Interview with Turlapati Kutumbarao

                                         Poolabala with Trulapati

          Pride and Prodigy

          Pride of India and Prodigy of Telugu

Veteran journalist, virtuoso orator, intrepid speaker, éclair of the stage and epitome of values, his versatile persona etched a niche for him, won him laurels. This champion of awards Turlapati is the pride of India and prodigy of Telugu. At the vertex of his life the octogenarian is simply lively and seriously forthright.

       Kutumba Rao, the denizen of Vijayawada was born here in 1933. He started his journalistic career at a very young age. He served as a secretary to the first Chief Minister of Andhra Pradesh Andhra kesari T. Prakasam. He is the man who wielded his pen and tongue alike. As a writer of more than 4,000 biographies he made an indelible mark on journalism and as an orator he addressed more than 12000 public meetings and received numerous titles and awards of excellence. In fact he is both wetted whetted in the volley of awards such as International Man of  the year, World Life time achievement award, National Citizen Award. Only a voluminous book can justify Turlapati’s work. It is hard to fit him into a book, harder still to fit him into a booklet and hardest to fit him into an article. His journalism is six years of saga and his life is eighty years legend. He received accolades from the editors of the Guinness book. Talent has no boundaries many people believe it and some people prove it. Turlapati’s life and work are manifestation of this fact. American Biographical institute honored him with “20th century achievement award.” International Biographical centre England honored him with a “Special award” for his outstanding work.  He was also appointed the honorary advisor, International Biographical centre, England. Japan Broadcasting Corporation recognized him as The Best Biographer and televised a special interview with Kutumbarao. He edited the book Assembly 2000 a book containing the life sketches of 294 members of The A.P. Legislative Assembly. This is first of its kind in the state.  He was conferred Pratibha purskar by Telugu University and Kalaprapoorna by Andhra University. He was honored by Dr.Shankar Dayal Sarma the then Governor of Andhra Pradesh with a gold medal for his services in journalism. He was the first journalist from Andhra Pradesh to receive Padma Shree. The people of Vijayawada showed their fervor to Turlapati by felicitating him with a gold bracelet. The street where he lives was named after by him by the Municipal Corporation of Vijayawada. Blessed is Turlapati who served his mother tongue mother land. The first governor General of India Rajagopalachari conferred on him the title “Guardian of Telugu.” The title is apt to him. His humanism was not as much eulogized as his journalism and patriotism. His humanism lies on the surface and reflects in his manners, manifests in actions. Verity is the inspiring virtue in Turlapati. His innate ability to call a spade a spade, his transparency even in matters of his own culture are remarkable and the youth of this generation should learn lessons of self respect  commitment to profession and command on history and culture from him and above all the quality courage to be unbiased. A random talk with Turlapati is edification. He was member of Planning Board of Bharati Dasan Univerity, Tamil Nadu and Central Film Censor Board.  Governments in  and universities in India and abroad have made use of his services. The society especially the present generation of journalists, teachers and educated young men and women can benefit from his rich experiences then only and only then we can consider that the knowledge of our ancestors has percolated to the grass root levels. This talking book Turlapati has shared some of the interesting experiences of his life and times in a recent interview he has extended to journalist.

What is the influence of electronic media on journalism ?

When there is an allegation on someone the media should approach, clarify and take the statement of the person facing the allegation and should present  that statement along with the allegation. Well, electronic media isn’t fair in this regard. A north Indian T.V channel showed an adultery allegation. The clipping was showed repeatedly. But they didn’t bother to show what the accused has to say. The man charged with adultery was innocent. He committed suicide because he is innocent and sensitive. I think media should be fair enough while dealing with such allegations. Otherwise many innocent people may die. The media should refrain from peeping into the personal lives of individuals.  The case of Ambati Rambabu is known to all of us. So media is troubling or vindicating persons. Media should not be a tool for such purposes. The golden rule in journalism “News is sacred comment free” 

 How is the  quality of programs electronic media?

The media created and has been creating lady villains which is a popular concept in all TV serials. These programs are sending wrong  signals and creates a poor picture of our Telugu home environment. This undesirable trend goes unabated. Since ages women has been traditionally exploited. 

 what is the difference between journalists in the past and present? 

In the past journalism was unblemished, but today it is tarnished. Journalist in the past maintained values and enjoyed high degree of freedom. Now-a-days they have no freedom. They are puppets in the hands of media barons so freedom of press is to be understood as freedom of press owner. In those days News papers or magazines were known by the editors. People used to read newspapers taking the editors into consideration. The main consideration of the reader in those days was the editor. Today nobody knows the real editors. The capitalists are the editors. A newspaper is known by its owner.  

 What are the standards of journalism today in comparison with journalism in your days?

There is no freedom of press today. All most all newspapers and TV channels side with some or the other political party. They design their programs based on the agenda of owners. Journalist can not have their views and opinions. Even if they have they can’t express them without the consent of the owner.       

  But in those days.......

      

Perhaps in 1937 Kotanraju Ramarao was the editor of National Herald, Nehru was its founder chairman. In the same year when Nehru spoke at a meeting in Delhi his statements hit headlines in all leading dailies. But the editor of National Herald did not consider the news worth publishing in head lines. He did not even publish it as a column. At least it was not published as a box item. When Nehru saw the news some where in  the last page  as a filler  he  had  blown  a  fuse.  He flew to Lucknow and reached Kotanraju’s office. He expressed his concern about the way his statement was relegated to the back pages while all other news papers published in the front page. Kotanraju was frank enough to tell him that it doesn’t make headlines as it was not that significant. Nehru flew off the handle and spoke in his usual manner,“What is this fantastic nonsense?” (it is his catch word). An exasperated Kotanraju asked Nehru to get out. Nehru left his room silently. 

Kotanraju resigned following this incident. However Nehru asked Kotanraju to withdraw his resignation and continue. Such is the importance and individuality and independence of editors in those days. The decision of the editor used to be final. The editors and journalists used to maintain self respect.

Mr. Kotanraju changed 21 places but never compromised on self respect or professional ethics. He always used to have the resignation letter ready in his pocket. “I too used to have a resignation letter in my pocket all the time.  Telugu people were highly self respecting and particularly it was summum bonum (ultimate importance) of journalism. If you juxtapose today’s journalism with journalism of yore, you can make out the present day  standards of journalism. Today comments outshine news proving the Latin adage “suproeesio veri; suggestion falsi”

What is the efficiency and virtues of politicians in the past and present?

The efficiency and selfless attitude of politicians are beyond compare. In 1946 when Andhra was in the composite Madras state, Nehru wanted C.Rajagopalachari to be the Chief Minister but all the MLAs wanted Tanguturi Prakasam to be the Chief Minister. When V.V.Giri was given the offer he refused to accept it.

     

What is the effect of the shift of publications from Vijayawada to Hyderabad?

    

The opinion of Andhra journalists and leaders is not coming to light as majority of the newspapers and TV channels are from Telangana. and Rayalaseema but not from Andhra. We regularly watch KCR, KTR, Nagam Janardhan Reddy, Harish Rao, Eetela Rajander Kishan Reddy and Kodandaram, Madhu Yaskhi and KK and we occasionally watch a few leaders like Lagadapati from Andhra.

  

What is the secret of your health and  energy?

  

I believe Lord Hanuman. I am a teetotaler. I run for a few minutes in the early hours everyday. I think my self control also helps me in keeping fit. When there is any problem I think for a few minutes and leave it like that. I don’t contemplate and bother much about it.  

Polyandry bloom in India

sharing wife

What is the future of Indian marriage? 

"They took me whenever they wanted -- day or night. When I resisted, they beat me with anything at hand, sometimes they threw me out and made me sleep outside or they poured kerosene over me and burned me.” said Munni.  When Munni arrived in a small village in UP of north India as a young bride years ago, little did she know she would be forced into having sex and bearing children with her husband's two brothers who had failed to find wives. "My husband and his parents said “Share bed with his brothers," said the woman in her mid-40s, dressed in a yellow sari, sitting in a village community centre in Baghpat district in Uttar Pradesh. Munni managed to leave her home after three months only on the pretext of visiting a doctor. Munni has three sons from her husband and his brothers, has not filed a police complaint either. Such cases are rarely reported to police because women in these communities are seldom allowed outside the home unaccompanied. So there may be many more women like Munni in the mud-hut villages of the area. "I've got used to it," she says holding her third child in her lap. "I miss my freedom."

This practice is gradually becoming acceptable among such close-knit communities because the victims are afraid of speaking out and the neighbours unwilling to interfere. Some villagers say the practice of brothers sharing a wife has benefits, such as the avoidance of division of family land and other assets amongst heirs.  It looks like the country is going towards matriarchal society.  The turn of wheel of time may bring woman dominant society. For example, 1900s began with privatization which changed to nationalization and now the theme is again privatization. 

Polyandry is not new to India. It is an age old tradition. Polyandry's roots sink deep into the soil of Buddhist and Hindu culture here. This tradition comes from the five brothers, Pandavas, of the Indian epic called the Mahabharata. According to the legend, Pandavas  married one woman called Draupadi. Which means Polyandry. The Jaunsari tribes in the Himalayas are still following the same tradition. They claim that Pandavas are their forefathers. They say “we are following what our ancestors did.” The tribal community is practicing Polyandry many for generations. A Jaunsari woman can marry many men. Its their part of life, if a guy marries a woman then she marries his brothers too. Once we believed that polyandry was limited to jaunsuri community. But now we realized that it is spreading through out the country insidiously. 

 Don’t judge the current situation by watching New Delhi where girls clad in jeans ride motor bikes and women occupy senior positions in multi-nationals. Just two hours drive from New Delhi, the mud-and-brick villages of Baghpat appear a world apart. Here, women veil themselves in the presence of men, are confined to the compounds of their houses as child bearers and home makers, and are forbidden from venturing out unaccompanied. Village men farm the lush sugarcane plantations or sit idle on charpoys, or traditional rope beds, under the shade of trees in white cotton tunics, drinking tea, some smoking hookah pipes while lamenting the lack of brides for their sons and brothers. The figures speak.  According to India's 2011 census, there are only 858 women to every 1,000 men in Baghpat district, compared to the national sex ratio of 940.

  

Decades of aborting female babies in a deeply patriarchal culture has led to a decline in the women population in India, which has resulted in rising incidents of rape, human trafficking and the emergence of "wife-sharing" amongst brothers. The practice of female foeticide has flourished across India because of a traditional preference for sons, who are seen as old-age security.

A study in the British medical journal Lancet found that 12 million Indian girls were aborted over the last three decades -- resulting in a skewed child sex ratio of 914 girls to every 1,000 boys in 2011 compared with 962 in 1981. This kind of a trend prevails nowhere else in the world. No other country in the world women is meted with such atrocious treatment. World economic forum statistics reveal that there is little gender equality in India. India stands in 217th position in gender equality among 234 countries. Despite laws making pre-natal gender tests illegal, India's 2011 census indicated that efforts to curb female feticide have been futile. Fewer girls were born than boys and the number of girls under six years old plummeted for the fifth decade running.

Still traditionalists say that woman is respected in India. Indian cinema highlights that India is the country that defines mother and motherhood. Is this the way to respect women? Leave alone respecting women we are not letting women live.  

The terrible impacts of falling numbers of females should be taken as a warning sign and we have to do something about it or we'll have a situation where women will constantly be at risk of kidnap, rape and much, much worse still leads to secret practices. "In every village, there are at least a dozen bachelors who can't find a wife. In some, there are up to three or four unmarried men in one family. Everything is hush, hush. No one openly admits it, but we all know what is going on “one daughter-in-law living with many unwedded brothers.” Some people raise objections to this new culture while others see polyandry as a way to woman empowerment.  As a civilized society, all over the world divorces and remarriages are acceptable. So who knows in the future, there are chances of this tradition could be popular surprise in the evolution of many surprises for humans. 

According to Indian historian Sarva Daman Singh, who wrote the 1988 book “Polyandry in Ancient India.” The husband in polyandry Kaza, Baldev Nath, 50, said that “everyone is pleased” with their shared-spouse arrangement, including his older brother and their common wife.  Women's rights activists say breaking down these deep-rooted, age-old beliefs is a major challenge. "The real solution is to empower girls and women in every way possible," says Neelam Singh, head of Vatsalya, an NGO working on children's and women's issues. "We need to provide them with access to education, healthcare and opportunities which will help them make decisions for themselves and stand up to those who seek to abuse or exploit them." 

While other women compare polyandry with polygyny( having many wives at the same time) And question” when a husband can have two or three wives at the same time why not a wife can have two or three husbands at the same time. It is accepted and practised in Hindu culture as well as Islamic culture. Many Hindu gods have more than one wife. Politicians and cine stars and celebrities have them. They also question the logic of allowing Muslim men to have more than one spouse while denying the same ‘right’ to women. 

Dr. Zakir Naik says polyandry is prohibited in Islam. He explains “A lot of people, including some Muslims, question let me first state emphatically, that the foundation of an Islamic society is justice and equity. Allah has created men and women as equal, but with different capabilities and different responsibilities.

Men and women are different, physiologically and psychologically. Their roles and responsibilities are different. Men and women are equal in Islam, but not identical.

Surah Nisa’ Chapter 4 verses 22 to 24 gives the list of women with who you can not marry and it is further mentions in Surah Nisa’ Chapter 4 verse 24 "Also (prohibited are) women already married"

1. If a man has more than one wife, the parents of the children born of such marriages can easily be identified. The father as well as the mother can easily be identified. In case of a woman marrying more than one husband, only the mother of the children born of such marriages will be identified and not the father

2. Man is more polygamous by nature as compared to a woman.

3. Biologically, it is easier for a man to perform his duties as a husband despite having several wives. A woman, in a similar position, having several husbands, will not find it possible to perform her duties as a wife

 Allah, in His Infinite Wisdom, has prohibited polyandry.

One distinct advantage with polyandry is population control. Husbands may be two or three but wife is only one to bear children. So the population control takes place naturally. Apart form population controls the economic and domestic burdens can be shared. The income of multiple husbands helps family to tide over financial problems. Often one female will find it very advantageous to have several males support her in childrearing, whether or not they have outside sexual interests. Whether or not we care to admit it, a lot of childrearing and household tasks tend to fall to women still, and this seems to be a comfortable combination of traditional and disruptively new problem-solving structure for a nice environment for a household. One should wait and watch whether or not Polyandry is synonymous with female empowerment. Who knows what is in store for women as men? 

Child sex ratios in Baghpat are even more skewed and on the decline with 837 girls in 2011 compared to 850 in 2001 -- a trend mirrored across districts in states such as Haryana, Punjab, Rajasthan and Gujarat. Women from Jharkhand and West Bengal were paid sums of 15,000 by middle-men and brought here to wed into a different culture, language and way of life. "It was hard at first, there was so much to learn and I didn't understand anything. I thought I was here to play," said Sabita Singh, 25, who was brought from a village in West Bengal at the age of 14 to marry her husband, 19 years her elder.

Decades of aborting female babies in a deeply patriarchal culture has led to a decline in the women population in India, which has resulted in rising incidents of rape, human trafficking and the emergence of "wife-sharing" amongst brothers. The practice of female foeticide has flourished across India because of a traditional preference for sons, who are seen as old-age security.

A study in the British medical journal Lancet found that 12 million Indian girls were aborted over the last three decades -- resulting in a skewed child sex ratio of 914 girls to every 1,000 boys in 2011 compared with 962 in 1981. This kind of a trend prevails nowhere else in the world. No other country in the world women is meted with such atrocious treatment. World economic forum statistics reveal that there is little gender equality in India. India stands in 217th position in gender equality among 234 countries. Despite laws making pre-natal gender tests illegal, India's 2011 census indicated that efforts to curb female feticide have been futile. Fewer girls were born than boys and the number of girls under six years old plummeted for the fifth decade running.

Still traditionalists say that woman is respected in India. Indian cinema highlights that India is the country that defines mother and motherhood. Is this the way to respect women? Leave alone respecting women we are not letting women live.  

The terrible impacts of falling numbers of females should be taken as a warning sign and we have to do something about it or we'll have a situation where women will constantly be at risk of kidnap, rape and much, much worse still leads to secret practices. "In every village, there are at least a dozen bachelors who can't find a wife. In some, there are up to three or four unmarried men in one family. Everything is hush, hush. No one openly admits it, but we all know what is going on “one daughter-in-law living with many unwedded brothers.” Some people raise objections to this new culture while others see polyandry as a way to woman empowerment.  As a civilized society, all over the world divorces and remarriages are acceptable. So who knows in the future, there are chances of this tradition could be popular surprise in the evolution of many surprises for humans. 

According to Indian historian Sarva Daman Singh, who wrote the 1988 book “Polyandry in Ancient India.” The husband in polyandry Kaza, Baldev Nath, 50, said that “everyone is pleased” with their shared-spouse arrangement, including his older brother and their common wife.  Women's rights activists say breaking down these deep-rooted, age-old beliefs is a major challenge. "The real solution is to empower girls and women in every way possible," says Neelam Singh, head of Vatsalya, an NGO working on children's and women's issues. "We need to provide them with access to education, healthcare and opportunities which will help them make decisions for themselves and stand up to those who seek to abuse or exploit them." 

While other women compare polyandry with polygyny( having many wives at the same time) And question” when a husband can have two or three wives at the same time why not a wife can have two or three husbands at the same time. It is accepted and practised in Hindu culture as well as Islamic culture. Many Hindu gods have more than one wife. Politicians and cine stars and celebrities have them. They also question the logic of allowing Muslim men to have more than one spouse while denying the same ‘right’ to women.

Dr. Zakir Naik says polyandry is prohibited in Islam. He explains “A lot of people, including some Muslims, question let me first state emphatically, that the foundation of an Islamic society is justice and equity. Allah has created men and women as equal, but with different capabilities and different responsibilities.

Men and women are different, physiologically and psychologically. Their roles and responsibilities are different. Men and women are equal in Islam, but not identical.

Surah Nisa’ Chapter 4 verses 22 to 24 gives the list of women with who you can not marry and it is further mentions in Surah Nisa’ Chapter 4 verse 24 "Also (prohibited are) women already married"

1. If a man has more than one wife, the parents of the children born of such marriages can easily be identified. The father as well as the mother can easily be identified. In case of a woman marrying more than one husband, only the mother of the children born of such marriages will be identified and not the father

2. Man is more polygamous by nature as compared to a woman.

3. Biologically, it is easier for a man to perform his duties as a husband despite having several wives. A woman, in a similar position, having several husbands, will not find it possible to perform her duties as a wife

 Allah, in His Infinite Wisdom, has prohibited polyandry.

One distinct advantage with polyandry is population control. Husbands may be two or three but wife is only one to bear children. So the population control takes place naturally. Apart form population controls the economic and domestic burdens can be shared. The income of multiple husbands helps family to tide over financial problems. Often one female will find it very advantageous to have several males support her in childrearing, whether or not they have outside sexual interests. Whether or not we care to admit it, a lot of childrearing and household tasks tend to fall to women still, and this seems to be a comfortable combination of traditional and disruptively new problem-solving structure for a nice environment for a household. One should wait and watch whether or not Polyandry is synonymous with female empowerment. Who knows what is in store for women and men?

venkat poolabala