Anita Pratap

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Anita Pratap
Born (1958-12-23) 23 December 1958 (age 65)
Kottayam, Kerala, India
NationalityIndian
Occupation(s)Journalist, writer
Spouse(s)Pratap Chandran (divorced)
Arne Roy Walther (1999–present)
ChildrenZubin (son)
Website www.anitapratap.com

Anita Pratap is an expatriate Indian writer and journalist. [1] [2] [3] In 1983, she was the first journalist who interviewed LTTE chief V. Prabhakaran. She won the George Polk award for TV reporting for her television journalism related to the takeover of Kabul by the Taliban. [1] She was India bureau chief for CNN. [4] [5] She has written the book Island of Blood based on Sri Lanka. [1] In 2013 she was presented with the Shriratna award by the Kerala Kala Kendram an organisation associated to the Kerala Sangeetha Nataka Akademi. [6] She was nominated as the Aam Aadmi Party candidate from Ernakulam, Kerala, for the 2014 Lok Sabha elections.

Contents

Early life

Anita was born in Kottayam, Kerala, in a Syrian Catholic family. Her father was employed with a Tata Group enterprise, he was posted at different locations in India taking his family with him. As a child Anita changed seven schools in eleven years. She passed Senior Cambridge from a Loreto School Kolkata and did her BA – English from Miranda House, New Delhi, in 1978 [7] and diploma in journalism from Bangalore University.

Career

After completing her diploma in journalism, Anita was recruited by Arun Shourie, the then editor of The Indian Express in Delhi. She then transferred to Bangalore to live with her parents. Shortly after, she joined Sunday Magazine. Her interest in journalism was in international politics and that led her to the ethnic conflicts in Sri Lanka. She visited many sites to gather first-hand information. In 1983, she interviewed Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam's (LTTE) chief Velupillai Prabhakaran. [1] This became the first ever interview Prabhakaran gave to the world in which he talked about his philosophies of establishing LTTE, of taking matters in his own hands rather than relying on government and of his plans ahead. Anita was immediately recognised on an international level. She continued her work in Sri Lanka and later in 2003 published her first book Island of Blood about her experiences of living in a terror-stricken areas. [1]

Anita also worked for India Today and then was a correspondent for Time magazine for eight years. [8] Post 1993-bombings in Bombay (now Mumbai), she also interviewed Bal Thackeray for Time; he was the then the chief of Shiv Sena which was the leading opposition party in Maharashtra. In 1996, she joined CNN, her first experience as a television journalist. She worked from the Atlanta and the Bangkok bureaus for a short while to get experience. She then covered news on the Taliban's takeover of Kabul for which she was presented with the George Polk Award. [9]

Switching to television from print media, Anita also made various documentaries on social issues and arts. In Light Up the Sky, she showcases the transformation of insurgent Mizoram into a democratic state. Her documentary, Orphans of an Ancient Civilization, notes the plights of craftsmen and When The Soul Glows documents folk dance traditions. The Shabash Hallelujah was a documentary on the Naga Regiment. [10] Co-authoring with a Bangalore-based photographer Mahesh Bhatt, she published her second book Unsung in 2007 which told stories of nine ordinary Indian people who served society. [11]

Awards and honours

Personal life

Her first marriage was to Pratap Chandran, and she has a son Zubin from that relationship, born when she was 22 years old. [15] Pratap Chandran was a senior reporter at The Indian Express where the two met. She subsequently divorced Chandran and took custody of her son. [16] In 1999, she married Arne Roy Walther, a Norwegian diplomat. This is also Walther's second marriage. [4]

The character of Jaya, played by Nargis Fakhri in the 2013 Bollywood thriller, Madras Cafe is modelled on Anita Pratap. [17] In the film, Jaya interviews LTF leader Anna Bhaskaran, who is in turn, modelled on Velupillai Prabhakaran.[ citation needed ]

Works

Books
Documentaries

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam</span> Militant Tamil organisation in Sri Lanka (1976–2009)

The Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam was a Tamil militant organization that was based in the northern and eastern Sri Lanka. The LTTE fought to create an independent Tamil state called Tamil Eelam in the northeast of the island in response to violent persecution and discriminatory policies against Sri Lankan Tamils by the Sinhalese-dominated Sri Lankan Government.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Sri Lankan Civil War</span> 1983–2009 conflict

The Sri Lankan Civil War was a civil war fought in Sri Lanka from 1983 to 2009. Beginning on 23 July 1983, it was an intermittent insurgency against the government by the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam led by Velupillai Prabhakaran. The LTTE fought to create an independent Tamil state called Tamil Eelam in the north-east of the island, due to the continuous discrimination and violent persecution against Sri Lankan Tamils by the Sinhalese-dominated Sri Lanka government.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Velupillai Prabhakaran</span> Leader of militant Tamil organisation in Sri Lanka (1954–2009)

Velupillai Prabhakaran was an Eelam Tamil revolutionary. Prabhakaran was a major figure of Tamil nationalism, and the founder and leader of the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE). The LTTE was a militant organization that sought to create an independent Tamil state in the north and east of Sri Lanka in reaction to the oppression of the country's Tamil population by the Sri Lankan government. Under his direction, the LTTE undertook a military campaign against the Sri Lankan government for more than 25 years.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Black Tigers</span> Sri Lankan separatist military unit

The Black Tigers was an elite suicide commando unit of the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE), a militant Tamil separatist organization in Sri Lanka.

Vinayagamoorthy Muralitharan is a Sri Lankan politician and former militant. Formerly a fighter for the Tamil separatist group, the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE), for over 20 years, Muralitharan later rose to prominence after defecting from the LTTE and forming the Tamil Makkal Viduthalai Pulikal (TMVP), a breakaway faction of the LTTE.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">People's Liberation Organisation of Tamil Eelam</span> Political party in Sri Lanka

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The Tamil New Tigers (TNT) was a Sri Lankan Tamil militant organization founded by Velupillai Prabhakaran on 22 May 1972. The group was composed of a few close associates of Prabhakaran, who was only 17 years old when he founded the group. The group was a predecessor to the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE).

Gopalaswamy Mahendraraja, also known as Mahattaya was a member of Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam who was killed for leaking secrets to India's RAW.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Eelam War IV</span> Conflict between Sri lanka and LTTE separatists

Eelam War IV is the name given to the fourth phase of armed conflict between the Sri Lankan military and the separatist Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE). Renewed hostilities began on the 26 July 2006, when Sri Lanka Air Force fighter jets bombed several LTTE camps around Mavil Aru anicut. The government's casus belli was that the LTTE had cut off the water supply to surrounding paddy fields in the area. Shutting down the sluice gates of the Mavil Aru on July 21 depriving the water to over 15,000 people - Sinhalese and Muslim settlers under Sri Lankan state-sponsored colonisation schemes in Trincomalee district. They were denied of water for drinking and also cultivating over 30,000 acres of paddy and other crops. The fighting resumed after a four-year ceasefire between the Government of Sri Lanka (GoSL) and LTTE. Continued fighting led to several territorial gains for the Sri Lankan Army, including the capture of Sampur, Vakarai and other parts of the east. The war took on an added dimension when the LTTE Air Tigers bombed Katunayake airbase on March 26, 2007, the first rebel air attack without external assistance in history.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Assassination of Rajiv Gandhi</span> 1991 massacre in Sriperumbudur, India

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Shanmugam Kumaran Tharmalingam is a former prominent member of the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE). Pathmanathan was on Interpol's most wanted list for various charges including arms smuggling and criminal conspiracy. He is also wanted by India's law enforcement agencies in connection with the assassination of former Indian Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi in 1991 and for violation of the Terrorist Act and the Indian Explosive Act. He was arrested on 5 August 2009. Pathmanathan was released from prison on 17 October 2012, when the complaints against him by Sri Lanka were withdrawn.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Battle of Mullaitivu (2009)</span>

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The Indian intervention in the Sri Lankan Civil War was the deployment of the Indian Peace Keeping Force in Sri Lanka intended to perform a peacekeeping role. The deployment followed the Indo-Sri Lankan Accord between India and Sri Lanka of 1987 which was intended to end the Sri Lankan Civil War between militant Sri Lankan Tamil nationalists, principally the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE), and the Sri Lankan Military.

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<i>Madras Cafe</i> 2013 Indian Hindi-language film by Shoojit Sircar

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S. M. Abdul Jabbar was a Tamil radio broadcaster, cricket commentator, writer and actor.

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References

  1. 1 2 3 4 5 Balakrishnan, Suneetha (6 March 2013). "Together we rise". The Hindu. Archived from the original on 22 April 2013. Retrieved 21 April 2013.
  2. ↑ Graham P. Chapman (2012). The Geopolitics of South Asia (Epub) from Early Empires to the Nuclear Age. Ashgate Publishing, Ltd. p. 296. ISBN   978-1-4094-8807-1.
  3. ↑ Postcolonial Insecurities: India, Sri Lanka and the Question of Nationhood. University of Minnesota Press. 1999. p. 277. ISBN   978-0-8166-3329-6.
  4. 1 2 Menon, Bindu (22 November 1999). "Just married: Former CNN bureau chief in New Delhi Anita Pratap weds Norwegian envoy Arne Walther". India Today. Archived from the original on 4 March 2016. Retrieved 21 April 2013.
  5. ↑ T. P. Sreenivasan (2008). Words, Words, Words: Adventures in Diplomacy. Pearson Education India. p. 202. ISBN   978-81-317-0405-9.
  6. ↑ "Shreeratna global award for Anita Pratap". IBN Live. Thiruvananthapuram. 28 February 2013. Archived from the original on 29 June 2013. Retrieved 21 April 2013.
  7. ↑ "Alumni Profile: Anita Pratap". Miranda House. Archived from the original on 19 April 2014. Retrieved 24 April 2013.
  8. ↑ "Anita Pratap: Curriculum Vitae". Anita Pratap. Archived from the original on 21 August 2007. Retrieved 24 April 2013.
  9. ↑ Jahagirdar, Archana (26 March 1997). "Anita Pratap: CNN's Delhi bureau chief is the first Indian to win the George Polk Award". Outlook . Archived from the original on 12 June 2013. Retrieved 24 April 2013.
  10. ↑ "Anita Pratap : Documentaries". Anita Pratap. Archived from the original on 12 November 2013. Retrieved 24 April 2013.
  11. ↑ "Unsung: About the Book". Anita Pratap. Archived from the original on 19 April 2014. Retrieved 24 April 2013.
  12. ↑ "Past Winners | Long Island University". www.liu.edu. Archived from the original on 10 May 2021. Retrieved 3 May 2023.
  13. 1 2 "New York State Writers Institute - Anita Pratap". www.albany.edu. Archived from the original on 3 May 2023. Retrieved 3 May 2023.
  14. ↑ "Archived copy". www.karmaveerawards.com. Archived from the original on 3 May 2023. Retrieved 3 May 2023.{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: archived copy as title (link)
  15. ↑ Singh, Sanghita (1 October 2001). "The island of Anita Pratap". Times of India . Archived from the original on 17 February 2019. Retrieved 24 April 2013.
  16. ↑ Singh, Khushwant (27 October 2011). "Anita Pratap". The Tribune. Archived from the original on 14 December 2012. Retrieved 21 April 2013.
  17. ↑ "Nargis Fakhri's role inspired by Anita Pratap?". mid-day. 5 August 2013. Archived from the original on 25 May 2019. Retrieved 25 May 2019.
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