Rural children find election a game marked by scuffle: Author Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak

Eminent scholar and Padma Bhusan awardee Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak on Saturday rued that children in rural belts interpret elections as nothing but a "game marked by scuffle".

Speaking after inaugurating the six-day Tata Steel Kolkata Literary Meet here, Spivak said that elections are absolutely important for democracy, though common people often find it difficult to cast their votes.

Narrating her interaction with a child in this regard during a discussion, Spivak said, ''He told me that casting votes is nothing but a game, marked by maramari (scuffle).'' The Columbia University academic, who had run a private school for children in the interiors of south Bengal, said, ''I know jobs were bought in some areas of Birbhum (district), I know rice had been stolen, I know people had got commission. And I am not saying these things by reading newspapers.'' Birbhum was in the news recently as the district president of the ruling Trinamool Congress, Anubrata Mondal, was arrested by the CBI last year in connection with a cattle smuggling scam. The central probe agency had also searched rice mills in the district allegedly owned by the politician.

Spivak, however, did not name any party or individual.

The writer of seminal books like 'Can the Subaltern Speak' and 'A critique of postcolonial reason', whose first book in Bengali was launched at the International Kolkata Book Fair last year, said she wonders why a section of Bengalis in the country do not speak in their mother tongue.

''Literature is like the healthcare for the soul'' the whole society needs, she said at the annual literary meet held at the sprawling lawn of the Victoria Memorial Hall. In another event of the meet, lyricist and poet Chandril Bhattacharya lamented that Bengal produced literary luminaries like Bibhutibhusan Bandyopadhyay and Manik Bandyopadhyay but their major works remain unrecognised in the world as they were not translated into English or other foreign languages.

Bibhutibhusan Bandyopadhyay is the writer of 'Pather Panchali' (Song of the road), based on which Satyajit Ray made his famous first film of the same name, while Manik Bandyopadhyay was the author of the landmark novel 'Putul Nacher Itikatha' (Puppet's Tale).

''I am of the view that writers like Bibhutibhusan, Manik Bandyopadhyay, poets like Jibanananda Das deserved international recognition for their rich seminal works, global awards like the Nobel medallions," he told PTI on the sidelines of the discussion.

But their works have not been introduced to the world readers in a proper way due to a lack of translations into English and other foreign languages, Bhattacharya said.

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