‘History book for the next generation’

At the opening of the Jaipur literature festival in India on January 24, when social activist and retired IPS officer Kiran Bedi released her co-authored book, Uprising 2011 — Indians Against Corruption, a senior journalist known to her, remarked “That quick?” And she replied: “Yes, lest people forget.”

Two days after Jaipur, Bedi and co-author Pavan Choudhury were both in Dubai to stretch public memory a bit more. Bedi released the book at the Dhow Palace Hotel on Saturday and signed copies for attendees. The release tied in with the previous evening’s Kavi Sammelan and Mushaira, in honour of India’s Republic Day.

KT illustration by A.U. Santhoshkumar

Bedi thinks nothing of her presumably tiring and evidently hectic travel schedule. On January 30, she will be in Patna to address a public meeting. Given her very active public life, the one casualty is her love of tennis. “But then you can’t drop everything at 4pm to pick up a racket,” she says.

In a quick chat with Khaleej Times, Bedi says the book is no big deal: “A piece of art and creativity written for posterity” is “sandwiched beautifully between a memory and vote,” she said.

Seated on a tall chair at an imposing-looking wooden table in a fitting sandy shade of shalwar-kameez, the former top cop is pleased about the timing of the book and says that the link between the 2014 general elections and publication of the book is a fortuitous one. The sandwiched memory she talks of is the two years of experiencing a mass movement and the one year of compiling it.

The book is a selection of English news articles that follows the arc of the Anna Hazare movement in India and the push for the Jan Lokpal bill that she points out has been cleared by the select committee. Priced at Rs 290, with a downloadable version available of each page, Bedi feels this will be a crucial reference text, a “history book for the next generation.”

“Just imagine,” she says, “if the Mandal Commission was better documented and we were able to recall more than that one iconic image of (Delhi student who protested job reservations for backward castes by setting himself alight) Rajiv Goswami.”

Barely a page per each of the eight chapters, and published by Wisdom Village Publications Pvt Ltd, the book is essentially a scrap book of news articles. At a glance, the articles in the book are selected on the basis of their headlines. From the August 2011 archives, there is a clipping of ‘Tewari sorry for calling Anna Corrupt’ and ‘Khurshid admits “errors of judgement”’. Illustrations and pictures of news clippings dominate inchoate ‘writerly’ sentences such as this one in chapter three (‘Beginnings of the Big Innings’): “Nation rose to its feet as its first victory over powers that be.”

Co-author Choudhury is the author of “path breaking books like ‘When you are Sinking Become a Submarine...”, the book sleeve reads. He and actor Salman Khan once had a tiff regarding the dialogue used in a certain movie without crediting the dialogue’s author — a certain self-help author. Speaking about the launch in Jaipur, Choudhury says, one man got up from the audience and asked him: “But what of it, what of all these movements, what has changed?” And in true flamboyant style, Choudhury returned: “If a stone cutter’s stone cracks only on the 100^th blow, it doesn’t mean the earlier 99 were useless.”

Bedi and Choudhury are on a tour of this book’s promotion. Australia is on the cards. Back in India, there is an itinerary ready — Gwalior, Coimbatore, and definitely her home turf Amritsar and Chandigarh. She’s looking forward to keeping alive the memory of this mammoth revolution. Is there any criticism in the pages or are the news clips only pro-Anna? There is a balanced critque, she feels: “The selection was a fair one.” Doesn’t she feel the movement lost momentum? “No,” she says. “It took on a different shape, it’s how a movement evolves.” She says it is important the anti-corruption movement stays alive in public memory, which is why this is a “historic document.”

nivriti@khaleejtimes.com