Indira Gandhi possessed a sharp literary sensibility that surfaced in her editorial work on an English translation of Rabindranath Tagore’s iconic poem Ekla Chalo Re, Congress leader Jairam Ramesh said on Wednesday, marking her 108th birth anniversary.
Ramesh said the former prime minister had a special relationship with Tagore, having spent nine months at Shantiniketan between July 1934 and April 1935. “She was an annual visitor to Visva-Bharati,” he noted.
Ekla Chalo Re was her favourite, and in the final month of her life she discussed the poem extensively with one of her closest aides, H.Y. Sharada Prasad.
On X, Ramesh shared a two-year-old article describing her “sensitive and diligent” edits on the poem’s English translation, found in Sharada Prasad’s archives. “Tagore's iconic poem Ekla Chalo Re was not only Indira Gandhi's favourite, it also brought out her latent literary sensibilities,” wrote Sanjiva Prasad, Sharada Prasad’s son.
He also recalled that on October 30, 1984 — one day before her assassination — Indira Gandhi approved the appointment of sculptor Sankho Chaudhuri as chairman of the Lalit Kala Akademi.
"While the veteran politician Ram Niwas Mirdha had won the most votes in an election for the post, he had the good sense and cultural sensibilities to suggest that one respected artist should succeed another as Chairman of the arts academy.
"But a more interesting interaction that took place over the month centred on a translation of Tagore's memorable song 'Jodi tor dak shune keu na ashe' that contains the memorable phrase 'Ekla Chalo', which inspired Indira Gandhi. However, the translations of this poem did not seem to satisfy her exacting standards," the article read.
"My father had on several occasions said that Indira Gandhi worked tirelessly on her speeches and would have made an excellent sub-editor. He also maintained that her intellect and education were of the highest calibre, with leading writers and philosophers like Iris Murdoch and Andre Malraux seeking out her company. How particular she could be about words and their meaning can be seen here," Prasad wrote, and gave an account of the changes and suggestions made by Gandhi for the English translation of the work.
"...I do not know who the little girl reader was that Indira Gandhi had in mind or whether her version of Tagore's great poem-song ever got published, but looking at her painstaking work on the poem, even in an unfinished form, one can appreciate her literary sensibilities," he wrote.