The Hindu : National : Not communication through the media: Krishna Iyer

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Tuesday, Nov 06, 2007
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Not communication through the media: Krishna Iyer

In reply to the West Bengal Governor Gopalkrishna Gandhi’s response to his letter, the former Supreme Court Judge, V.R. Krishna Iyer, has written the following letter to Mr. Gandhi:

I read with some surprise your letter to me published in The Hindu on 03.11.2007. I have not yet got that letter till now (1.00 p.m. 5th Nov) by post or fax. You have stated in your press statement that I wrote an open letter to you through The Hindu and so you were replying to me through The Hindu. I was embarrassed to read this egregious solecism of addressing the honourable Governor, not directly but through a newspaper. I wondered what you would have thought of me making an odd communication to a great dignitary through the media. So checked up with my secretary whether this was a fact. Under normal circumstances I cannot convince myself of being guilty of such a deviance. I learn that I sent you directly a fax communication of the entire letter on 31st October 2007 at 1.24 p.m. The Governor’s House i.e. your office apparently acknowledged receipt because my telephone gave the result OK. I may also add that the same letter was sent by email at about the same time to your Chief Minister. Indeed, The Hindu was given a copy later but they published an edited version of my letter to you on the 3rd November, 2007. It is unfortunate that the Raj Bhavan staff did not bring my fax letter to your notice on the 31st itself. Your reply status that I addressed you a letter through The Hindu would have puzzled the readers of The Hindu. That is why I am writing this clarificatory note. However, I am greatly thankful to you for your prompt and exceedingly meaningful response which goes a long way to convince me that your government is now seized of the real problem. I am repeating my letter once again, although I have earlier sent the original by post also. The issue raised by me is of national importance and the country has to resolve the conflict between distorted development through technologically processed industrialisation by MNCs with land acquisition proceedings victimising the small peasantry who stand the peril of losing their land getting a compensation of devalued cash. This is anti-Gandhian, anti-socialist and, in a larger sense, anti-democratic.

Dear Governor Gopal Gandhi, do forgive me for this epistolary invasion of your time but my purpose is to bring home an inconvenient truth that industrialization with the rich getting richer, employment potential being an illusion. Unless there is a creative nationalism informing developmental humanism the temptation of foreign investment is a dubious proposition.

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