02-09-2005, 01:15 AM
From Deccan.com , 9 feb., 2005
<!--QuoteBegin-->QUOTE<!--QuoteEBegin-->Kamaladeviâs legacy
By H Y Sharada Prasad
Fame came early to Kamaladevi. Her intellect, her many-sided talents, her self-assurance and daring and her dazzling good looks combined to make her one of the best known younger leaders of the freedom movement. <b>She was one of the six or seven women whose photographs appeared along with the portraits of the national leaders even in the early Thirties. She shared the honour with Kasturba Gandhi, Annie Besant, Sarojini Naidu, Swarup Rani and Kamala Nehru, Nellie Sengupta and Basanti Devi.</b>
<b>Kamaladevi was born in 1903 in Mangalore </b>which was then part of the Madras Presidency. She was married at 14 but was widowed a year later. But the enlightened family encouraged her to continue her studies. <b>She came under the spell of Gandhi, hawked copies of his banned book Hind Swaraj and gave proof of her tremendous organising abilities in the Seva Dal.</b> Sarojini Naiduâs brother, Harindranath Chattopadhyaya, fell in love with her and married her.
âThe gods would envy us,â he wrote in poetic flourish. But he lacked the constancy of temperament to make it work.
Kamaladevi plunged even deeper into political work. <b>She became general secretary of the All India Womenâs Conference when barely 21. </b>Her work as leader of the team of volunteers at the Madras session of the Congress in 1927 won high praise. <b>She argued with Gandhi himself and made him revise his decision to exclude women from the Salt Satyagraha.</b>
She was jailed in the Satyagrahas of 1930 and 1933. She threw in her lot with the socialist wing of the Congress and presided over the annual conference of the Congress Socialist Party held at Meerut in 1936. She travelled and wrote widely. She was recognised as one of the few leaders in national politics who was interested in the theatre and had thought deeply about the arts in general.
<b>When freedom came, she stayed with those socialists who spurned office like Narendra Deva, Jayaprakash Narayan, Yusuf Meherally, Achyut Patwardhan and Rammanohar Lohia, </b>while people like Minoo Masani accepted Nehruâs invitation. But the upheaval caused by partition and the uprooting of millions of people provided Ka-maladevi the challenge and the opportunity that her immense organisational gifts were waiting for.
Vast numbers had to be provided shelter and food at the refugee camps. But that was not the end of the problem. Means of livelihood had to be provided so that they could stand on their own feet. Kamaladevi gathered a young band of workers who conducted a survey of the vocations that the refugees had followed.<b> A telling instance throws light on her method of work. She found that there were several thousand acre of vacant land near the Qutab Minar but that officials had allotted that to their own favourites.
She asked the refugees in the camp to occupy the land. She and Sucheta Kripalani followed it up with an all-party conference which adopted the slogan âLand for the tiller and tools for the artisan.â A letter went to Nehru, who promptly ordered the cancellation of the bureaucratsâ plans to grab the lands. As for people who were no agriculturists but knew some craft or other, arrangements were made to provide them with tools and materials and their products were sold through a refugee handicraft shop.
This was the origin of the Central Cottage Industries Emporium which in later years came to be called the most attractive shop in the world and ensured that the most precious craft traditions of our land were preserved and gained worldwide fame. Kamaladevi also became fairy godmother to the Indian Co-operative Union, and the All-India Handicrafts Board. </b>
The full story of these two organisations as also of the Faridabad township which owes its origin to the efforts of Sarojini Naidu, Mridula Sarabhai and Kamaladevi has been told by L C Jain in his books. Jain also says that when once she thought that Indira Gandhi was needlessly interfering in a matter, Kamaladevi wrote to Nehru, âYou ask her to keep herself away from my areas of operation. It is none of her business.â
There was always something of the lioness in her. But when dealing with innocent artisans, she was all mother. A colleague recalls how when a potter fell ill she went all the way to his hut to give him money for his treatment.
âWe walked the bylanes of Delhi to visit him and other craft persons, not minding the filth or the state of the streets. She would not think twice of hitching her sari to wade through the water even in her autumnal years.â
Another former aide recalls, âEach journey with her was a voyage of discovery and an education in the fullest sense. While touring Bengal, during the day we visited the craft centres and in the evening the jatra performances, the old puppets in Murshidabad and the patta painters and singers. In Orissa while searching for weaving centres, jewellery makers and visiting the painters of Raghurajpur we also saw the Sahi Jatra at Puri, the puppeteers of Orissa at Kantil and Cuttack and visited the NGO working on fibre research and adivasi welfare.
At Sonepur in Bihar we saw the thick Bhagalpuri waste silk chaddars used by the villagers as an inexpensive wrap during winter. We tracked down the producers and, for the first time, Kamaladevi ordered the producers to make yardage. A waste cloth became an important export item.â
The extracts I have given are from a publication brought out by the Crafts Council of Karnataka a few months ago by way of a âtribute to the mother of handicrafts on her birth centenary.â It contains articles in both English and Kannada. <b>My inquiries show that no comparable book was brought out at the all-India level on a person to whom the nation owes so much. Was at least a commemorative stamp brought out, which is a common form of tokenism? </b>
The Kamaladevi centenary and the golden jubilee of the Indian Handicrafts Board would have been a wonderful occasion for bringing out a set of stamps in various denominations of some of the most eye-catching and colourful handicrafts of our land. Come to think of it, crafts constituted only a small portion of her world. <b>Her political contributions and the work she did for the theatre and the Sangeet Natak Akademi and for individual institutions like the India International Centre all need to be celebrated. </b>
(H Y Sharada Prasad was adviser to Prime Ministers Indira Gandhi and Rajiv Gandhi)
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<!--QuoteBegin-->QUOTE<!--QuoteEBegin-->Kamaladeviâs legacy
By H Y Sharada Prasad
Fame came early to Kamaladevi. Her intellect, her many-sided talents, her self-assurance and daring and her dazzling good looks combined to make her one of the best known younger leaders of the freedom movement. <b>She was one of the six or seven women whose photographs appeared along with the portraits of the national leaders even in the early Thirties. She shared the honour with Kasturba Gandhi, Annie Besant, Sarojini Naidu, Swarup Rani and Kamala Nehru, Nellie Sengupta and Basanti Devi.</b>
<b>Kamaladevi was born in 1903 in Mangalore </b>which was then part of the Madras Presidency. She was married at 14 but was widowed a year later. But the enlightened family encouraged her to continue her studies. <b>She came under the spell of Gandhi, hawked copies of his banned book Hind Swaraj and gave proof of her tremendous organising abilities in the Seva Dal.</b> Sarojini Naiduâs brother, Harindranath Chattopadhyaya, fell in love with her and married her.
âThe gods would envy us,â he wrote in poetic flourish. But he lacked the constancy of temperament to make it work.
Kamaladevi plunged even deeper into political work. <b>She became general secretary of the All India Womenâs Conference when barely 21. </b>Her work as leader of the team of volunteers at the Madras session of the Congress in 1927 won high praise. <b>She argued with Gandhi himself and made him revise his decision to exclude women from the Salt Satyagraha.</b>
She was jailed in the Satyagrahas of 1930 and 1933. She threw in her lot with the socialist wing of the Congress and presided over the annual conference of the Congress Socialist Party held at Meerut in 1936. She travelled and wrote widely. She was recognised as one of the few leaders in national politics who was interested in the theatre and had thought deeply about the arts in general.
<b>When freedom came, she stayed with those socialists who spurned office like Narendra Deva, Jayaprakash Narayan, Yusuf Meherally, Achyut Patwardhan and Rammanohar Lohia, </b>while people like Minoo Masani accepted Nehruâs invitation. But the upheaval caused by partition and the uprooting of millions of people provided Ka-maladevi the challenge and the opportunity that her immense organisational gifts were waiting for.
Vast numbers had to be provided shelter and food at the refugee camps. But that was not the end of the problem. Means of livelihood had to be provided so that they could stand on their own feet. Kamaladevi gathered a young band of workers who conducted a survey of the vocations that the refugees had followed.<b> A telling instance throws light on her method of work. She found that there were several thousand acre of vacant land near the Qutab Minar but that officials had allotted that to their own favourites.
She asked the refugees in the camp to occupy the land. She and Sucheta Kripalani followed it up with an all-party conference which adopted the slogan âLand for the tiller and tools for the artisan.â A letter went to Nehru, who promptly ordered the cancellation of the bureaucratsâ plans to grab the lands. As for people who were no agriculturists but knew some craft or other, arrangements were made to provide them with tools and materials and their products were sold through a refugee handicraft shop.
This was the origin of the Central Cottage Industries Emporium which in later years came to be called the most attractive shop in the world and ensured that the most precious craft traditions of our land were preserved and gained worldwide fame. Kamaladevi also became fairy godmother to the Indian Co-operative Union, and the All-India Handicrafts Board. </b>
The full story of these two organisations as also of the Faridabad township which owes its origin to the efforts of Sarojini Naidu, Mridula Sarabhai and Kamaladevi has been told by L C Jain in his books. Jain also says that when once she thought that Indira Gandhi was needlessly interfering in a matter, Kamaladevi wrote to Nehru, âYou ask her to keep herself away from my areas of operation. It is none of her business.â
There was always something of the lioness in her. But when dealing with innocent artisans, she was all mother. A colleague recalls how when a potter fell ill she went all the way to his hut to give him money for his treatment.
âWe walked the bylanes of Delhi to visit him and other craft persons, not minding the filth or the state of the streets. She would not think twice of hitching her sari to wade through the water even in her autumnal years.â
Another former aide recalls, âEach journey with her was a voyage of discovery and an education in the fullest sense. While touring Bengal, during the day we visited the craft centres and in the evening the jatra performances, the old puppets in Murshidabad and the patta painters and singers. In Orissa while searching for weaving centres, jewellery makers and visiting the painters of Raghurajpur we also saw the Sahi Jatra at Puri, the puppeteers of Orissa at Kantil and Cuttack and visited the NGO working on fibre research and adivasi welfare.
At Sonepur in Bihar we saw the thick Bhagalpuri waste silk chaddars used by the villagers as an inexpensive wrap during winter. We tracked down the producers and, for the first time, Kamaladevi ordered the producers to make yardage. A waste cloth became an important export item.â
The extracts I have given are from a publication brought out by the Crafts Council of Karnataka a few months ago by way of a âtribute to the mother of handicrafts on her birth centenary.â It contains articles in both English and Kannada. <b>My inquiries show that no comparable book was brought out at the all-India level on a person to whom the nation owes so much. Was at least a commemorative stamp brought out, which is a common form of tokenism? </b>
The Kamaladevi centenary and the golden jubilee of the Indian Handicrafts Board would have been a wonderful occasion for bringing out a set of stamps in various denominations of some of the most eye-catching and colourful handicrafts of our land. Come to think of it, crafts constituted only a small portion of her world. <b>Her political contributions and the work she did for the theatre and the Sangeet Natak Akademi and for individual institutions like the India International Centre all need to be celebrated. </b>
(H Y Sharada Prasad was adviser to Prime Ministers Indira Gandhi and Rajiv Gandhi)
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