All great literature engages with contemporary events of the times: Sainath

P. Sainath speaking at the Mysuru Literature Festival 2025 on Sunday.
| Photo Credit: M.A. SRIRAM

Renowned journalist and author P. Sainath said here on Sunday that all great literature captures the significant events and processes of the times and connects with the lives of common people.

He was speaking after inaugurating the Mysuru Literature Festival 2025, organised by the Mysuru Literary Association, at the Maharaja’s College Centenary Hall.

Mr. Sainath, said Mahatma Gandhi, B.R. Ambedkar, and Bhagat Singh produced the most enduring literary material through their engagement with the great processes under way during their times.

“While Gandhi engaged with swaraj, Ambedkar engaged with the greatest battle for human dignity, and Bhagat Singh engaged with struggle against imperialism, and these struggles are still relevant,” said Mr. Sainath.

Criticises media

Mr. Sainath said the Kisan Andolan of 2020-21 and the reverse migration during the COVID-19 pandemic were the great processes of the present times in India, and he was critical of how the media covered them. He also touched upon the “Occupy Wall Street” movement as another great process of the present times which highlighted inequality but was initially ignored by the mainstream media in the U.S.

Describing the Kisan Andolan as the largest and greatest struggle for justice in the last few decades, Mr. Sainath said it was peaceful, constitutional, and democratic, but the media was silent on these aspects.

“It lasted 54 weeks, but the farmers did not budge even though they were attacked by the police, who used water cannons in the worst winter of Delhi in the last 40 years. The farmers’ attitude of not giving up and their unwillingness to surrender went straight back to the ideals of the freedom struggle,” Mr. Sainath added.

He said people were not informed by the channels or newspapers that more than 720 farmers died during the agitation due to various causes, including COVID-19 and hypothermia resulting from the severe cold of the prevailing winter season.

Untold story

Referring to COVID-19 and the mass reverse migration, Mr. Sainath said the number of Indians who died during the pandemic was more than four million, according to various studies by international bodies, including the World Health Organization. “But the government maintains that 4.86 lakh people died during the period and is living in denial,” he said, questioning why writers, theatrepersons, journalists, researchers, and litterateurs were not covering this incredible untold story.

Though there was a lot of coverage in the press until the migrants left the city borders, it stemmed from a sense of the loss of cheap labour, said Mr. Sainath. He said no fewer than two crore people had crossed borders and gone back home due to reverse migration and this is more than the number of people displaced during the Partition, but there is no writing on this, according to Mr. Sainath.

Describing COVID-19 as a deadly autopsy of the postmortem of society, the writer said it exposed the prevailing and incredible inequality.

There were sessions by B.S. Ajai Kumar, an oncologist; S.M .Shivaprasad, a senior scientist; Rajendra Chenni, a literary and cultural critic, and Lavanya Prasad, a professional storyteller. K.C. Belliappa, founder of the Mysuru Literary Association, and former Vice- Chancellor of the Rajiv Gandhi University, presided over the programme.