The government filed a case against Sitarama Shastri and Ashvatthanarayana Rao, accusing the article published in Navajīvana to be treasonous.
Shastri had severely criticized the government’s callous attitude towards its own people in the January 1929 issue of Vīrakesari. The issue published on 15th January had an article titled Will Tyranny Win? The contents were as follows –
Right from his childhood days, Sitarama Shastri was interested in writing. Observing this, Krishna Shastri sent him to M Venkatakrishnayya in Mysore. Sitarama Shastri started by writing articles to his newspaper and then contributed articles to other newspapers too. During those days he also got acquainted with ‘Tāyināḍu’ P R Ramayya, ‘Sādhvi’ Agaram Rangayya, and others who were trained under M Venkatakrishnayya. In a way it can be said that journalism was in his blood. Combined with that was his erudition.
Irrespective of the weather conditions and his own state of health, V Si. never missed a class. He always said – ‘When young children are coming to school, how can I sit at home and relax?’ This kind of sincerity and commitment is a rare quality and is worth emulating.
Let me narrate a couple of incidents that reflect the kind of affection V Si. had towards his students –
During his childhood he lost eyesight in one of his eyes while playing gilli-daṇḍa[1]. By 1947 he lost eyesight in the other eye too. Thus all his main works were dictated and written by a scribe. His writing skills and his memory were extraordinary.
Despite all this, the administration showed no increase in its spirit and enthusiasm. I have thought about its reason. In my view, it was the lack of intensity, drive, and spirit of freshness in people, which caused this. Let me quote an example.
By nature, Narasinga Rao Purnaiah [i.e. Krishnamurti] was a great person. He was a generous man who carried a serious disposition and was a well-informed reader of books. His eyes had lost their sharpness. Yet he would closely read and grasp the most difficult of treatises.
Political acumen, rights and duties of the citizens, answerability of the government, the role of newspapers in protecting the welfare of the people – these things found expression in a hitherto unseen rigour for the first time in Karnataka (the erstwhile Mysore state) during 1928–29. The ‘Ganapati Riots’ of Sultanpet, Bangalore provided the stage for this.