Indian student politics is not very well covered in literature. This is strange, given that from Narendra Modi to Arun Jaitley to Lalu Prasad Yadav, here have been many student leaders to political stories in India. Easily the most referenced book in this genre, is titled ‘Students and Politics in India’ by Anil Baran Ray.
Written in 1978, the book is a case study of student activism in one Indian university, Banaras Hindu University (BHU). The book extrapolates what happened in BHU during the 1950s and the 1960s and draws some conclusions relating to the rest of India on student political activism.
There are also a few academic books, covering student politics in Orissa (by Subash Chandra Hazary in 1987, covering student leadership at Ravenshaw College, Cuttack) and one on Assam written by Jagannath Upadhyaya in 2017, about the All Assam Nepali Students’ Union).
The other missing link in Indian origin literature seem to be comprehensive biographies about our female chief ministers. And there have been 18 such leaders so far, Sucheta Kripalani being the first. A few of them have been authors themselves. Here are our five Bookstrapping insights on this theme.
1. The most ‘literary’ CM was undoubtedly Jayalalitha. She wrote a novel, Nenjile Oru Kanal (A fire in my heart), which she said was partly autobiographical. There are several biographies about her too- ‘Jayalalithaa: A Journey’ by Papri Sen Sri Raman and Renu Kaul Verma, ‘The Lone Empress: A Portrait of Jayalalithaa’ and ‘Amma: Jayalalithaa’s Journey from Movie Star to Political Queen’ by Vaasanthi. There are many more books in Tamil. She was also an avid reader and confessed to having read books on history, (the series on the Tudor dynasty written by Jean Plaidy), Kahlil Gibran and Hegel, as well as Rajaji’s translation of the Mahabharata and the Ramayana.
2. Number two on the list would be Nandini Satpathy, the erstwhile CM of Odisha who was a well known writer of fiction. She wrote one anthology ‘One Step Towards the Sun; Short Stories by Women from Orissa’ and another book ‘Uttar Purusha’. Her biography, Nandini Satpathy: The Iron Lady of Orissa was authored by Pallavi Rebbapragada.
3. Mamata Banerjee has written ‘My Unforgettable Memories’ which serves as a memoir of sorts and also, a book of her poems. There’s a biography about her by Monobina Gupta titled ‘Didi – A Political Biography.’
4. Sheila Dikshit has authored two books, one a coffee table book Dilli Meri Dilli (Before and After 1998) and an autobiography Citizen Delhi: My Times, My Life.
5. A handful of chief ministers have a lone literary signature. Sushma Swaraj has a book ‘The People’s Minister’ written by Sushmita Datta and Gujarat’s Anandiben Patel has a book ‘Dare, Dream, Do: The Extraordinary Life Of Anandiben Patel’ co-authored with Anurag Garg. Sucheta Kripalani has one biography titled ‘A Trailblazer of Change’ by A.K. Gandhi. Mayawati too has one biography titled ‘Behenji’ by Ajoy Bose. There are a few small titles in Hindi too.
The remaining women chief ministers, V. N. Janaki , Shashikala Kakodkar, Syeda Anwara Taimur, Rajinder Kaur Bhattal, Rabri Devi (there’s one book that calls her Lalu’s Masterstroke), Uma Bharti, Vasundhara Raje, Atishi Marlena and Mehbooba Mufti don’t seem to have any books written by them or about them. Adding Rekha Gupta now to the list.
Reeta Ramamurthy Gupta is a columnist and bestselling biographer. She is credited with the internationally acclaimed Red Dot Experiment, a decadal six-nation study on how ‘culture impacts communication.’ Asia’s first reading coach, you can find her on Instagram @OfficialReetaGupta.