February  2005 
Year 11    No.105

Obituary


In memory of Sriprakashji

Hum Watan—We The People (A National Campaign in Defence of Democracy) lost a dear friend and active participant when Sriprakash Sharma, one of Hum Watan’s national convenors, passed away suddenly on January 22, 2005. His death came as a shock and painful ordeal for his family as well as numerous friends in the activist world. He will be sorely missed by close comrades in Rajasthan and all over the country. Sriprakashji was a staunch pillar of the anti-communal movement and deeply committed to an alternate and principled media.

Sriprakashji will be remembered for his bold, austere and honest life. As a young 19-year-old during the Emergency, he along with three other friends ran an underground newspaper in Varanasi. Although a Sanskrit scholar with three Shastri (MA) degrees from BHU and Rajasthan University, he opted for journalism to uncover stories that were hidden from the public eye. Starting off as a journalist in Univarta, the Hindi section of UNI, he went on to become the UNI chief of bureau for Rajasthan.

For the past five years Sriprakashji worked closely with activist groups from all over the state as also different parts of the country. Recently he also set up the Institute of Development Journalism in Jaipur to train young men and women in various aspects of journalism. His efforts, through his own writings and through several initiatives in the media, brought struggles and initiatives relating to secularism, the right to food and work, land rights, the right to information, and those concerning the dignity of Dalits, tribals and women into the public realm. Moreover, he was committed to making the State accountable to the people.

Women’s groups owe him a great deal for having found them a niche in the media in the eighties and the early nineties, when they were hardly heard at all. As the founder of the Pink City press club, he ensured the presence of movement groups at the press club by providing rooms for press conferences at very affordable rates. As a journalist, he played a significant role in creating conditions for the defeat of the BJP government in Rajasthan in 1998. Later, he occupied a key role as an advisor to virtually all movement groups in the state.

Sriprakashji’s loss is already being keenly felt in Rajasthan and elsewhere in the country. Friends and co-workers now pledge to carry on his endeavours and work to actualise Sriprakashji’s dreams in his absence.


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