The Evening our Hon’ble Vice President Took Us Back in Time...

The Evening our Hon’ble Vice President Took Us Back in Time...

It has been a little over a year since I was posted to Delhi as Resident Commissioner, Maharashtra and Secretary, Maharashtra Sadan. From the very first day, I was driven by the  desire to present the culture,food, festivals, textiles and the living traditions of Maharashtra at Delhi in the best way possible.

And so we got to work together as a team.

The Mango Festival came first , a riot of colour and fragrance that brought Maharashtra's legendary alphonso to the capital. Then the Ganesh Utsav, where the blessings of Shri Ganesha found its way to New Delhi along with art , craft and the famous , modak, coconut and jaggery dumplings in steamed rice flour made by the ladies of the self-help groups from Maharashtra. 

The Food Festival, the Hurda Party, the Saree Mahotsav which followed were a celebration and a present of love from Maharashtra to the city that hosts us.

Every event was planned with care, executed with sincerity, and received with warmth. And slowly, word spread. Maharashtra Sadan was not just an administrative outpost. It was becoming a cultural home.

It was against this backdrop that, Shri Leshpal Jawalge of Sarhad, Pune walked into my office , one day with an idea. He spoke of women officers across India  IAS, IPS, IFS, State and Allied services  who were not just administrators but writers and poets. Women who drafted policy papers by day and wrote about their feelings, experience and grace by night. Women who had stories to tell, essays to write, poems to share, voices worth listening to but who never had a platform specifically created for them.

He proposed the first-ever, Akhil Bhartiya Mahila Prashaskiya Adhikari Sahitya Sammelan, a literary conference for women officers across India. I had seen creativity quietly living inside me and in many of my colleagues, waiting for a moment to breathe so I said yes immediately. 

And then, as these things go, the detailed preparations began.

Delegates to be identified and invited from across the country. Speakers to be confirmed. Articles and interviews to be solicited, written, edited. And a souvenir, a proper publication to mark the occasion  to be compiled and printed in time. We named it 'Soudamini' Lightning, brilliant and  illuminating. It felt exactly right.

It was also important that this souvenir should be released by someone truly worthy of the occasion.

When we requested the Honourable Vice President of India, Shri C. P. Radhakrishnan , he was gracious enough to give us an appointment despite his busy schedule. Having  served as the Hon'ble Governor of Maharashtra, he knew our state, our people, our culture and it added to the glory. 

Walking Into the Enclave - 

For every officer and writer who was part of our delegation that evening, walking into the Vice President's enclave was a great moment. There is a quiet grandeur to the place  unhurried, gracious, carrying the weight of the office with a certain lightness.But what overwhelmed us was not the grandeur. It was the warmth.

The Hon'ble Vice President received us not with the stiffness of ceremony but with the ease of someone genuinely interested in who we were and what we were doing. He appreciated our efforts in taking lead to organise the first Akhil Bhartiya Mahila Prashaskiya Adhikari Sahitya Sammelan. He looked at  'Soudamini' with care. He asked questions. He listened.

"Maharashtra," he said with a smile, "is like my second home."

The Hon'ble Vice President spoke of Chhatrapati Shivaji Maharaj with a reverence that transcended region and religion. He reminded us that Chhatrapati Shivaji Maharaj is not merely Maharashtra's hero ,he is a civilisational icon, a guardian of an entire way of life. His campaigns reached as far south as Jinji in Tamil Nadu, weaving a thread of sovereignty and cultural confidence across the subcontinent.

Had Chatrapati Shivaji Maharaj not risen when he did, the course of India's history , its cultural continuity, its civilisational self-respect  would have been unrecognisable.

He recalled an encounter with scholar  who had never read Chatrapati Shivaji Maharaj's history in full and therefore had parochial views. The Hon'ble Vice President shared that he had been reading about Chatrapati Shivaji Maharaj's greatness since he was in school. He knew about Chatrapati Shivaji Maharaj's great respect for women and for all religions. The Chatrapati had never demolished any structure unlike other perpetrators who came from outside. "Those who do not know this history cannot truly know India." He said. 

He spoke with reverence of Maharani Tararani, Chhatrapati Shivaji Maharaj's daughter-in-law, the warrior queen who held the Maratha empire together in its darkest hour. She did not let it collapse but endured, fought, negotiated, governed and prevailed. Her story belongs to all of India and to all of humanity.

Not many people outside Maharashtra know her greatness therefore, her biography, should be translated into every Indian language, he said. 

Maharashtra's literary inheritance found a proud champion in the Vice President's address. He spoke of the Saraswati Mahal Library in Thanjavur, an extraordinary repository of manuscripts, ancient texts, and rare collections  as a testament to the intellectual grandeur that has always flowed from the soil of Maharashtra. The Maratha kings who wielded the sword also built the library. Power and scholarship were never in opposition; they were, in the Maratha tradition, expressions of the same civilised wholeness.

Perhaps the most stirring note of his address came from a recent personal experience. During a visit to Jammu and Kashmir, the Hon'ble Vice President had witnessed something that moved him : girls from Muslim families, from communities often associated in the popular imagination with resistance to girls' education, were outperforming their peers in examinations. They were topping charts, filling classrooms, writing futures. He said that  "No religion prevents women from excelling in education. 

Girls , from Muslim families, from communities about whom certain assumptions of restriction persist  were not merely attending university. They were leading it, winning gold medals. Daughters, the first-generation scholars, young women were sitting in those classrooms with a quiet, fierce determination.

He was clear and firm about what this meant: "Islam does not prevent women from excelling in education. These girls are the proof."

This was not just a general observation. He was sharing something that had genuinely moved him as a human being. The real story unfolding in Kashmir  which rarely finds its way into our newspapers or our conversations is this. Girls choosing knowledge. Families choosing futures. 

His thoughts also went to Punyashlok Ahilyadevi  Holkar, the beacon of Maharashtra's women's tradition in the same breath. Her legacy of governance, compassion, and temple-rebuilding lives on as proof that women in power have always elevated not just institutions, but civilisation itself.

His call was clear and urgent: we must seek out positive stories, nurture them, amplify them and share them. In a world saturated with narratives of conflict, the administrator's truest duty should  be highlight what is quietly, stubbornly, beautifully working.

The souvenir 'Soudamini' ,means lightning, brilliance, the sudden illumination of a dark sky and holds within its pages the essays, reflections, and interviews of women IAS, IPS, IFS, State and Allied service officers from across India. It's release by the Hon'ble Vice President was a recognition that the officer and the writer are one person, and that both deserve to stand in the light. As we bid adieu, his emphasis that this laudable event be replicated in all parts of the country remains with me. 

R.Vimala, IAS,  

Resident Commissioner, Maharashtra, & Secretary, 

Maharashtra Sadan,  & Phd Scholar at IIT Bombay