INDEPENDENCE AND THE INDIAN PRESS - Heirs to a Great Tradition
 
 
 
 

        The story of India's Independence and the evolution of Indian Journalism are so closely intertwined that it is impossible to look at the history of the Indian press without beginning from its participation in the freedom struggle.

        In every stage of India's development, particularly during the freedom struggle, the press was in the vanguard, in a supportive, educative and critical role.

        The author, who is one of the doyens of the modern Indian Journalism, takes a look at "Independence and the Indian Press".  In fact, it is an expansion and elaboration of a lecture he gave on this topic so that he could piece together the entire story.

        Starting with the pioneer of journalism in India, James Augustus Hicky, he traverses the various stages of the freedom struggle, focussing as much on the birth of English newspapers as ont he flourishing role of the vernacular press.

        Indian Journalism, in the first half of the 19th century, was preoccupied with social and religious issues, with the rise of the christian missions attracting considerable attention.  It then turned to political and public affairs, moslty to protest against British governance and the racial arrogance of the Raj.

        With increased political consciousness, the course of the Indian National Congress and its approaches to the challenges of freedom movement dominated the print media during the first part of the 20th century.  The Press played the role of "politicising" the people and encouragind discussion on political, social and economic issues.  Naturally Mahatma Gandhi dominated the pages and the debate in those years.

        But the support from the Press was not always unqualified, argues the author.  They differed even with Mahatma Gandhi and the tenets of the Congress party.  But the spirit of nationalism and national integration pemeated the media.  The Salt Satyagraha was a major media event and the author wonders what would have happened if television had arrived by then.

        With independence came the transformation of the Indian Press -- from a cottage industry to a heavy industry.  Journalism ceased to be a vocation and became a profession.  The launch of the All-India Newspaper Editors Conference in 1940 signalled the change.  But all along, the freedom of the Press was seen as part of the agenda of Indian emancipation and evolution.  Even in 1937, when the Congress Party assumed power in provinces, it had adversarial Press as in any democracy.

        After dwelling on the birth of economic journalism and some recent trends in the Indian Press, the author warns that it must never cast aside its "raison d'atre" - an overriding sense of public interest and common good.

        He is worried about the "commodisation" of the newspaper - the mindset that treats newspapers as a product ot be marketed like any item of mass consumption, with no regard for its unique attributes.  He urges the Press not to "abdicate its historically mandated role as the conscience keeper of the community," even if it were to modestly disclaim for itself a higher intrinsic moral excellence than that of the other institutions in the polity,

V Jayanth in The Hindu, Tuesday October 12, 1999: P. 27