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.