End of an Era in Journalism

TRIBUTE

by HIRANMAY KARLEKAR

With the recent passing of Prithvis Chakra-varti—Prithvisda to this writer and Prithvis or Chakravarti to his friends and colleagues—the country has lost one of the last tall eminences of the great decades of print journalism. A fine newsman with a keen nose for things that mattered, he was also an uncompromising crusader for journalistic ethics. A strong champion of the principle that a campaign for greater professio-nalism among scribes should accompany the fight for their rights, he saw to it that the National Union of Journalists, of which he was a founder, also organised workshops and training sessions for its members.
His crusading spirit clearly stemmed from his early life as a political activist which, as in the case of many of his contemporaries and seniors, took him to journalism. Thus, he started his journalistic career in The Vanguard, the English-language daily which was the mouthpiece of the legendary revolutionary M.N. Roy’s Radical Democratic Party. That was in 1943, when Wold War II was raging in its full fury.

The next stop was The People, founded by Lala Lajpat Rai, where he was an Assistant editor in 1947. He joined The Statesman in the following year and Hindustan Times in 1949 where his last assignment was as the Chief of its Delhi Bureau and where he worked for 31 years—his longest stint with any publication—until 1980. Prithvisda’s second-longest innings was with the Bengali daily, Aajkaal, which he joined as the Deputy Editor and Chief of Bureau and where he continued until 1994.

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A drab, chronological recounting of the positions he held and his stints in these, however, does little justice to his role in Indian journalism as a guide and mentor to his younger colleagues. A hard taskmaster, he had no time for sloppy stories based on hearsay. An utterly fearless professional, he was prepared to take on anybody, any time. Yet, he was never rash nor did he ever tilt at windmills.

This writer was the Editor of Hindustan Times during the Emergency when he was also closely associated with a section of the underground resistance. He would have been in serious trouble had he been found out. Here Prithvisda was a great help. A Radical Humanist and a great believer in human freedom, he was a fierce opponent of the Emergency. He had, as the Secretary-General of the NUJI, led a delegation to Prime Minister Indira Gandhi, protesting against Press censorship. Yet, he shared this writer’s view that fighting a modern state machinery was not an easy thing. One had to wait until discontent boiled over and a massive upsurge was waiting to happen and sweep away the incumbent authoritarian regime.
Meanwhile, one had to preserve one’s strength and quietly build up a strong underground network and propaganda machinery which could mobilise and strike when the hour came.

On many days we sat till late in the evening after work was over, exchanging notes on the day’s events and discussing what could be done. Finally, the hour came with the announcement that parliamentary elections would be held in the country from March 16 to 20, 1977. The outcome was a rout for the Congress, which proved decisively that the people of India had no use for authoritarian governance.

During the Emergency and even afterwards, Prithvisda was always a source of calm and wise counsel. He had been a witness to a tumultuous period beginning with World War II and continuing through the horrors of the Partition, the joy of Independence and the decades thereafter which saw India traverse the difficult path of combining development and democracy, successfully negotiating the transition from the era of one-party domination to that of coalition rule, from planned development to a liberalised economy, fighting wars to ward off aggressions, coping with subversion and sustained terror attacks, not yet entirely over the hills but close to being so.

Prithvisda had been there and seen it all. The years had given him wisdom and a calm optimism tempered by a mild cynicism and a certain detachment. These had made him keenly aware of the importance of ethics in personal and professional life and of setting an example by his own conduct. His passing creates a void that will be very difficult to fill.

(Courtesy: The Pioneer)