TO ALL MEMBERS AND FRIENDS

Summary

This two-page English extract contains two apparently separate items. The first is a circular from the P.E.N. All-India Centre, dated July 28, 1975, reporting an Executive Committee resolution passed on July 22. Reaffirming the fourth clause of the P.E.N. Charter, the resolution defends the unhampered transmission of thought, freedom of expression, a free press, and opposition to arbitrary censorship. It specifically deplores the restrictions imposed under the President’s Emergency ordinance, including pre-censorship of published material, and appeals to the President of India to revoke them. The resolution invokes Dr. S. Radhakrishnan and the late Pandit Nehru among distinguished readers of the charter.

The second visible page is a literary and commercial item. It concludes a laudatory passage describing Chaudhuri’s treatment of Indian and European history and advertises six English translations of Konkani poetry by R. V. Pandit, translated from the original Konkani by Thomas Gay. The supplied pages do not establish whether these items belong to the same publication or indicate the original document’s broader context.

Key points

• The P.E.N. All-India Centre circular is dated July 28, 1975, and records a resolution adopted on July 22.
• The resolution reaffirms the P.E.N. Charter’s commitment to the transmission of thought within and between nations.
• It opposes suppression of freedom of expression and arbitrary censorship during peacetime.
• It argues that a free press must resist mendacity, deliberate falsehood, and distortion of facts.
• It deplores Emergency-era publishing restrictions, especially pre-censorship of printed material.
• The second page contains the close of a literary commendation and an advertisement for six English translations of R. V. Pandit’s Konkani poems.
• The relationship between the circular and the literary advertisement cannot be established from the two supplied pages.