Baba
Dealing with thugs
Namaskar,The use of pen names is absolutely essential with hot topics and controversial issues. So when a topic is contentious a pen name is highly needed. Whereas if one is just talking about goody-goody things, then a pen name is not needed. Basically, pen names enable readers to focus on the issue at hand without concerning themselves with who wrote it. And pen names allow writers scope to share their views without being judged on petty, superficial grounds like caste, gender, nationality, race, age, and ethnicity.
https://anandamargauniversal.blogspot.com/
In addition, pen names protect innocent people from getting killed by hooligans and criminals etc. For these reasons and more, that is why pen names are widely used around the world. So the use of pen names is universally accepted both inside and outside Ananda Marga Pracaraka Samgha. It is a common custom and tradition to use a pen name in certain key circumstances.
Baba & pen name
As needed, Baba also used various pen names including when He was a student. In that circumstance, He used the Muslim pen name - Aftab Uddin - when writing to an Urdu newspaper to expose Islamic dogma. By this approach, He was not judged on the basis of His age or family background etc, but on the value of His words and ideas.
Pen name: safety from thugs, criminals, & murderers
There are any number of reasons for using a pen name and one of the reasons is this. When a writer is dealing with cheats, bandits, thugs, anti-social elements, criminals, kidnappers, and murderers, then the use of a pen name is highly needed. Because thieves and killers etc are not normal human beings and they react in wild and crazy ways when they read anything written about them that is factual but unfavourable.
https://anandamargauniversal.blogspot.com/
Unfortunately, the same is the case with some leaders in our AMPS and Prout movements. If anyone writes anything factual against them then those Wt leaders harass, threaten, victimise, alienate, attack, and even try to kill that person. In that untenable situation, the only option for margii writers when pointing out the faults and hypocrisy of certain Marga leaders is to use a pen name. That is the only way to bring the issue into the limelight.
Because if that margii uses their real name they will face terrible adversity, attacks, revenge, and even death threats and killing. So for their safety, writers use pen names. And indeed, the common practice is for publishers and editors to encourage the use of pen names by their writers because only in this way can the entire story be brought to the fore. Then they can reveal all the events without their life endangering themselves and getting killed.
This is the standard tradition with even big newspapers like the Washington Post, The New York Times etc. On certain hot issues, pen names are common - with books as well. That is why the writer of the posting - "XYZ" - used a pen name. Moreover, these writers are common margiis, LFTs, and Wts from all around the globe.
List of pen names Baba used
Baba used so many pen names and here are a few. This is not a full list. He used various pen names for different audiences and subject matters. Baba wrote the below names in Bangla and now here we present them in ways in which they might be commonly spelled using Roman script:
- Vidrohii Yuvak / Vidrohi Yuvak / Vidrohii Yubak
- Priyadarshii / Priyadarshi
- Raungadadu / Rangadadu / Raunga’da’du / Ranga’da’du
- Bar’da’
- Aftab Uddin / A’fta’b Uddiin - To write article for Urdu newspaper
- “Observer’s Diary” - this is another way He used to sign
Conclusion
There are very integral and ideological reasons for the use of a pen name - especially when addressing key controversial issues of the day, or when dealing with irrational or violent people etc. As Ananda Margiis, we should be keen to follow Baba's example and employ this practice as needed.
https://anandamargauniversal.blogspot.com/
Namaskar,
in Him,
Shiva Dayal
~ Very important info about pen names below - Must Read ~
Pseudonym protects the writer for exposé
~ Courtesy of Wikipedia ~
A pseudonym may be used to protect the writer for exposé books about espionage or crime. Former SAS soldier Andy McNab used a pseudonym for his book about a failed SAS mission titled Bravo Two Zero. The name Ibn Warraq has been used by dissident Muslim authors. Author Brian O’Nolan used the pen names Flann O’Brien and Myles na gCopaleen for his novels and journalistic writing from the 1940s to the 1960s because Irish civil servants were not allowed at that time to publish works under their own names. The identity of the enigmatic twentieth century novelist B. Traven has never been conclusively revealed, in spite of thorough research.”
The Histoire d’O (The Story of O)
For reasons unknown, but perhaps to escape the notice of English authorities, the author Robert Noonan chose the name Robert Tressell as his pseudonym to write his novel The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists.
Alice Bradley Sheldon had a multiplicity of reasons to write under the pen name of James Tiptree, Jr.: she was a woman writing in the heavily male-dominated genre of science fiction; she was a bisexual woman who may have wanted to avoid the inherent biases of her readers; and she was a career intelligence officer, first in the Army Air Corps and then in the early years of the CIA, for whom concealment was a way of life.
After Stephen King‘s pen name Richard Bachman got released to the public, King said that Bachman had “died of cancer“. After this, King began writing under his own name for most of his stories. The event of King’s pen name being released helped conceive another novel, The Dark Half. (Courtesy of Wikipedia)
Pen name protects writer's life
~ Courtesy of Wikipedia ~
The right for anonymous political campaigning was established in the U.S. Supreme Court decision in McIntyre v. Ohio Elections Commission (1995) case: “Anonymity is a shield from the tyranny of the majority...It thus exemplifies the purpose behind the Bill of Rights, and of the First Amendment in particular: to protect unpopular individuals from retaliation—and their ideas from suppression—at the hand of an intolerant society”.
The right of individuals for anonymous communication was established by the decision in case Columbia Insurance Company v. Seescandy.com, et al. (1999) of the US District Court in the Northern District of California: “People are permitted to interact pseudonymously and anonymously with each other so long as those acts are not in violation of the law”. (Courtesy of Wikipedia)
Pen name protects from thugs
~ Courtesy of Wikipedia ~
There are various situations in which a person might choose to withhold their identity. Acts of charity have been performed anonymously when benefactors do not wish to be acknowledged. A person who feels threatened might attempt to mitigate that threat through anonymity. A witness to a crime might seek to avoid retribution, for example, by anonymously calling a crime tipline. (Courtesy of Wikipedia)
To protect the author’s real identity to save life
~ Courtesy of Belinda Pollard ~
Some authors have used a pen name for life-or-death reasons, because they live under oppressive regimes, or have dangerous things to say about powerful people.
For some, it’s been a matter of privacy. They don’t want weirdos looking them up in the phone book, or workmates teasing them.
Some might work for a government department or other organisation which does not allow its employees to publish under their own names, because of the conflict of interests it may cause. (Courtesy of Belinda Pollard)
Here is small sample
There are thousands of people who have used pen names, to see a sampling please see link down below at the very bottom of this email.
Definition of true writers
Ananda Marga philosophy states, "When for age after age society spins in the murky eddies of evil and vice, when individual and collective knavery masquerades as intelligence, when hypocrisy, bribery and fraud are the yardsticks for measuring the ability to lead – it is then that the genuine followers of Bháratii [the goddess of learning] must struggle on in spite of constant humiliation. Only taunts and insults will be their fate. Those who are afraid of these insults are incapable of offering anything really lasting to humanity." (1)
Who can't understand
Some so-called intellectuals in AMPS, who lived their entire life as anti-social elements, have now surrendered their periodical magazines for propagating the Marx manifesto. In result, every step they are printing the article in favour of communism. Overall they are befooling their readers that they are propagating Ananda Marga social philosophy. Such types of psychically diseased people cannot understand the aforesaid Baba’s modus operandi of using a pen name when dealing with sensitive matters and critical issues, unfortunately.
https://anandamargauniversal.blogspot.com/
Reference
1. A Few Problems Solved - 1, The Practice of Art and Literature
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