Akshaya Mukul | Writer, Rebel, Soldier, Lover

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Join us for a conversation on Writer, Rebel, Soldier, Lover: The Many Lives of Agyeya , between author Akshaya Mukul and Assistant Professor of Hindi Literature, Rahul Bjørn Parson . _________________

DATE: Thursday, October 13, 2022 TIME: 5pm Berkeley | Calculate Your Local Time VENUE: 341 Dwinelle Hall (Located on Level F) This event will also be live streamed on the Institute's FB page: ISASatUCBerkeley _________________

ABOUT THE BOOK Sachchidanand Hirananda Vatsyayan ‘Agyeya’ is unarguably one of the most remarkable figures of Indian literature. From his revolutionary youth to acquiring the mantle of a (highly controversial) patron saint of Hindi literature, Agyeya’s turbulent life also tells a history of the Hindi literary world and of a new nation-spanning as it does two world wars, Independence and Partition, and the building and fraying of the Nehruvian state.

Akshaya Mukul’s comprehensive and unflinching biography is a journey into Agyeya’s public, private and secret lives. Based on never-seen-before archival material-including a mammoth trove of private papers, documents of the CIA-funded Congress for Cultural Freedom and colonial records of his years in jail-the book delves deep into the life of the nonconformist poet-novelist. Mukul reveals Agyeya’s revolutionary life and bomb-making skills, his CIA connection, a secret lover, his intense relationship with a first cousin, the trajectory of his political positions, from following M.N. Roy to exploring issues dear to the Hindu right, and much more. Along the way, we get a rare peek into the factionalism and pettiness of the Hindi literary world of the twentieth century, and the wondrous and grand debates which characterized that milieu.

Writer, Rebel, Soldier, Lover features a formidable cast of characters: from writers like Premchand, Phanishwarnath Renu, Raja Rao, Mulk Raj Anand and Josephine Miles to Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru, revolutionary Chandra Shekhar Azad and actor Balraj Sahni. And its landscapes stretch from British jails, an intellectually robust Allahabad and modern-day Delhi to monasteries in Europe, the homes of Agyeya’s friends in the Himalayas and universities in the US. This book is a magnificent examination of Agyeya’s civilizational enterprise.

Ambitious and scholarly, Writer, Rebel, Soldier, Lover is also an unputdownable, whirlwind of a read.

SPEAKER BIOS Akshaya Mukul is an independent researcher. He is the author of Writer, Rebel, Soldier, Lover: The Many Lives of Agyeya and Gita Press and the Making of Hindu India . The latter won every major non-fiction award in India on its release, including the Crossword Book Award, Ramnath Goenka Award, Tata Literature Live Award, Atta-Galatta-Bangalore Literature Festival Prize and the Shakti Bhatt Award. An alumni of Delhi University, he has been a journalist for 24 years and worked at The Times of India, Hindustan Times, The Pioneer and the Asian Age . He has written extensively on Indian politics, education and culture and has contributed essays for India: A Conceptual Lexicon for the 21st Century , edited by Rukmini Bhaya Nair and Peter Ronald deSouza, and A Functioning Anarchy? Essays for Ramachandra Guha , edited by Srinath Raghavan and Nandini Sundar. Akshaya Mukul is the author of Mukul is the recipient of the Homi Bhabha, Jawaharlal Nehru Memorial Fund and the New India Foundation fellowships.

biography written by akshaya mukul

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Akshaya Mukul’s biography of Agyeya captures the life of one of Hindi literature’s most iconic practitioners

Writer, rebel, soldier, lover: the many lives of agyeya is set against the cultural landscape of the 20th century and explores the life of the iconic writer, who was one of the mainstays of the nayi kavita literary movement.

biography written by akshaya mukul

Those of us who grew up across north Indian towns and cities in the 1980s, attempting to unravel the contradictions of the self, often found ourselves divided when it came to the work and life of Sachchidananda Vatsyayan, or Agyeya (1911-1987). Prolific and provocative, he was regarded as not only one of the most prominent Hindi writers of the 20th century but also an enigmatic cultural figure who animated the otherwise complex and dreary — or, at least, that’s what it appeared to us then — Hindi literary scene. Despite all his literary prowess and achievements, our young selves sometimes found it challenging to embrace Agyeya fully, for his intellect, poetry, and writings dared to bare the complexities of the human mind, the inner contradictions, and the tussle between social identity and self.

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biography written by akshaya mukul

My quest with Agyeya’s writings in the past and now has often taken me to the pioneering work of CH Cooley — the American sociologist who propounded the theory of looking-glass self, the tug of war between perception and reality, the general questions around the sense of social self and identity. I, however, reserve this extension of my interpretation to a later time and straightaway deep dive into Akshaya Mukul’s biography of Agyeya, which attempts to answer most of the questions that linger around his legacy, placed in a larger context of colonial and post-colonial history, the subjectivities of which find relevance in today’s public sphere.

Writer Rebel Soldier Lover: The Many Lives of Agyeya is a veritable doorstopper and makes for rewarding reading, illuminating the life of Agyeya and the world around him. Through a critical lens, Mukul has delved into a vast wealth of papers and archival material and attempted to decode the enigma surrounding Agyeya. One need not be a fan of Agyeya’s work or interested in the minutiae of his life to understand this biography, for his work, for the most part, is set in the social and literary history of India in the 20th century.

books, Writer Rebel Soldier Lover: The Many Lives of Agyeya

A simple reckoning with Agyeya or any of his contemporaries from the 1980s is difficult at the outset. The title of the book is a window to the complexities of Agyeya the artiste’s life. After all, an artiste is a constantly evolving, multifaceted, multi-layered “idea” and not a fixed entity, and rarely embodies monochromatic, cast-in-stone rigidities. Agyeya resonated naturally with these complexities emerging from within a single idea or thought, which makes his work fulfilling to curious minds trying to break into the concepts of freedom, liberation, and critical thinking.

Festive offer

I was reminded of poet Allama Iqbal at various points while reading the book. He, too, has been a subject of long-running debates for the radical breakthroughs emanating from his work. Some writers are more consistent than others, but consistency is hardly a virtue or a measure of literary worth. Inconsistencies and contradictions are, on the other hand, intellectual and organic, as they indicate inner struggles, trials, and tribulations, that sometimes provide an index of changing circumstances. What makes Mukul’s book compelling is that Agyeya is not the “ideal” subject, nor has Mukul made any effort to smoothen the wrinkles and present him as one. The four identities in the title of the book correspond to Agyeya’s various lives as a writer, an anti-colonial revolutionary who spent several years incarcerated, an anti-fascist who participated in World War II , and an individual who longed for, yet was rarely able to, find freedom or love.

His constant pursuit of the inner self was a result of the extractive nature of relationships and the transactional associations he often witnessed in his day-to-day life that deeply troubled his sense of empathy and sensitivity. Mukul describes how on a train journey to Madras, he defends a school teacher being subjected to unwarranted remarks by a fellow passenger. Similarly, some of his earlier texts reflect a tussle between perception and reality, for instance, the dichotomy in his and societal perceptions of youth and old age.

As I read the book, I found that Agyeya the writer is all-encompassing and all-embracing. Mukul’s work presents a delightful snapshot of Agyeya’s life as a student and a scholar who travelled and continuously shaped his ideas. Most of all, the overarching theme that emerges from the book is how Agyeya is widely regarded as the trendsetter of the Nayi Kavita movement. His contributions remain seminal, some of the most inventive and innovative, as he continued to evolve the world of Hindi literature with modernist thoughts.

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I have often wondered why Agyeya intensely focused on the inner lives of his characters and not so much on how they engaged with the outside world. The answer, as Mukul helps us understand, is, perhaps, because Agyeya did not want to preach or assume a didactic, moralising voice when he was riddled with a range of anxieties that he often expressed in his private correspondence. In the then-dominant sociological perspective, Agyeya reveled in the realm of the psyche. This may have helped him resolve (at least symbolically) the several inner contradictions that came to characterise the labyrinthine professional and personal dilemmas of his life. Widely regarded as one of the greatest poets of symbolism, it is for these reasons that Agyeya speaks to the messiness in all of us.

In a recent interview, the 2021 Nobel laureate in literature, Abdulrazak Gurnah, said, “I represent me. I represent me in terms of what I think and what I am, what concerns me, what I want to write about… When I speak, I’m speaking as a voice among many, and if you hear an echo in your own experience, that’s great.” Similarly, Agyeya, to me, remains a writer resonating with the more profound sense of self — much more than any other identity imposed on him or expectations set around him. To me, he celebrates the idea of freedom and liberation, in theory, thought, or expression. As I stand better acquainted with him after reading Mukul’s excellent work, I’ll heed the poet’s own words of advice that appear at the end of the Preface of his much-celebrated 1978 Jnanpith award-winning collection of poems, Kitni Navon Mein Kitni Baar (In How Many Boats, How Many Times): “Kavitayein aapke saamne hain. Iske aagey woh hi prasangik hain — Kavi nahin (The poems are before you. From this point onwards, only they are relevant — not the poet).”

Agyeya was heavily misunderstood and misinterpreted during the Cold War period. To the scholars of the future, Mukul’s biography will be beneficial as he analyses him with no such prejudices. His life, reflections, and creativity are a larger commentary on the historical backdrop of the time and weave a narrative helpful in understanding the relevance of colonial and post-colonial history today.

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Akshay Mukul’s biography of Agyeya is a nuanced journey through the writer’s fascinating life

The biography humanises the subject, expands the empathy of the reader, and turns agyeya’s world into a real, pulsating, and authentic universe for the readers..

Akshay Mukul’s biography of Agyeya is a nuanced journey through the writer’s fascinating life

Reading Writer, Rebel, Soldier, Lover: The Many Lives of Agyeya , Akshay Mukul’s colossal biography of Agyeya, a stalwart of Hindi Literature, was like entering the fascinating world of my literary forefathers. With Agyeya at the center of this socio-cultural and literary cosmos, I got to see intimate glimpses of so many names I have grown up reading passionately but could never meet in person. Mostly because most of these writers were either dead before I was born or were gone later, while I was still years away from foraying into my own reading journey.

Agyeya’s pulsating universe

Right from Premchand to Jainendra Kumar to Phanishwar Nath Renu to Nemi Chandra Jain to Muktibodh to Shamsher Bahadur Singh to Malayaj to Nirmal Verma and Namvar Singh – anyone who has been of some serious significance in the world of Hindi Literature in the decades around independence is there in the biography. For this reason alone, this 800 pages long epic book is an absolute joy to read. My reading experience was an adventure which has left me elated and in daze.

There are scenes of Hindi giants no less than Hazari Prasad Dwivedi taking walks in flower-gardens with Agyeya, discussing plants with the passion of love. And then there are scenes where despite juggling with his own chaotic work-world, a mature Agyeya is making time for getting the PHD submissions of deadline-distressed younger Hindi writers typed in Allahabad. Not stopping here, he is also then proof-reading those submissions and even arranging for a car to send off the younger writer to Banaras, all for the sake of ensuring a timely submission by a junior.

There are scenes where a very young Agyeya, locked in prison as a undertrial for his rebellion against the British empire, is having dreams with explicit sexual overtones. And he is boldly noting down what Mukul calls ‘his nocturnal fantasies’ – out of all places, on the back of his court documents! There are scenes of long and often poignant, correspondences of Agyeya with an astonishing range of people – from Maithili Sharan Gupt to Muktibodh. The concerns that these letters betray give us a rare glimpse into the worries, delusions, disagreements, insecurities and more than often, into the vulnerabilities that marked the lives of some of the most brilliant minds that shaped India.

It is remarkable details like these through which Mukul humanizes his subject, expands the empathy of the reader and turns Agyeya’s world into a real, pulsating, authentic universe for all of us. A vulnerable universe which was often full of a multitude of ironic contradictions and a few significant triumphs.

With the page count of only notes and references running to 200, Mukul has clearly handled staggering amount of research. One can only imagine the challenges of creating this hefty biography largely out of Agyeya’s papers – a massive ‘twenty trunks, few cartons and two almirahs worth of material’. Though the subject himself is often considered a daunting figure in Hindi literature and the endless sifting through his life-papers might look intimidating to some, but Mukul comes across with flying colours.

He has clearly written the book with passion, I could feel the undercurrent of that passion on the pages while reading the text. But what’s remarkable here is that while being at it, Mukul is able to maintain the dispassion and precision of a surgeon. He is empathetic towards his subject but never goes overboard. He is not only sensitive but obsessed with details, sub-plots and side stories – which eventually proves significant in giving the reader a fleshed out and solid reading experience.

Mukul’s nuanced, subtle and restrained approach also comes into play when he is dealing with the many literary and political battels surrounding Agyeya. Be it the allegations around Agyeya being called a CIA agent or him being painted as a reactionary pro-right intellectual – Mukul meticulously investigates through a maze of papers and busts all the myths – but he is never loud and lets facts do all the talking. What moved me most was the way Mukul treats the women in Agyeya’s life. Santosh, Kripa, Indumati, Kapila and Ila – he is considerate, empathetic and has genuinely listened to all of them via reading their papers as well as their circumstances.

A cautionary tale

While growing up in my regular university days circles, I remember being fed on the spiraling narrative of the almost mystical battle between a progressive pro-people Muktibodh and an individualistic bourgeois Agyeya. I used to feel stifled by this constant stress on choosing a side – even before being given an opportunity to read both writers and make up my own mind. It did not took me long to realize that this was a manufactured battle that the Hindi literary world has been dragging on for decades and was now imposing it on the younger generation as well. I always saw this whole thing as sort of a trap which puts readers (and writers) in camps and hence limit them and the possibilities of relating to and responding to literature.

Hence this biography of Agyeya came to me as – what now feels as the authentic back story of the most historical feud in my own extended (literary) family. After years of living through the torture of seeing this boxing and limiting of the lives and works of my beloved writers – I could finally read a fact-based account of how did all this started, to begin with. It was a relief to know that the two writers themselves were sincere and respectable towards each other for large parts of their lives. The section dealing with Muktibodh’s death in particularly poignant and moved me to tears.

The descriptions of the ideologically divided and emotionally fractured Hindi world were sad to read. The constant fighting and the exchange of blistering letters between numerous important Hindi writers of that era, often left me disappointed. It is true that Agyeya was relentlessly attacked by the ‘progressives’, but more than often, he himself showed little to zero restraint in attacking them back.

I read the biography during a course of one week and throughout felt a weird kind of grief while encountering these otherwise sensitive Hindi poets and writers – fighting bitterly among themselves on the pages. This went on even while India was at the threshold of attaining independence. While the whole country was shaking through waves of violence, Hindi writers were fighting among themselves to decide who was progressive and who was not. In this sense, Mukul has created in this biography what I personally like to call ‘a cautionary tale of what not to do’. For the same reason, this can prove to be a crucial read for younger generations.

The women in Agyeya’s life

Kripa Sen, Agyeya’s secret lover from the 1940s, is one of the many feats of this biography. I connected to Kripa so much that I feel I will carry her with me forever. In the book she comes across as a great lover– and here I am not writing the word ‘great’ in a sense of hyperbole. The lover in Kripa has a Sufi heart and which comes straight from the legacy of Meer and Majnu. She was a remarkable woman with extraordinary capacities for sustaining love and the wounds that one sometimes earns while being in love. Hindi literature should be thankful to Mukul for introducing us to Kripa, who would otherwise have slipped through the pages of History.

The sections dealing with the women in Agyeya’s life had an undercurrent of the impending grief which kept hovering over the love. But here, grief was not only limited to the loss of love. As Mukul puts it, “His (Agyeya’s) relationships with women – each of them talented in her own right – tended to be extractive, whether financially or for creative gain.” His constant infidelity with zero guilt about how he was treating the women in his live was painful to read through.

In his book titled Wagner: The Terrible Man and his Truthful Art , American-Canadian author M Owen Lee addresses the historic literary question we all struggle with – How can a seriously flawed person produce true and great art?

I do not believe in moral judgements as my own ambivalence about these sensitive questions often overwhelms me. But still, even if I take a considerate view, the patriarchal and insensitive approach of Agyeya towards the women in his life remains so glaringly evident on the record now, that it’s impossible to ignore. Here too, the biography is a cautionary tale.

Agyeya, the writer

One of my favorite sections in the biography moves around Agyeya and Phanishwar Nath Renu. The most eminent Hindi novelist from Bihar, Renu’s letters to Agyeya are both tender and poetic. During the 1966 drought in Bihar, Agyeya went to report on the ground along with a young and enthusiastic Renu. Meeting common people and visiting villages while reporting in the good old school manner, the two produced some seminal longform reportage for Dinaman magazine. Agyeya called out the administration for the pathetic situation in the state – but he did not spared the public intellectuals of Bihar too.

The most poignant pages of the biography details the last months and eventual demise of Renu – who passed away in April 1977, right after emergency was lifted. Renu was a passionate critique of emergency and was locked in a jail in Bihar for a long time. Later, when emergency was lifted, he was out on Parole. But despite being gravely sick due to abdominal complications, Renu kept ‘raring to campaign for the opposition’. Constantly in and out of hospital, he wanted to delay his surgery till fresh elections could happen and the new government is formed. But before that, he had to be taken to Patna Medical College where he died at the age of 56. While reading this I was overwhelmed with grief – thinking about how much we all owe to selfless writers and public intellectuals like Renu, who risked their lives to ensure that the democratic values of our constitution are not compromised.

On a biography spree, I finished reading five writer-biographies this year. Among all five, Agyeya’s biography is the one which has least number of pages devoted to the writer’s work in fiction and poetry. Hence the book is fittingly titled The Many Lives of Agyeya . Literature was just one of Agyeya’s many passions. As much as it can, the biography provides deep insights into his works – especially on ‘ Shekhar: Ek Jeevani’ . But more often than not, Agyeya is either planning a new magazine, planning for a weekly, heading a daily newspaper or preparing for one of his incessant foreign travels. Besides taking multiple fellowships and long teaching assignments abroad, lecturing around the world and organizing literary events were his big passion. It’s a surprise, perhaps an educational one too – that despite leading such a multifaceted life, Agyeya was able to write and publish as much as he did.

biography written by akshaya mukul

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  • Print length 1141 pages
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Akshaya Mukul

Penguin Random House India Private Limited

24 July 2022

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REMEMBERING AGYEYA: WRITER, REBEL,LOVER, SOLDIER

SOURCE: THE WIRE

A SHORT NOTE BEFORE THE READ

The name ‘AGYEYA’ appeared in various news daily as his biography got penned by Akshaya Mukul. 

Sachchidananda Hirananada Vatsyayan (1911-1987) went by the popular pen name AGYEYA, also known as ‘the unknowable’. 

Born in Kushinagar, Uttar Pradesh and the son of a renowned archaeologist Hiranand Sastri, he wore many hats. The writer is also credited for pioneering new trends in Hindi poetry, fiction, criticism as well as journalism. Prayogavaad (experimentalism), a movement in modern Hindi Literature; the launch of his own Hindi language weekly ‘Dinaman’; ‘Nayi Kavita’ in Hindi poetry: are all credited to his imaginary output. 

The Indian revolutionary, AGYEYA was awarded the Sahitya Akademi Award    (1964), Jnanpith Award (1978) and Golden Wreath Award for poetry. 

Akshaya Mukul’s comprehensive biography sums up multifaceted Agyeya’s life as ‘Writer, Rebel, Soldier, Lover: The Many Lives of Agyeya.’A well-researched colossal biography of 565 pages depicts the controversial Hindi writer as we peep into the darker realities of his personal, political as well as literary life as we enter the body and soul of another individual.  

Book Review | Remembering Agyeya: Writer, Rebel, Soldier, Lover

For Agyeya, freedom and self-respect were values on which he never compromised. His biography penned by Akshaya Mukul affirms this notion.

Book Review | Remembering Agyeya: Writer, Rebel, Soldier, Lover

Akshaya Mukul has named the comprehensive biography which sums up the various facets of Agyeya’s life as  Writer, Rebel, Soldier, Lover: The Many Lives of Agyeya.  The book has been published by Vintage, a part of the Penguin Group. The book is enormous not merely because it relates a factual, contextual tale of the many lives of a stalwart writer; it is humongous in size as well with a total of 565 pages of the biography and an additional 200 pages or more of reference material.

I believe it is the most thoroughly researched biography ever written of any Hindi litterateur. In fact, rarely has any writer been the subject of a biography of such epic proportions in the wider Indian literature. Mukul spent several years in writing the book and has scoured all possible sources from across the world looking for authentic facts and references.

Such refinement and perseverance are rare in Hindi. Very few biographies meet the standard in terms of authenticity, detail and due diligence to facts and data. Penguin is soon going to publish the Hindi translation of this colossal biography. For almost four decades, Agyeya was a towering figure in modern Hindi literature. He was the most controversial Hindi writer during his lifetime. Countless rumors were spread about his personal life. Akshaya Mukul must have been cognizant of them too. But he has related the story of Agyeya’s life in a very objective manner based on references and documents. His narrative flows like an articulate novel and there is almost no room for boredom or quirks in it.

Another little-known romantic liaison between Agyeya and Kripa Sen is probably Akshaya’s discovery and, therefore, Agyeya has been appropriately designated as a lover in the book’s title. Besides, Agyeya did write some poignant love poems too.

The book contains a detailed account of Agyeya’s early life, his life in prison and his own advocacy of the court case. The arguments and facts presented by Agyeya in his defense gave a glimpse into his future: it was clear that he would challenge social and political norms.

To those who continuously accuse Agyeya of being an aristocrat and of staying away from the masses, the biography explains in detail how the writer had a close association with, for instance, the peasant movement. Later, he, along with Renu, continuously covered the plight of the farmers and the failures of the administration during the Bihar famine.

Agyeya was almost always short of money because he had opted for writing as a profession at a time when most writers in Hindi literature received very little, sometimes even nil, remuneration. Popular novels like  Shekhar  earned him a miniscule amount in royalties from Saraswati Press. Therefore, Agyeya’s insistence on being remunerated for his lectures later in his career makes sense.

It is also worth noting that when he started receiving some money, for instance, from the Jnanpith Award, he ventured to form a trust with twice the prize money and spent it on other writers. Agyeya was probably the first Hindi writer to do so.

Agyeya’s association with the Congress for Cultural Freedom was at the centre of another controversy. While the affiliation is a fact, it is also true that many of the world’s renowned writers at the time had such connections. Earlier, Agyeya had organised a major conference along with progressive writers against fascism. Freedom and self-respect were values on which he never compromised. This biography attests to this notion.

The literature, thought, and ideological pursuit of Agyeya do not prove his pro-Americanism. Moreover, if it was justified to receive financial aid from the then Soviet Union to publish books at cheap prices and to receive the Soviet Land Award, then any American aid should also be justified. Ironically, both the camps were ignoring the Soviet genocide at the time and the US involvement in the subsequent Vietnam and Korea wars and genocide.

The biography also reminds me of a personal incident which I had almost forgotten. My correspondence and communication with Agyeya started when I was 18 years old. During one such correspondence, when he had not even turned 50, Agyeya once expressed his desire to stop writing.

I registered my protest against such a desire and wrote to him that it would be unfortunate and a great loss. I even suggested that Agyeya should publish a new collection of poems and include in it a lengthy essay on his poetic experiences, problems faced by contemporary poets and ‘Nai Kavita’ or modern poetry.

I even dared to write that Nirmal Verma and Raghuveer Sahay were the most authentic representatives of modern fiction ( nai kahani ) and modern poetry at the time. I was pleasantly surprised to learn that Agyeya preserved this correspondence while I lost the letters I had received from him.

Another aspect of Agyeya emerges from this biography: his connection and interaction with many active members across generations during his time. He also supported many writers in due course. There have also been controversies regarding writer-camps organised by Vatsal Nidhi. Akshay Mukul has carefully scrutinised them contextually and studied the discussions held.

For decades, many left-wing writers have been condemning the stalwart as right-wing, anti-people, and what not. This biography makes it clear that unlike most leftists, Agyeya spent three years in prison for participating in the freedom movement. He remained associated with minor movements thereafter. He never adopted any pro-government, anti-people stance while he was the editor of  Dinaman  and  Nav Bharat Times . Rather, he was democratic and critical of the government and supported Jayaprakash Narayan in his massive and decisive mass movement.

He shared long dialogues with Muktibodh and in  Naya Prateek  had even condemned the attack on Harishankar Parsai by the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh goons.

If one reads this biography with a broad outlook, one will intimately envisage the struggle of Agyeya’s life, his self-respect and dignity as an author, and his authentic, though somewhat obscure, existence.

Ashok Vajpeyi is a well-known Hindi poet-critic and art lover.  

Originally  published  in Hindi, this piece was translated by Nausheen.

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HERE'S AN ANOTHER ARTICLE BY KULDEEP KUMAR FROM THE WIRE

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Akshaya Mukul spills the beans about author Agyeya in his new biography

Akshaya Mukul talks about the protagonist of his new biography Writer, Rebel, Soldier, Lover: The Many Lives of Agyeya. It is a fascinating study of a multi-faceted man, pieced together using official documents, private papers, and recollections of people he knew.

Akshaya Mukul spills the beans about author Agyeya in his new biography

Akshaya Mukul, who bagged a number of non-fiction awards with his book Gita Press and the Making of Hindu India (2015), speaks proudly and passionately about his new book Writer, Rebel, Soldier, Lover: The Many Lives of Agyeya (2022). Published by Vintage, it is a biography of a man who is remembered not only as a stalwart of Hindi literature but also for his contributions to India’s freedom struggle, and his beleaguered but colourful love life.

Excerpts from the interview:

What, according to you, are Agyeya’s most significant contributions to Hindi literature?

Agyeya came on the literary scene when Chhayavaad (romanticism) was on the decline. He heralded the arrival of Prayogvaad (experimentalism). He is particularly known for the Nayi Kavita movement, which was modernist in style. The Marxists attacked Agyeya for his emphasis on individualism but he did not pay much heed to them. He did his own thing. His creativity flourished during years spent in jail for revolutionary activities against the British.

Do you consider your book not only a biography but also a work of translation? While you have not translated Agyeya’s writing per se, you have brought alive for people who read only/mainly in English the life and personality of a Hindi writer. Your thoughts?

That is an interesting way of looking at my book. I am going to give you a long-winded answer. I hope that’s okay with you. Agyeya was not a typical Hindi heartland author. He was a Punjabi man who spent his childhood and youth in Lucknow, Srinagar, Patna, Nalanda, Madras (now Chennai), Ooty, Lahore, and many other places. He was comfortable with English but he wrote poems, essays, novels and travelogues in Hindi because he saw English as the colonizer’s language. His private papers tell another story. His correspondence with his younger brother, some of his lovers, and his literary contemporaries was mostly in English.

Though he was almost chauvinistic about Hindi, he wanted to be translated into English so that he would be read widely outside India. In fact, his novels Nadi Ke Dvip and Apne Apne Ajnabi , and many of his poems, were translated into English during his lifetime. In addition to this, Agyeya translated a lot of his own poems. I did not want to produce a work of translation but I agree with you that I have ended up deconstructing Agyeya for the English-speaking world. I was lucky to have support from Arvind Krishna Mehrotra, Ranjit Hoskote, Trisha Gupta and Akhil Katyal in translating some untranslated Agyeya poems for my book.

Your book opens with Kushinagar, the site of Shakyamuni Buddha’s mahaparinirvana and also the birthplace of Agyeya. Did you visit the place while working on this book?

Yes, I did. Kushinagar had a formative influence in Agyeya’s life, especially because his father Hiranand Sastri used to work with the Archaeological Survey of India. Agyeya used to accompany his father on archaeological expeditions. He was fascinated with the sculptures, inscriptions and coins that were excavated from there. When he was a child, some Buddhist lamas had approached his parents because they wanted to adopt him and train him as a monk. It was difficult for them to let go of him. Agyeya was his father’s favourite child. Agyeya spoke about this phase of childhood publicly when he was invited to Kushinagar in the 1960s.

Agyeya studied at Forman Christian College in Lahore. Did you go there for research?

Going to Lahore for archival work is almost impossible because of political tensions between India and Pakistan, and the difficulty of obtaining a visa for research purposes. I relied on the generosity of scholars who live in Pakistan to locate information and fill in some gaps. I checked out archives in Allahabad and Chicago, and I visited Agyeya’s houses in Delhi.

Would you have had a different approach to this biography if Agyeya were alive today?

I would not have taken up this project if I had been asked to write a controlled biography. Yes, he is a colossal figure of Hindi literature from the 20th century but he is also a human being. I despise biographies where men come out with flying colours all the time. I did not want to write such a hagiography. I like to bring out secrets, struggles, foibles and failures.

During Agyeya’s lifetime, Ram Kamal Rai wrote a biography titled Shikhar Se Sagar Tak based on interviews with Agyeya and his contemporaries. It had the makings of an authorized biography. I did not want Agyeya’s stamp of approval or his permission while writing this book. I wanted to treat him as a protagonist, and tell his story as truthfully as possible.

Agyeya’s romance with Kripa Sen is one of the highlights of your book, and it’s great to see you write about her with the same dignity that is accorded to his wives Santosh Malik and Kapila Vatsyayan. How would describe Kripa Sen’s role in Agyeya’s life?

They had a stormy relationship but she made a huge impression on him. When I saw Agyeya’s private papers, I realized that Nadi Ke Dvip is more autobiographical than I had imagined. Their relationship was intense and all-encompassing. Kripa was a passionate woman, and extremely well-read. She was educated in England. She was proficient in Persian and Bengali in addition to English. She moved among the social elite of her time. She was completely besotted with Agyeya. Sometimes, she would write four love letters in a day.

Kripa was a real match for him. If he gave her the silent treatment, she would have none of it. She used to persuade him and compel him to talk. She would not let him walk all over her. They were going to have a child together. She had to abort the child. I wrote about their relationship only because Agyeya never wanted to forget it. If he wanted to hide it, he would not have kept Kripa’s letters along with his private papers even after he got married to Kapila. Excluding Kripa from my biography of Agyeya would have been blasphemous.

Your book also mentions that Agyeya was “emotionally involved” with his cousin, and had some homosexual encounters during his college days. What sources did you use?

My thumb rule was to write an evidence-based biography and avoid gossip at all costs. There is enough material available about Agyeya’s emotional entanglement with his cousin Indumati. His first wife Santosh was outraged when she saw Indumati wearing her wedding ring but later suggested that she was open to living with Agyeya and Indumati under the same roof. Kripa was quite aghast when she learnt about the closeness between Agyeya and Indumati. What I have written about Agyeya’s homosexual encounters is based on the dream journals that he kept, and his book Shekhar: Ek Jivani that draws from his personal life.

Is it true that Agyeya was also a photographer?

Yes, Agyeya loved taking photographs of his lovers, nature, and children. When Gandhiji was assassinated, and his ashes were scattered all over India, Agyeya took photographs to document the moment when the ashes were thrown into the Sangam in Allahabad (now Prayagraj). Apart from being a photographer, Agyeya was also a great cook, tailor and carpenter. He was deeply interested in physics, dance and music. He was knowledgeable about plants and trees. He also made and kept designs of furniture, underwear, and teapots. He had a curious, expansive mind, which was always occupied with something or the other.

Chintan Girish Modi is a writer, journalist and educator who tweets @chintan_writing

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Book review: ‘Writer, Rebel, Soldier, Lover: The Many Lives of Agyeya’ by Akshaya Mukul

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Written By: Ashutosh Kumar Thakur

| Published on: Feb 1, 2023

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The biography of Agyeya – ‘Writer, Rebel, Soldier, Lover: The Many Lives of Agyeya’ by author Akshaya Mukul, which was released in July 2022, chronicles his transformation from “a revolutionary youth to a very controversial patron-saint of Hindi writing.”

In 2015, Akshaya Mukul wrote the multi-award-winning book “Gita Press and the Making of Hindu India.”

Author Akshaya Mukul successfully presented Agyeya’s public, private, and secret lives in the book with no holds barred. It also covers Hindi literature from colonial times to Nehruvian India and beyond. What Akshaya Mukul has done is read and investigate the clues to his life that Agyeya has left behind in his works, giving us a truly unique perspective on a man who contributed tremendously to the world of words and ideas.

Along the way, we get a rare peek into the factionalism and pettiness of the Hindi literary world of the twentieth century, and the wondrous and grand debates which characterized that milieu. The factional battles in the Hindi society and Agyeya’s quest into civilisation are equally as exciting as the era he lived in.

Sachchidananda Hirananda Vatsyayan (March 7, 1911 – April 4, 1987), popularly known by his pen name ‘Agyeya’ was a remarkable Indian writer, poet, novelist, literary critic, journalist, translator and revolutionary in Hindi language. His monumental novel ‘Shekhar: Ek Jeevani’, widely regarded as his masterpiece, was drawn from his own experiences in prison.  He also pioneered modern trends in Hindi poetry, as well as in fiction, criticism, and journalism. With his unwavering contribution for Hindi, he is regarded as the pioneer of the Prayogavaad (experimentalism) movement in modern Hindi literature.

Son of a renowned archaeologist Hiranand Sastri, Agyeya was born in Kasia, a small town near Kushinagar in Uttar Pradesh. He took active part in the Indian freedom struggle and spent several years in prison for his revolutionary activities against British colonial rule.

Agyeya, a pioneer of modern Hindi literature, developed a brand-new narrative language that articulated a remarkable poetics of exaggeration, transgression, and sarcasm. How Agyeya edited remarkable the Saptak series which gave rise a new trend in Hindi poetry, known as Nayi Kavita. He also edited several literary journals, and launched his own Hindi language weekly Dinaman, which set new standard and trends in Hindi journalism. Agyeya translated some of his own works, as well as works of some other Indian authors to English along with translated some books of world literature into Hindi . Akshaya Mukul narrated extremely well about the life and work of Agyeya in the book.

‘Shekhar: Ek Jivani’ is an unfinished Hindi-language novel by Agyeya. Published in two parts, with a third part that has yet to see the light of day, ‘Shekhar: Ek Jivani’ is semi-biographical in nature and is considered to be Agyeya’s magnum opus and also considered a unique and landmark work in Hindi literature. The experimental nature of the novel gave it attention, and many critics recognized it as the first psychoanalytical novel of Hindi literature due to its focus on thematising the gap between the external world and internal states.

It is essential to know that Agyeya started writing ‘Shekhar: Ek Jivani’ when he was imprisoned for his rebellious activities against the British colonial government, in particular, for his participation in the attempt to help Bhagat Singh, a leader of the Hindustan Socialist Republican Army, to escape from jail in 1929. He wrote the first draft of the novel after being arrested, where he contemplated writing about his life before he would be executed. The first part was published after four redrafts, and the second was released in 1944. The third part, which Agyeya said he had written, never appeared.

Akshaya Mukul gave clear and lucid account in the book that Agyeya, had a wonderful understanding of the civilisational roots of the country and was the modern voice of the genius of India. Agyeya had no predecessors in Hindi, and he decided to depart the dominant mode of realism and explore reality in non-realistic, sometimes surrealistic ways. From his revolutionary youth to acquiring the mantle of a (highly controversial) patron saint of Hindi literature, Agyeya’s turbulent life also tells a history of the Hindi literary world and of a new nation-spanning as it does two world wars, Independence and Partition, and the building and fraying of the Nehruvian state. Agyeya firmly believed that language in literature does not merely reflect reality but also, more significantly, creates it. A tireless experimentalist, in fiction, poetry and editing, Agyeya created a larger geography of empathy.

The book ‘ Writer, Rebel, Soldier, Lover: The Many Lives of Agyeya ’ also features a formidable cast of characters: from writers like Premchand, Phanishwarnath Renu, Raja Rao, Mulk Raj Anand and Josephine Miles to prime minister Jawaharlal Nehru, revolutionary Chandra Shekhar Azad, and actor Balraj Sahni. And its landscapes stretch from British jails, an intellectually robust Allahabad and modern-day Delhi to monasteries in Europe, the homes of Agyeya’s friends in the Himalayas and universities in the US. This book is a magnificent examination of Agyeya’s civilizational enterprise.

Author Akashaya Mukul looks at the scattered elements of Agyeya’s life as ingredients that went into the making of the writer the book observes and records the influence of Agyeya’s lived experiences, the places he habited, the people he associated with, and the books he read in his stories, poems, and novels.

Based on never-seen-before archival material-including a mammoth trove of private papers, documents of the CIA-funded Congress for Cultural Freedom and colonial records of his years in jail-the book delves deep into the life of the nonconformist poet-novelist. Akshaya Mukul’s comprehensive and unflinching biography is a journey into Agyeya’s public, private and secret lives.

Mukul also reveals Agyeya’s revolutionary life and bomb-making skills, his CIA connection, a secret lover, his intense relationship with a first cousin, the trajectory of his political positions, from following MN Roy to exploring issues dear to the Hindu right, and much more. Agyeya’s journey from a young revolutionary to a patron saint of Hindi literature is extensively explored in the book.

This is a work of intense analysis and considered excavation a contemplation on Agyeya’s oeuvre and its place in world literature. Through this book, readers will get an insider’s look into the life of an eminent writer. Ambitious and scholarly, Writer, Rebel, Soldier, Lover is also an unputdownable, whirlwind of a read.

Book Name: Writer, Rebel, Soldier, Lover: The Many Lives of Agyeya by Akshaya Mukul Published by: Penguin Vintage Book MRP: ₹999.00

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About Ashutosh Kumar Thakur

Ashutosh Kumar Thakur is a Bengaluru-based management professional, curator, and literary critic. He can be reached at [email protected]

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Agyeya: Being Human

A multi-layered biography of Agyeya, a foundational figure of modern Hindi literature

biography written by akshaya mukul

Agyeya (Illustration: Saurabh Singh)

A LITERARY BIOGRAPHY STANDS at the intersection of many disciples. Language, history, political thought, cultural memory, and human narrative collide within its pages. Sachchidanand Hirananda Vatsyayan ‘Agyeya’ was a man of many parts, who lived through a seminal period of Hindi litera­ture. He was born on March 7, 1911 and died on April 4, 1987. His biographer Akshaya Mukul describes his birth at an excava­tion site in Kushinagar “in an open space, not far from the spot where the Buddha was believed to have breathed his last.” The word “agyeya,” which he adopted as his pen name means “the unknowable”, and the puzzles, paradoxes and contradictions of his life stand testimony to that.

This vast biography, with its mythic scope and texture, is written with precision and passion. It is ironic, and also ap­propriate, that this first comprehensive biography of the man who was considered a foundational figure of modern Hindi literature, a man whose “stance on language politics bordered on Hindi chauvinism” is written in English. It is also appropri­ate because of the cosmopolitanism of Agyeya’s scholarship, even though he was insistent that “an Indian writer could not successfully write fiction and poetry in the colonizer’s tongue.”

Agyeya grew up in a multilingual environment, as his father had a transferable job with the British government. His first language was in a sense English, and he writes that he used to dream in English. He took pains to ground himself in his neglected mother tongue and affirmed that he had only learnt Hindi by “deliberate effort, in a hostile atmosphere”.

This ambitious biography begins with Alexander Cun­ningham, the first director-general of the Archaeological Survey of India, and the effort to locate the site of the Buddha’s death. Agyeya’s father, Pandit Hirananda Sastri, had been hired by the ASI. By page 11, we encounter the young Sachcha’s precocious talent for poetry. It is at the age of four that he says of a spinning top he plays with “ Nachat hai bhumi ri —O the earth is dancing”. At the age of five he drops out of his convent school after a reprimand by a disciplinarian nun. A rigorous course of home schooling begins, which included English, Hindi, Persian and above all Sanskrit. This early rigorous grounding in classical texts was to provide a firm philosophical base for his later endeavours.

We meet Agyeya in his youthful revolutionary days, when, to quote his prison diaries, he had pledged himself to “the undy­ing flame of a revolutionary ideal”. The political activism led to conspiracies and jail sentences, and the cover of a soap factory to manufacture explosives. This was followed by courtroom dramas, betrayals, and struggles with the harsh realities of the British Raj. However, there was also the intense reading, both revolutionary and romantic, and the growing realisation that he was at heart a writer. Sometime in 1932, Premchand, the leading light of the Progressive Writers’ Association, and editor of the literary journal Hans , encountered Vatsyayan’s stories. They met his rigorous standards; the story did not bear his name; Premchand conferred the pen name “Agyeya”— unknowable—to the byline.

This biography is a dizzying read, a joyous adventure, and as one turns the pages one glimpses Agyeya, as an all too human figure, the frailties and vanities that come with fame and accompany genius

biography written by akshaya mukul

Mukul’s unputdownable book is packed with literary and social history and gives an exhilarating feel of those dark days, which were yet so full of hope and conviction. It follows the pub­lication of Agyeya’s major work and the sure blossoming of his genius. There is also mention of the stalwarts of world literature such as Anatole France, John Galsworthy, Emile Zola etc. We read of Russian literature, European literature, Bangla writing. We read of DH Lawrence, and of the pull of Nicholas Roerich, and the influence and disenchantment with the Chhayavad movement. We haven’t crossed page 100 yet, and there are 650 more to go, including the references, acknowledgements, and index.

How does one review a book like this one? How could one man have compressed so much intensity into a single life? It is a dizzying read, a joyous adventure, and as one turns the pages one glimpses an all too human figure, the frailties and vanities that come with fame, and accompany genius. We read of his time in the British Indian Army, where, forever the shapeshifter, he is now Captain Vatsyayan. We see him through his mar­riages, his affairs, his aspirations, we see him scaling new heights of success, we see him coping with the despondent realities of a writer’s life. We witness all too familiar factions and rivalries between writers. We read of the All India Writers’ Conference, which reached out to a dazzling array of writers across ideologies and political persuasions with a rare generosity of spirit.

We see a language being fired; we see a literature being forged.

It is difficult to judge a writer by his lived life. Agyeya, the unknowable, was a man convinced of his genius. Like many other men of genius (rarely women) he considered himself exempt from the rules. Fidelity and loyalty were not his most abiding qualities. There was his complex relationship with his older cousin Indumati. His brief, loveless first marriage, to Santosh Kashyap, was “a big commitment,” which he could “not fulfil”. The relationships and affairs that preceded and followed it suggest a restless search, for companionship, for romance, for mental and physical stimulation. Mukul has written of Agyeya’s personal and emotional life with depth and discretion. I was par­ticularly moved by the pages that took us to the tender, heartfelt, and yet sparky letters from Kripa Sen, his secret lover in the early 1940s, who was later immortalised as Rekha in Nadi ke Dvip . In his thoughtful introduction, Mukul comments, “His relation­ships with women—each of them talented in her own right— tended to be extractive, whether financially or for creative gain.” Agyeya’s deepest, best known relationships were with the formi­dably beautiful and talented Kapila Vatsyayan, who he married in 1956, and with Ila Dalmia, both muse and amanuensis, who remained with him until the end. Kapila was 27 when he married her, and he 46. She was also the niece of his previous wife, Santosh. She remained his legally wedded wife, although her authorised biography has barely referred to the relationship.

Agyeya met Ila Dalmia sometime in 1967 or 1968. She was 23, and he was about 30 years older. The two decades they spent together were fruitful and creative, with travels across Europe and America, new friends, and incur­sions into new areas of creativity. Mukul comments that Ila Dalmia was “instrumental in burnishing Agyeya’s reputation in his old age”. She was in many ways to become the custodian of his life and legacy.

When Agyeya died, the editorial in the Navbharat Times declared, “a vast silence has fallen over Hindi literature.” The cult around him, and his mystique, flourished after his death, though it is difficult to evaluate his continuing impact on today’s generation and contemporary Hindi writing. A year after Agyeya’s demise, Ila Dalmia published her first novel, which she had been working on for some time. Titled Chhat par Aparna , it was discernibly autobiographical in its theme of a young woman from a wealthy family and her older lover.

Most of the dramatis personae in this multi-layered biography are no longer with us. This resonant narrative is a magnificent work of scholarship, researched with passion and told with detachment. It chronicles an era and links the history of recent Hindi literature with the intellectual life of the nation. It also provides a crucial bridge between the determined insularity of Hindi and the sometimes rootless cosmopolitan­ism of the Indian-English literati—a bridge that Agyeya himself effortlessly crossed and recrossed in his inner life and literary career. The tome contains over 200 pages of notes, primary and secondary references, indexes and acknowledgments. These document the deep friendships, rivalries and discords, the con­cerns and dilemmas, that obsessed a generation that was search­ing for its true voice and identity through a time of transition.

The book opens with Agyeya’s poem ‘ Mujhe Aaj Hasna Hai ’—masterfully translated by Ranjit Hoskote as ‘I Should Laugh Today’. “One day I’ll / be found lying dead by the roadside / and people will keep turning to look and ask by right / Why were we not informed earlier / that there’s still life in him?” (from ‘ Sagar Mudra ’, 1971)

Akshaya Mukul’s epic endeavour proves that there is still life in Sachchidanand Hirananda Vatsyayan Agyeya. The embers are still aglow.

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Founded in 1923, now world’s largest publisher: The 100-year journey of Gita Press

The gita press presently has 20 branches in india, one in kathmandu (nepal), along with 48 railway stalls across india. about 2,500 booksellers are associated with the organisation.

Gita Press, which has been conferred with the Gandhi Peace Prize 2021 for its contribution towards social, economic and political change through non-violent and other Gandhian methods, was started in a house in Gorakhpur on a rent of just ₹ 10 a month on April 29, 1923.

Gita Press has been conferred with the Gandhi Peace Prize 2021 (File Photo)

After a journey of over 100 years in the Hindi Bazar area of Gorakhpur in Uttar Pradesh, the Gita Press, which is the world’s largest publisher of Hindu religious texts, now runs on an area of about two lakh sq ft.

It currently publishes 1,850 types of books in 15 languages, and has so far published 930 million books that include its monthly magazine, ‘Kalyan’.

The Gita Press presently has 20 branches in India, one in Kathmandu (Nepal), along with 48 railway stalls across India. About 2,500 booksellers are associated with the organisation.

Also Read: Gandhi Peace Prize 2021 to be conferred on Gita Press: Govt

In his book ‘Gita Press and The Making of Hindu India’, author Mukul has given a chapter on The World of Gita Press, and under the subtitle Chronicle of the Dead, there are observations about the organisation’s monthly magazine ‘Kalyan’.

“Following the principle of not talking ill about the dead, ‘Kalyan’ built up an interesting collection of obituaries of a mix of people ranging from Keshav Baliram Hedgewar to King George V, Moti Lal Nehru, Jawaharlal Nehru, MS Golwalkar, Sampoornanand, S Radha Krishnan, Jugal Kishore Birla, Indira Gandhi and Rajiv Gandhi. The greatest tribute was, however, paid to Pandit Madan Mohan Malviya as ‘Kalyan’ brought out an extra issue on his death in 1946; no other obituary came close to such an expression of reverence,” stated the author.

“There were some significant delays and deliberate omissions as well. The assassination of Mahatma Gandhi was never mentioned, though much later, in 1948, several articles were carried about the life and teachings of Mahatma,” added Mukul.

BR Ambedkar, who remained anathema to Gita Press’s world of ‘Sanatan’ Hindu Dharma, was completely ignored after his death, mentioned the author.

On Sunday (June 18) the Union ministry of culture announced that the Gandhi Peace Prize for 2021 will be conferred on Gita Press.

The award carries a cash prize of ₹ 1 crore, a citation, a plaque and an exquisite traditional handicraft/handloom item.

To this, Lal Mani Tiwari, manager, Gita Press, said, “We don’t react to any comments made by political parties. We work on character building and don’t accept any donations from the government or from private organisations and individuals. This is why we have decided not to accept the prize money of ₹ 1 crore.”

Tiwari said Gita Press had a close association with Mahatma Gandhi. “We have a Lila Chitra Mandir (gallery) depicting stories of lord Ram, lord Krishna and lord Shiva and a picture of Mahatma Gandhi has been placed there,” he said.

“Gita Press works for the uplift of society. Any controversy has no meaning as Gita Press works in the interest of society,” said professor SK Dwivedi, former head of department, political science, Lucknow University.

The publisher recently landed in a controversy after senior Congress leader Jairam Ramesh slammed the Union government for its decision to confer the Gandhi Peace Prize 2021 on Gita Press and called the move a ‘travesty’.

Also Read: ‘Like awarding Godse’: Jairam Ramesh on Centre’s decision to confer Gandhi Peace Prize on Gita Press

Ramesh took to Twitter to criticise the decision and said that giving the Gandhi Peace Prize 2021 to Gita Press is like ‘awarding Savarkar and Godse’.

The Congress leader also shared the cover page of ‘Gita Press and the Making of Hindu India’ written by Akshaya Mukul and argued how the author ‘unearths the stormy relations it had with the Mahatma and the running battles it carried on with him on his political, religious & social agenda’.

“There is a very fine biography from 2015 of this organisation by Akshaya Mukul in which he unearths the stormy relations it had with the Mahatma and the running battles it carried on with him on his political, religious and social agenda. The decision is really a travesty and is like awarding Savarkar and Godse,” Ramesh wrote on Twitter.

The Union ministry said that after due deliberations, a jury, headed by Prime Minister Narendra Modi, unanimously decided to honour Gita Press, Gorakhpur, with the 2021 award, in recognition of its outstanding contribution towards social, economic and political transformation through non-violent and other Gandhian methods.

Instituted by the government in 1995, the Gandhi Peace Prize is an annual award as a tribute to the ideals espoused by Mahatma Gandhi. The award is open to all persons regardless of nationality, race, language, caste, creed or gender.

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Umesh Raghuvanshi is a journalist with over three decade experience. He covers politics, finance, environment and social issues. He has covered all assembly and parliament elections in Uttar Pradesh since 1984. ...view detail

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IMAGES

  1. 'Writer, Rebel, Soldier, Lover': Akshaya Mukul's biography of Agyeya

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COMMENTS

  1. Akshaya Mukul

    Akshaya Mukul s comprehensive and unflinching biography is a journey into Agyeya s public, private and secret lives. Based on never-seen-before archival material-including a mammoth trove of private papers, documents of the CIA-funded Congress for Cultural Freedom and colonial records of his years in jail-the book delves deep into the life of ...

  2. Akshaya Mukul's biography of writer Agyeya wins the 2023 Kamaladevi

    The Winner of the Kamaladevi Chattopadhyay NIF Book Prize 2023 is Akshaya Mukul for his magisterial biography of Agyeya - congratulations to the author and the publishers! @Akshayamukul ...

  3. 'Writer, Rebel, Soldier, Lover': Akshaya Mukul's biography of Agyeya

    Rs 999. Book Title: Writer, Rebel, Soldier, Lover: The Many Lives of Agyeya. Author: Akshaya Mukul. Ira Pande. This is not a book for the dilettante reader or those who have weak wrists. With ...

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    Written by Manoj Kumar Jha September 10, 2022 12:00 IST. Follow Us ... reserve this extension of my interpretation to a later time and straightaway deep dive into Akshaya Mukul's biography of Agyeya, which attempts to answer most of the questions that linger around his legacy, placed in a larger context of colonial and post-colonial history ...

  5. Interview: Akshaya Mukul, author of Writer, Rebel, Soldier, Lover: The

    Author Akshaya Mukul (Courtesy the publisher) I have always been fascinated by Agyeya's life and works. I first read him during my intermediate college years in Ranchi.

  6. Writer, Rebel, Soldier, Lover: The Many Lives of Agyeya

    Akshaya Mukul's comprehensive and unflinching biography is a journey into Agyeya's public, private and secret lives. Based on never-seen-before archival material-including a mammoth trove of private papers, documents of the CIA-funded Congress for Cultural Freedom and colonial records of his years in jail-the book delves deep into the life of ...

  7. Akshay Mukul's biography of Agyeya is a nuanced journey through the

    Nov 19, 2022 · 08:30 am. Agyeya. Reading Writer, Rebel, Soldier, Lover: The Many Lives of Agyeya, Akshay Mukul's colossal biography of Agyeya, a stalwart of Hindi Literature, was like entering ...

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    Lover: The Many Lives of Agyeya; Akshaya Mukul, Vintage Books, ₹999. The reviewer is a leading critic, writer, public intellectual and scholar of Kabir, Hinduism, the Mahabharata and Nehru. Read ...

  9. Writer Rebel Soldier Lover: The Many Liv

    Akshaya Mukul has written a comprehensive, interesting and balanced biography of Agyeya. Almost all aspects of Agyeya's life were covered in this 565-page biography. Remaining pages contain copious notes. A highly readable biography. Kindly read acknowledgements that tells us the story of birth of this book.

  10. Writer, Rebel, Soldier, Lover: The Many Lives of Agyeya

    Akshaya Mukul has written a comprehensive, interesting and balanced biography of Agyeya. Almost all aspects of Agyeya's life were covered in this 565-page biography. Remaining pages contain copious notes. A highly readable biography. Kindly read acknowledgements that tells us the story of birth of this book.

  11. Writer, Rebel, Soldier, Lover by Akshaya Mukul

    Akshaya Mukul's comprehensive and unflinching biography is a journey into Agyeya's public, private and secret lives. Based on never-seen-before archival material-including a mammoth trove of private papers, documents of the CIA-funded Congress for Cultural Freedom and colonial records of his years in jail-the book delves deep into the life of ...

  12. Biographer's Diary: Akshaya Mukul On Writing Biography Of Famous Hindi

    Akshaya Mukul is a writer, most recently of Writer, Rebel, Soldier, Lover: Many Lives of Agyeya. After almost a month of going through Agy­e­ya's papers, on a rainy afternoon, I une­a­rthed ...

  13. Writer, Rebel, Soldier, Lover

    Akshaya Mukul's comprehensive and unflinching biography is a journey into Agyeya's public, private and secret lives. Based on never-seen-before archival material-including a mammoth trove of private papers, documents of the CIA-funded Congress for Cultural Freedom and colonial records of his years in jail-the book delves deep into the life ...

  14. Book Review

    His biography penned by Akshaya Mukul affirms this notion. For Agyeya, freedom and self-respect were values on which he never compromised. His biography penned by Akshaya Mukul affirms this notion.

  15. REMEMBERING AGYEYA: WRITER, REBEL,LOVER, SOLDIER

    Akshaya Mukul has named the comprehensive biography which sums up the various facets of Agyeya's life as Writer, Rebel, Soldier, Lover: The Many Lives of Agyeya. The book has been published by Vintage, a part of the Penguin Group. The book is enormous not merely because it relates a factual, contextual tale of the many lives of a stalwart ...

  16. Akshaya Mukul spills the beans about author Agyeya in his new biography

    Akshaya Mukul, who bagged a number of non-fiction awards with his book Gita Press and the Making of Hindu India (2015), speaks proudly and passionately about his new book Writer, Rebel, Soldier, Lover: The Many Lives of Agyeya (2022). Published by Vintage, it is a biography of a man who is remembered not only as a stalwart of Hindi literature but also for his contributions to India's freedom ...

  17. Biography of Agyeya wins Kamaladevi Chattopadhyay NIF prize

    The Hindu Bureau. Akshaya Mukul's biography of the influential Hindi poet Agyeya, Writer, Rebel, Soldier, Lover: The Many Lives of Agyeya, (Penguin) has won the Kamaladevi Chattopadhyay NIF Book ...

  18. Book Review: The Many Lives Of Agyeya By Akshaya Mukul

    Mukul has covered the minutiae of Agyeya's life in 565 pages of biography and 200 pages of reference material. The author has laboriously sifted all the pulsating facets of his life from his ...

  19. Akshaya Mukul

    Winner of the ₹15 lakh Kamaladevi Chattopadhyay NIF Book Prize 2023, Akshaya Mukul, author, Writer, Rebel, Soldier, Lover: The Many Lives of Agyeya, talks about his biography of Sachchidanand ...

  20. Book review: 'Writer, Rebel, Soldier, Lover: The Many Lives of Agyeya

    The biography of Agyeya - 'Writer, Rebel, Soldier, Lover: The Many Lives of Agyeya' by author Akshaya Mukul, which was released in July 2022, chronicles his transformation from "a revolutionary youth to a very controversial patron-saint of Hindi writing." In 2015, Akshaya Mukul wrote the multi-aw

  21. Agyeya: Being Human

    A LITERARY BIOGRAPHY STANDS at the intersection of many disciples. Language, history, political thought, cultural memory, and human narrative collide within its pages. Sachchidanand Hirananda Vatsyayan 'Agyeya' was a man of many parts, who lived through a seminal period of Hindi litera­ture. He was born on March 7, 1911 and died on April 4, 1987. … Continue reading "Agyeya: Being Human"

  22. The Wire: The Wire News India, Latest News,News from India, Politics

    Discover the life and work of Agyeya, a writer and lover who defied conventions and explored his inner self. Akshaya Mukul's biography reveals all.

  23. Founded in 1923, now world's largest publisher: The 100-year journey of

    "There is a very fine biography from 2015 of this organisation by Akshaya Mukul in which he unearths the stormy relations it had with the Mahatma and the running battles it carried on with him ...