arrested in May 1929.

After the arrest of Bhagat Singh and B.K. Dutt on April 8, 1929 in Delhi, and of other revolutionaries like Sukhdev on April 15, the link of revolutionaries led by Bhagat Singh in the murder of Saunders came to be known to the Punjab police. Soon other arrests followed and most of them were students of various colleges. An FIR was filed against 25 people in the court of Rai Sahib Pt. Sri Kishan, Special Magistrate appointed to conduct the Lahore conspiracy case.

While the police produced 16 of the accused in the court on July 10, 1929, accused from 17th to 25th in the list were declared absconders. These include Chandershekhar Azad (never arrested and martyred on February 27, 1931 in Alfred Park, Allahabad), Bejoy Kumar Sinha (arrested later), Kailashpati Raghunath alias Rajguru (arrested later), Bhagwaticharan Vohra (never arrested and martyred on May 28, 1930 while experimenting with a bomb at Ravi bank, Lahore), Kundan Lal (arrested last), Yashpal (noted Hindi writer (arrested in 1932 and charged with different cases), Satgurudyal (not arrested).

Under the Indian Penal Code, they were accused of, among other things, trying to establish a “Federated Republican Government”. Prem Dutt’s name figured in No. 5 of the accused list as Prem Dutt alias Master alias Amrit lal, son of Ram Dutt Khatri of Gujarat. Kishori Lal Rattan, son of Raghubar Dutt of Hoshiarpur district, was No.3 after Sukhdev and Agya Ram. The case was known as ‘Sukhdev vs Crown’.

Exhibits in four bound and typed volumes in English of the Lahore conspiracy case, were gifted to the Punjab and Haryana High Court, Chandigarh, in 2006 by Rana Bhagwan Das, the then Acting Chief Justice of Pakistan Supreme Court. Though he and his family were insulted at Wagha border by insensitive Indian officials and sent back without allowing entry, he came later. Of the 600 plus exhibits of the case, Advocate and Prof. Malwinderjit Singh Waraich had presented 63 exhibits in a large volume. Section 12 of this volume deals with Recovery from Prem Dutt, Section 29 deals with Statement of Prem Dutt and Section 51 deals with Prem Dutt Letters/other records.

Accused Jai Gopal became approver. Agya Ram, Surindernath Pandey and B.K. Dutt (already serving life imprisonment in the Delhi Bomb case) were discharged from the list on July 10, 1930. The remaining 15 accused were proceeded against. Apart from Jai Gopal named in the original FIR, Phonindernath Ghosh, Manmohan Bannerjee, Lalit Kumar Mukerji and Hansraj Vohra became approvers of the case and got pardon in reward.

An incident relating to Prem Dutt Verma during the trial proceedings is worth revisiting. It has been narrated by many authors, but the first-hand account of Bejoy Kumar Sinha, himself an accused and victim, is touching and revealing. To paraphrase him from the book, Bejoy Kumar Sinha: A Revolutionary’s Quest for Sacrifice by his widow Srirajyam Sinha, published by Bhartiya Vidya Bhavan in 1993, the book presents many unpublished memoirs of B.K. Sinha through his papers, on October 21, 1929, in the court of Pt. Sri Kishan, approver Jai Gopal while tendering his evidence from witness box, was twisting his moustache and trying to provoke the accused in the other box.

According to Sinha, “Prem Dutt, the youngest of all, got excited and upset and in the heat of a moment threw a sleeper at the approver. Immediately, the rest of the accused hastened to express regret at his conduct and dissociated themselves from the act.” (Page 44). Despite their regret, in the following days all revolutionaries were treated in a most brutal fashion. On October 22, they were all handcuffed and after lunch, when they resisted, in B.K.Sinha’s words, “the police was hell bent on teaching the accused the lesson of their life”. A special Pathan force was requisitioned and they were beaten mercilessly.

Bhagat Singh was singled out for this. Eight ferocious Pathans pounced upon him and with their regulation boots kicked him viciously and beat him with lathis ruthlessly. Mr Roberts, an European officer, pointed out at Sardar Bhagat Singh and said “this is the man, give him more beating”. They were dragged on the ground and carried like logs of wood and thrown on the benches. All this happened in the presence of the visitors of court compound.

The magistrate too was watching all this apparently thinking that he had no jurisdiction as he was not presiding over the court. Sheo Verma and Ajoy Kumar Ghosh became unconscious. Bhagat Singh then raised his voice and told the court, “I want to congratulate you on this. Sheo Verma is lying unconscious and if he dies you will be responsible for this.” (page 45). According to B.K. Sinha, that was not the end of the day, as Bhagat Singh was attacked in the jail ward the same evening again and thrashed. A.G. Noorani, in his book, The Trial of Bhagat Singh, reports on the same event with Prem Dutt speaking to the court the same day: “Yesterday fingers were thrown into our rectum and kicks were given on our testicles. Is it civilisation? You call it civilisation?

The same situation was repeated on May 12, 1930, when after disbanding of Pt Sri Kishan Special Magistrate court, a Special Tribunal of three judges was proclaimed through an ordinance by Lord Irwin on May 1, 1930. On May 12, during the court appearance, “Bhagat Singh started singing”, according to B.K. Sinha, “in his melodious voice” — Watan ki aabroo ka pas dekhen kaun kehta hai/suna hai aaj maktal mein hamara imtihan hoga (Let us see who cares for the dignity of the nation/ It is heard today we will be tried in a massacre house).

And it literally happened. Justice Coldstream, President of the Special Tribunal, ordered them to be silenced and the police in large numbers in the running court pounced upon them despite Bhagat Singh protesting that there was no occasion for that. Scuffle, beating, singing, slogan shouting all continued and Prem Dutt, Kundan Lal and Ajoy Ghosh became unconscious. Justice Agha Haider could not bear and covered his face with a newspaper and dissociated himself from the brutal order. In his book, A.G. Noorani wrote that Bhagat Singh, while addressing the Tribunal, said: “You are cowards and mercenaries.”

In May 1929, at Prem Dutt Verma’s house at Mohalla Qila Shumali, Gujrat city of Punjab was searched and on May 7, 1929, 24 books and magazines including copies of Urdu and Panjabi Kirti, books on Mahatma Gandhi, Guru Gobind Singh, Sachindernath Sanyal’s Bandi Jivan, Tolstoy’s Essays and Letters, Tales from Shakespeare, Poems and Plays of Goldsmith, etc were recovered.

Another search mentions the recovery of nearly 30 more books such as the Sedition Committee Report, popularly known as the Rowlett Report of 1918, The Seven that were Hanged, Resurrection by Tolstoy, a portrait of Kartar Singh Sarabha and a portrait of Kakori martyr Thakur Roshan Singh. Recoveries were made till May 12, 1929 and Prem Dutt was mentioned as the grandson of Mrs Vidyawati, widow of Thakur Dass, caste Vig Khatri...

In section Prem Dutt letters/Other records, his letter of May 16, 1929, is reproduced twice, which seems to be written in coded language. In this letter to a friend referred as S.S. Prem Dutt enquires about the fruit garden, contracts of wine, charas and bhang and also about fireworks (ammunition), also about license for potash, sulphur, etc. It seems to be relating to the bomb making code.

Prem Dutt’s statement exhibited as “confession” was recorded by Magistrate Mushtaq Ahmad on May 17, 1929. A 15-page printed statement, it refers to his passing the entrance examination. In 1927, at the age of 16, he joined the DAV College in Lahore. Prem Dutt refers to reading of revolutionary literature along with Kishori Lal and Pran Nath, like the Sedition Committee Report, Dan Brien’s My Fight for Irish Freedom, Anand Math (Bankim Chatterji), proscribed books like Chingarian and America Ne Swadhinta Kaise Prapat Ki (How America won its freedom).

Saunders’ murder

He refers to Kishori Lal having a library of such books. He further refers to Bertrand Russell’s book, Roads to Freedom. Prem Dutt refers to his meeting with Bhagat Singh, who was known as Ranjit in the group (his other fictitious name was Balwant). This was after the murder of Saunders. An interesting part of this meeting was that according to Prem Dutt, Bhagat Singh and Kishori Lal went to see Tolstoy’s novel-based film of the same title, Resurrection in Lahore’s Excelsior theatre. Prem Dutt mentions about his handing over Bhagat Singh’s shoes to the police.

Prem Dutt Verma or Vig was sentenced to five years imprisonment in the case. After his release, he probably resumed his studies and went up to become Professor of History in Panjab University, Chandigarh. But the strange part of his story is that despite being in academics, not much of his writings on the subject or memoirs are known. After retirement he went to the US where he hopefully lives. No information could be gathered from the Department of History, Panjab University.

Hope some of his family members or friends will bring Prem Dutt’s life to focus. Many co-students/co-workers of Bhagat Singh like Durga Das Khanna, A.C. Bali etc. joined The Tribune or other media organisations and some of them have their memoirs of those days published. The saga of Bhagat Singh continues to fascinate and is impregnated with many more stories.n

The writer is Editor, Bhagat Singh’s Documents, (in Hindi published by the Publications Division, Government of India) and of Jail Notebook and Other Writings of Bhagat Singh (in English). A Professor of Centre of Indian Languages, JNU, New Delhi, he is currently Visiting Professor, University of West Indies, Trinidad & Tobago

A strong Lokpal can tame the monster of corruption
by Maja Daruwala

Everyone has been fascinated and deeply engaged in the great anti-corruption stir in India over the past few weeks. It is perhaps our own Tahrir Square moment.

The Union Government was caught unawares by the dozens of peaceful marches across the country following Anna Hazare’s fast. Days before five state elections were to begin, it could not be seen to be resistant to what is seen as the most corrosive issue of our times. It was deeply concerned at the possibility that the outpouring of pent-up anger and widespread support for Anna’s demands would take an ugly turn especially if the old gentleman of 73 fell seriously ill or died. In less than a week, the government agreed to constitute a joint committee of five ministers and five members of civil society to review and draft an Ombudsman law and promised to have it before Parliament by Independence Day (August 15).

However, the tug of war between powerful interests who have garnered all sorts of statutory protections against wrong-doing for themselves and the activists who want a strong Ombudsman to take on corruption is only just beginning.

The knives are certainly out. The so-called civil society version of the possible law has been characterised by friend and foe alike as being unrealistically all-encompassing, creating a constitutionally untenable ‘supercop’ authority, and being badly drafted to boot. No doubt, there is room for improvement but there is no fatality in the draft law that cannot be cured during the process and leave behind a perfectly practicable and strong Ombudsman.

Still, as if piqued that public pressures could force it to the table to bring to fruition a long avoided cure to curb corruption in high places, a clever multi-pronged smear campaign against some of the main persons leading the civil society effort is underway. Everyday a little bit of poison is dripped into the public consciousness. No one is claiming authorship at the sly maneuvers that one day see an attack by now this party stalwart and now that sleazy opportunist even as other powerful public figures appear to placate and agree that this is genuinely low stuff. The Good are faced with debilitating moral dilemmas and the Bad are gleefully rubbing their hands.

The daily insinuations are poised to discredit hitherto credible crusaders for rectitude in public life, create dissension in the civil society panel, and dissipate public belief in the leadership of the movement. The strategy seems to be to draw out the process of creating a good law long enough so that will eventually fall off the public radar, destroy the impetus for its demand and reduce the intensity of public interest enough to allow it to be diluted sufficiently to be as usually harmless as other oversight bodies that presently burden our exchequer without ever having to account for their performance.

Whatever the outcome of this push and pull, the unfolding events are evidence of deepened Indian democracy and a measure of public involvement in governance today. The country as a whole — except for those who are crippled into silence and subjugation by abject poverty and neglect — is caught up in an intense interaction across all the diversities of our make-up. Issues that have long festered with the public are being brought to centre stage.

The debate today is focused on corruption but is already expanding to the process by which laws are passed; the need for widespread pre-legislative consultation before they come on to the books; the illegitimate degree to which politicians and bureaucrats are protected despite unimpeachable evidence of abuse of office; the need for electoral reforms which allow people with criminal records to become representatives; electoral expenditure reform; the wastage of parliamentary time; and the deterioration of the police and judiciary that have completely eroded the ability to get justice for almost all the population and much more.

Public grievance and impatience personified through Anna Hazare are now finding voice in far flung and unlikely corners of the nation. Long avoided cures are impatiently being demanded. People are refusing to be silenced.

As new governments form in the states they will have to be seen, not only as intolerant of corruption and criminality but actively doing something about it. At the Centre as national elections come ever nearer, today’s responses of this government to Anna Hazare’s demands will factor into their fortunes as well.

People will remember. A strong and effective functioning Lokpal will go a long way to building goodwill even if the pain of change has to be borne by few power elite that has too long benefited from a corrupt and venal system.n

The writer is Director, Commonwealth Human Rights Initiative, New Delhi

OPED

Whither Indian identity?
Civil society initiatives hold out promise
By Pushpa M. Bhargava

India is a country of minorities with virtually everyone belonging to a number of minority groups. There are a large number of variants or sub-divisions of Hindi, Hinduism, Islam and Christianity – all in minority. So a Hindi-speaking person from Varanasi would have difficulty in understanding Chattisgarhi; a Catholic will not marry a Protestant; and Sufis would not be considered as true Muslims. A rich educated Bengali, Hindu male Brahmin coming from Bhatapara would have at least seven identities distinguishing him from other Indians – each identity generally leading him, consciously or subconsciously, to discriminatory practices against other Indians.

Those who would seek kinship with every other Indian through a shared Indian identity are rare. In fact, the importance we attach to the myriad minority groups based on circumstances of birth and opportunities after birth is the core reason for most conflicts and for making cities such as Delhi so unsafe for women.

It is, therefore, important to understand why doesn’t every Indian identify himself/herself first as an Indian, all other identities being incidental? Why doesn’t every Indian have equal respect for every other Indian unless the other person gives evidence through action or belief, of not being worthy of such respect. It is so because of too many mistakes and too much interference by the government, the political setup, the bureaucracy, the police and the clergy.

The first mistake was India’s linguistic division which led to linguistic chauvinism that gave linguistic identity precedence over the Indian identity. Our second mistake was to allow commercialisation of school (and higher) education and the inevitable consequent decline of State-run schools with the exception of Central Schools in which largely children of government employees go. This situation led to the most important and undesirable division in the country: between, say, 20 per cent who could send their children to expensive private and/or commercial schools and pay for private tuition, and the remaining 80 per cent who remained virtually uneducated even if they did enroll in a government school.

The third divider of people has been the government’s emphasis on growth rate to the exclusion of parity and equity. If the high growth rate has led to ‘x’ per cent increase in the income of the top 1 per cent, it has led to an increase of only ‘x’/100 per cent in the income of the bottom 80 per cent and, that too, only as an unintended trickle-down effect, leading to further consolidation of the 80:20 divide.

Fourthly, our political and electoral processes have ensured a government of the corrupt, by the corrupt, and for the corrupt, with exceptions being ineffective. The all-pervading corruption — financial and intellectual — has been a divider of people in our country into three groups: those who are forced to pay bribe or are exploited (like the millions displaced from where they have lived for decades; those who take the bribe and are the exploiters; and those who give bribes to be able to exploit. The second and the third categories are hand-in-glove with each other and represent a minority of say, 5 per cent, while the exploited in the first category represent the remaining majority of our people.

Consider the police. Which Indian will go to the police for protection? Recently, on my way to the Hyderabad airport a policeman stopped the car and asked the driver to show his license, registration, insurance and pollution control certificates which were all in order. He then asked me why was the driver not wearing his dress! He let us go only when I called up the Director-General of Police.

The fifth reason is our not codifying religions other than Hinduism. Why can a Muslim who is not a government servant, have four wives, or be governed even in important matters of basic human rights to which the country is committed, by Sharia rather than by common law? We allow all this in spite of the hypocrisy of all religions. Thus, no clergy raises an eyebrow when anyone amongst the rich or the powerful marries outside of one’s caste, community or religion. But the same clergy raise hell for someone doing the same in a village.

Doing little about such hypocrisy of religion has been one of our greatest failures. This has divided the people. Instead of confining religion to one’s private space, it has been used as a political tool to divide people.

The same would be true of reservations for the Scheduled Castes and Tribes or Other Backward Classes. After Independence, we had instituted reservations for only ten years with the promise to create equal opportunities for all and consequently end reservations. But that did not happen because we designed our policies on education to ensure that.

Sixthly, as we have not de facto separated religion from the state, our top politicians and bureaucrats holding public office fall prostrate in front of dubious godmen, seek the blessings of celestial deities in our places of worship to ensure the safety of a satellite launch and have no hesitation in bribing the gods to have their unethical and immoral wishes fulfilled. In fact, all religions provide their practitioners widely used recipes to wash off their sins.

Seventhly, money and position have acquired the power to derail justice which, if delivered within a framework of honesty and integrity, can be a great equaliser. Lastly, governance and objectivity have become so anachronistic that politics and subterfuge have become synonymous.

And it is not that all of India cannot come together relegating all distinctions based on religious or political creed, caste or class, and language or educational status, to the background. We did that when we successfully fought the battle against genetically modified brinjal. We did that recently in the battle against corruption led by Anna Hazare. They were all spontaneous, civil society’s initiatives. We just have to ensure that interference by politicians, bureaucrats and clergy does not come in the way of similar efforts in the future.n

The writer is a former Vice-Chairman, National Knowledge Commission

On Record
Education needs a mechanism like RTI Act
by Aditi Tandon

In her second term as Chairperson of the National Commission for Protection of Child Rights (NCPCR), Shanta Sinha is tasked with an onerous responsibility of monitoring the Right of Children to Free and Compulsory Education Act, 2009, which guarantees a slew of rights to children aged 6 to 14 years. The Act names NCPCR as an independent monitoring agency for its progress and gives the Commission immense powers to ensure that legal entitlements of children are respected and kept.

Shanta Sinha

The NCPCR is also responsible for protecting children from corporal punishment and other crimes, including sexual offences. Padma Shri and Ramon Magsaysay Award winner (2003) Shanta Sinha speaks to The Tribune about the challenges of keeping children safe.
Excerpts:

Q: How do you view the pace of the RTE Act’s progress?

A: The RTE Act, guaranteeing elementary education as every child’s right, is laudable. But we need a national awareness campaign to drive home the nuances of this law, whose provisions resonate with the aspirations of the poorest. The Centre must evolve actionable points for nationwide advocacy of the Act. A message must go out that we mean business. The last person in the street must know what the law provides.

Q: Is the Act worthwhile in its present form or does it need fine-tuning?

A: The Commission strongly feels that the Act doesn’t provide for a grievance redressal mechanism. We have asked the HRD Ministry to see that the states define such mechanisms in RTE model rules. We can’t have one authority redressing all the grievances that arise out of the complex set of entitlements given to the child.

We need clarity on who will uphold which right and in what time frame the custodian of such a right redress grievance related to its violation. We must consider for the RTE Act the complaint registration and redressal system the Right to Information Act uses. We also need block-level grievance redressal officers for the RTE Act.

Q: Corporal punishment has attained menacing proportions though the RTE Act bans it. What are you doing to check it?

A: We are in the process of finalising guidelines against corporal punishment at schools. An expert group is working on these guidelines, which would then be notified and sent to schools through the HRD Ministry. These guidelines will help us implement Section 17 of the RTE Act which bars corporal punishment.

Q: Another issue is crimes against children, especially sexual offences. Do you think the Protection of Children from Sexual Offences Bill, 2011, recently introduced in the Rajya Sabha, would suffice?

A: It’s significant that we have this law. But many of its provisions would have to be sharpened if children’s best interests are to be guarded. The Act focuses hugely on how an offence would be tried. It must focus equally on protection for children who report the crimes. Our entire jurisprudence system is designed for adults as perpetrators and adults as victims. That must change. A child must be given protection right from the stage of recording of the complaint.

Q: Rising crimes against the girl child are one of the factors fuelling an already dismal child sex ratio. What needs to be done?

A: Child sex ratio has dipped alarmingly even in some progressive southern states. That’s shocking. But we must look at the states that have posted gains in Census 2011 provisional figures. Punjab and Haryana have improved their performance though they continue to be the worst.

We must find out what they did right to register gains and see if we can replicate the effort. To get shifts in secondary data is significant. It will take us a generation to correct the aberration but we must know what to do to effect that change.

Q: Do you think we need to revisit the Pre-Conception and Pre-Natal Diagnostics Techniques Act?

A: The Act, as such, is fine. What we need is its effective implementation. Penalties must get stringent and punishments harder, now that there is evidence of how much is at stake.

Q: The Commission for Protection of Child Rights Act, 2005, under which the NCPCR came up, had mandated the establishment of children’s courts to deal with their issues. Is there any progress on that front?

A: Goa has set up children’s court and Delhi is expected to follow suit. Frankly, I don’t think it’s a good idea. We visited the Goa court and found the atmosphere so informal that the accused had virtually lost all fear of the law.

Jurisprudence, to yield the desired results, must inspire awe. Our normal court systems, with some modifications, can serve the children well. We need not exclude them.

Profile
KB Sir: Govt job to Phalke award
by Harihar Swarup

There was a time when K. Balachander, film producer, director and screen writer, now decorated with the prestigious Dadasaheb Phalke Award, was working in the Accountant General’s office in Madras. Now 81, he made an amazing transformation from a government servant to a writer of amateur playwright and then to a leading film personality.

K. Balachander

The journey from the AG’s office to being the recipient of Dadasaheb Phalke Award, the acme of all awards in the cine world, has indeed been long and arduous. Even when he was in government service, he was drawn to theatre: he wrote a set of plays that were marked by realistic portrayals. He later took to penning dialogues and he gradually found himself wearing the director’s hat with ease.

Popularly known as “KB Sir”, Balachander, the first Tamil Director to receive Dadasaheb Phalke Award, directed films in Tamil, Telugu, Hindi and Kannada. He started with dialogue writing for the legendary M.G. Rama-chandran’s (MGR) film Dheiva Thaai. Apart from Rajnikanth and Kamal Hasan, actresses Sujatha, Jaya Prada and Sarita were all his discoveries. Later, they became big names in Indian cinema. His bilingual — Maro Charitra — starring Kamal Hasan and Rati Agnihotri, was a big hit of the times that was made in Hindi as Ek Duje Ke Liye. The movie made waves in Mumbai.

Maro Charitra is basically a Telugu film, looking at the love story breaking linguistic barriers. A Tamil man, Balu (Kamal Hasan) loves a Telugu woman, Swapna (Saritha), Their families, against the affair, ask the two not to see each other. If they can fulfill this condition, then they can marry. The film was a huge success and Balachander directed its Hindi remake for L.V. Prasad – Ek Duje ke Liye (1981). This film introducing Kamal Hasan and Rati Agnihotri to Hindi audiences and converting the love story to a Tamil-Punjabi romance too was a huge success at the box office.

Balachander also made the political dramas — Thanneer..Thanneer (1981) based on a play by Komal Swaminathan and his own story — Achamillai achamillai (1984). Of the two — Thanneer..Thanneer — got great acclaim. The film looks at Athipattu, a village in the arid region of southern Tamil Nadu where there is no access to any water source and the villagers struggle for a bucket of water. A fugitive seeks refuge in the village and he is protected by Sevanthi, wife of a policeman. Elections to the State Assembly are announced and candidates from different political parties visit the village making many promises. However, the villagers boycott the elections and push forward their demand for water. They also attempt to dig a canal from the nearest water source, miles away but are thwarted by government officers. The police took action against the villagers for defying the authority and the fugitive dies while attempting to escape from the police.

Among Balachander’s later films, Sindhu Bhairavi (1985), deserves special mention. The film, a musical melodrama, sees one of Suhasini’s best performances in the role of a folk music teacher, winning her the National Award for Best Actress. In retrospect, Balachander’s early films did have an element of the stage but gradually he successfully began exuding greater cinematic techniques and storytelling, besides effectively using outdoor locales and bringing in political issues.

It speaks volumes for KB Sir’s impeccable sense of judgement that a number of artistes introduced by him went on to make a name for themselves in Indian cinema — Kamal Hasan, Rajnikanth, Sujatha and S.V. Shekhar, to name a few.