Of the four editors who left India to attend the Empire Press
Union Conference in London, two, Sir Francis Low and Mr. A.A. Hayles, belong to
Anglo-Indian journalism. So high a proportion of anglo-Indian editors bespeaks
the neglected plight of the Indian Press which certainly is entitled to much
more than parity. Originally, it would appear that Mr. K. Srinivasan of The Hindu and Mr. C.R. Srinivasan of the
Swadesamitran were to have gone; but
later they stood aside, which gave Mr. Sadanand his chance. Mr. Tushar Kanti
Ghosh as President of the All-India Newspaper Editors’ Conference was of course
entitled to priority and exercised the right.
* * *
Sir Francis Low is not known for
any brilliance, but his industry is indefatigable. He scorns delights and lives
laboriously. Even on Sundays he keeps on working. Formerly he was news editor.
The legacy of that position abides with him even to-day, and too often the
newsman in him gets the better of the editor. As a writer his style lacks
vigour. But he is great in the acquisition of details and rarely fails to be
informative and analytical. He is good to his staff and completely devoid of
any racial superiority complex. He is not above recognizing his Indian staff in
clubs and social gatherings where he excels in making neat little speeches full
of pleasant platitudes. He has the reputation of betting fond of external manifestations
of greatness, and report has it that few could have worked so hard as he for
the achievement of knighthood. He has the Scotsman’s lack of liberality in the
matter of money, which is aggravated on occasions by a constitutional
incapacity for any sort of serious dissent from the point of view of the
management. That is how I am told it happened that in 1938, when the Times of India celebrated its centenary—a
unique occasion—no benefit at all signalized it for the staff. Socially charming,
but given administratively to caution and overmuch economy, Sir Francis Low is
an ideal editor for a paper with no policy and the motto of “Safety first”. He
is extremely popular with discreet strategists who know how to make capital of
his limitations. But he is no hero to the staff capable of evoking in them
warmth of affection, enthusiasm, admiration or devoted loyalty.
* * *
The other Anglo-Indian editor,
Mr. Hayles, is an intensified version of Sir Francis in economy and industry
minus his social gifts. Until recently, when a new management stepped in and
introduced standards of unexpected liberality, The Mail office was a veritable corss-section of the British Empire at
its worst, with the same rampant racialism, the same steep division between a
pampered privileged class maintained I n great style, and a body of sweated
helots condemned to rough treatment and short rations. But the craftsmanly
virtues of Mr. Hayles command respect. In personal habits he is a Hinduised
Englishman with a keen sense of the cleanliness of vegetarianism and the joys
of sea-bathing.
* * *
Two more dissimilar beings than
Mr. Sadanand and Mr. Tushar Kanti Ghosh it would be hard to find among all the
delegates gathered at the Empire Conference. The Patrika came to Mr. Ghosh as a rich property. As in the affairs
of men, so in the fortunes of newspapers, there is a tide which leads on to
success and prosperity, and once the tide is taken at the flood, adversity is
left behind and reverses that would have broken incipient ventures lose a large
part of their destructive faculty. The momentum of ancestral enterprise has
carried the inheritor of the Patrika to a pinnacle of importance in the world
of Indian journalism where his individual qualities have not yet begun to
shine. This is the defect of all great positions reached without struggle
through inheritance: one never knows, as in the case of the dyanastic succession
to Congress Presidentship from father to
son in the Nehru family, where parental advantage ends and individual merit
begins. The poor are wont to envy the rich, but there is a rich man’s side to
it too. The late S. Srinivasa Iyengar used to say that he never could be quite
sure where the effects of affluence ceased, and genuine unmercenary sincerity
of sentiments prevailed, among all the host of seekers that used to assail him
constantly for this or that favour.
* * *
Mr. Sadanand is an adventurous
prodigy who in his strides as a newspaper magnate never owed anything to inherited
advantage. Elsewhere, I wrote of him that he was a dashing go-ahead dare-devil
who never let well alone and never knew where to draw the line and came to
grief through soaring ambition which impelled him to gigantic schemes beyond
his power. Since then he has learned much and unlearned much. The old
ruthlessness is now gone. In its place there is an attempt to cultivate
detachment as the supreme journalistic discipline. The quest for detachment has
landed him in the worshipful surrender to an idolized deity for which he is
building a temple at great cost, and seeks relaxation from the strenuousness of
professional duties in religion. The practice of religion in a temple starts as
a consolation and develops into an intoxication, and what effect it will have
on the future of the Indian Press through its effects on a devotee like Mr.
Sadanand, it is risky to prophesy. So far it seems to have filled him with
sweet affability. He aspires to reform the standards of journalism by imparting
to them the spirit that inspires the work of the Christian Science Monitor. He
knows the newspaper business from A to Z and in the sense of providing the
public what it would most readily buy, if offered, be is an adept in giving the
public what it wants. The long-term wants of the public are however different
from what will make newspapers sell, and conditions in India are not far
different from what they are in England as described by a writer in the latest
issue of the New Statesman and Nation to be received here: “A race is
run between the commercial exploitation of public ignorance and the deliberate
self-education of people who have discovered, through two world wars and a
great economic slump, that democracy has no meaning unless it is based on
knowledge and not on disconnected snippets of information collected for their
news value”.
* * *
The influence of the Northcliffian
revolution in English journalism has not been lost on India. Hedre, as there,
we have two types of papers; those with large circulations that make the
biggest fortunes, to which public affairs are important only when they happen
to be as popularly interesting as sport, racing and crime stories; and others,
a comparatively small section, that are content with a small circulation but
seek to build up a great political influence through earnest educative
endeavour. The latter class is being squeezed out of press advisory bodies,
editors; conferences and the like, and now its voice is practically unheard at
the Empire Press Conference. This is a great pity.—(June 15, 1946) S A K A.
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