Narayan Athawale no more
GOANEWS DESK, PANAJI | 28 April 2011 15:02 IST
Nayaran Athawale
Veteran journalist and former MP Narayan Athawale expired today morning in Mumbai, after brief illness. He was 79.
Athawale is known in Goa as a vibrant and dashing editor, when he edited Gomantak Marathi daily for a decade, since 1980.
In spite of his biased and unsuccessful position of making Marathi the official language of Goa, he attained great respect even in the Konkani circle.
His major contribution to Goa is Lokvishwas Pratishthan, a school for dumb and deaf students, which he initiated as a founder trustee by raising funds from common Goans in 1980.
He also took several initiatives to raise funds through Gomantak at the time of several disasters, beginning with a canoe that overturned taking lives of farming workers from Madkai.
Before he took up journalism as his career, Athawale was active in Pune Mazdoor Sabha and Kamgar Sabha, affiliated to Hind Mazdoor Sabha.
Being a socialist, he also initially worked a joint editor of Prajawani, an organ of Praja Socialist Party. He then also edited his own weekly Prabhanjan for five years since 1974, before joining Gomantak in Goa as its editor.
He was also the president of Mumbai Marathi Patrakar Sangh in 1972 and a member of Press Council of India from 1985 to 1988. He had also served as the member of All India Marathi Patrakar Parishad in 1978.
With a pen name Anirudh Punarvasu, Athawale has to his credit 16 novels, two short-story collections and a humorous novel Mumbai Geeta.
After retiring from professional journalism, Athawale joined Shiv Sena and was elected as MP from central Mumbai in 1996. He had defeated Sharad Dighe (Congress) and Bapu Kamble (RPI) by 89,199 votes.
He is survived by his wife Anuradha, also a writer and his daughters.
After a person dies, nobody asks whether he is face upwards or prone. They all shower praises on him, maybe for the sake of decency.
Narayan Athawale lit the spark of communal disharmony in Goa during the 555 days of AGITATION to grant Official Language status to Konkani.
Please remember that.