Shabd, a magazine in Marathi that provides a platform for new voices and ideas, organised a talk with Ganesh Devy and Uttam Parmar at Borivali, Mumbai on January 2nd 2016. The program was called ‘In Search Of the Truth’.
Photo by Sanjeev Khandekar
Parmar spoke of the ways in which Gandhian thought had transformed him as a person. Ganesh Devy began with a letter Narayan Desai wrote a few months before his death last year. The letter, he said, expressed fears about the future of India under the new leadership. The fear was that this leadership would tear the fabric of “this diverse, multilingual, beautiful culture evolved over many centuries.”
Devy also spoke of the free economy and how it can shrink language and mutilate culture: “It is a predator economy, [the] turbo system of disaster capitalism… we are witnessing an unholy mutation. Limitless desires and progress of the mighty, speed and the techno politics of those who own and can afford technology will bring an unprecedented silence to this planet… the word will lose its ability to translate meaning, it will be robbed of its power to abstract human experience, and language will be reduced to a mechanical data transfer from one machine to the another…”
Devy also invited the audience to join him and other writers, artists and thinkers who are meeting at Dandi on January 30th 2016 to remember one of the first mass led protests: “Let’s revisit and touch that soil where the Mahatma picked up a pinch of salt… let the profound protest that still inspires millions stay firm and fearless.”
