[Reader-list] I &B Minister's response in the Lok Sabha about the Collected Works of Mahatma Gandhi

[Punam Zutshi]

http://www.hindu.com/2004/12/19/stories/2004121902511000.htm


Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Sunday, Dec 19, 2004 

Dilemma over Mahatma's works 
By Our Special Correspondent 



NEW DELHI, DEC. 18. The Government has found complaints of errors and omissions in the "revised reprint'' of the Collected Works of Mahatma Gandhi (CWMG) to be true but has not decided on withdrawing it from circulation. 

The Information and Broadcasting Ministry is also facing a piquant situation - there is no record on who issued the orders to begin the new series. 

In fact, the Information and Broadcasting Minister, S. Jaipal Reddy, admitted as much in his reply to a question on the CWMG in the Lok Sabha this week. 

Stating that the complaints have been found to be true, he said that "enquires so far made do not show the basis on which the new series were launched in the first place; nor do the enquiries show the names of scholars chosen by the Government for the purpose.'' 

Also, he said, efforts were initiated in November 2003 by the previous regime itself to take corrective actions. "Although this process of correction has been initiated, complaints from authoritative sources are continuing with the demand that the new series have so many defects as to make any remedy impossible. The situation resulting from this problem is under consideration of the Government.'' 

The revised edition of the CWMG was brought out by the Publications Division in 1999 along with a CD-Rom version which includes 30 minutes of film footage, over 550 photographs and 15 minutes of Mahatma Gandhi's voice. However, following the release of the revised edition and the electronic version of the 100-volume collection, Gandhian institutions and other organisations, including the Sabarmati Ashram Preservation and Memorial Trust (Ahmedabad), Servants of the People Society (New Delhi), the Gandhi Peace Foundation (New Delhi), the Gandhi Smarak Nidhi (New Delhi), Gujarat Vidyapith (Ahmedabad), and the Albert Einstein Institution (U.S.A), sent in complaints about the errors, omissions and deletions. 

Ban sought 


More recently, after the change of guard at the Centre, the Gandhi Smarak Nidhi, the Sarva Seva Sangh, Sevagram (Wardha) and the Gandhi Peace Foundation demanded a ban on the "revised reprint'' and urged the Government to pass a law treating the original 100-volume collection of the Mahatma's works as a national heritage to prevent any tampering of his works in the future. 

Stating that there were 500 omissions in the CD version of the collected works and about 500 deletions in the revised version, they demanded their withdrawal, and reprint of the original volumes. 

Referring to the Publisher's Note to the "revised reprint'' - wherein the changes are justified on the premise that "reports of his [Gandhiji's] speeches, interviews and conversations which did not seem to be authentic have been avoided as also reports of his statements in indirect form" - the three institutions said that comparison with the original volumes makes it "difficult to believe that the changes have been done without a biased motive."

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