Rajaji, as a Journalist

To think of Rajaji not only in the birth centenary year but at any other time is to think of someone stunningly unique, someone dear to everyone of us and, at the same time, distant from us. Someone unique and yet not. The word he detested most was unique. And its variants such as peerless, outstanding, distinctive, unmatched, unequalled, unsurpassable, etc. For he never considered himself superior or exclusive, because of his concern for the lowliest of the lowly, the poorest of the poor, the humblest of the humble and the weakest of the weak, with whom he spared no effort to communicate on the same wavelength. He was a communicator par excellence, because of his uncanny powers of perception, ratiocination and articulation.

Rajaji was however unique in one special sense of the term: In the sense that in his post-retirement years virtually he opted for the life of a working journalist without being formally designated as one. He supported himself by writing books and articles, resisting all the time the Government’s moves to tax him out of circulation. He had all the qualities and credentials of a responsible, crusading journalist of the pre-independence vintage. He was indeed a product more of the pre-independence Gandhian era than of the post-independence Nehru years which only made; it possible for crooks, clowns and charlatans to proliferate. He could think clearly and independently, analyse a situation with the cold-blooded dexterity and detachment of a surgeon, deflate undeserved reputations without inflating deserved ones out of proportion, listen to the other man with critical interest, study a subject thoroughly from all angles before commenting on it, write briefly and tellingly attempting no frills or flourishes and remain wide-awake intellectually lest time overtake him. He could afford to be fearless, upright and fiercely unemotional, because his only concern in life was the pursuit of the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth. He was not afraid of being inconsistent in his search for the truth as he understood it. Inconsistent, yes, but never illogical or insincere. He was not for sale: Nobody could bribe or bully him into doing something which he considered improper or inelegant. Being an uncompromising democrat of the old liberal school, he firmly believed in the interdependence of informed public opinion and democratic culture, which, he maintained, only a strong and responsible parliamentary opposition and a formidable Fourth Estate could strengthen and sustain. The Swarajya, of which he was the moving spirit for more than a decade, had these ideals before it: “There is before the country the great problem of how to secure welfare without surrendering the individual to be swallowed up by the State, how to get the best return for the taxes the people pay and how to preserve spiritual values while working for better material standards of life. This journal will serve all these purposes.”                    (C. Rajagopalachari)

Rajaji was no doubt a journalist inthe accepted sense of the term. For he was closely connected with four weeklies which were respected because of his association with them, as long as he was with them. They were: Young India, Harijan and Vimochan (Tamil) which he edited during Gandhiji’s absence and Swarajya which he super-edited out of love for the ailing editor, Khasa Subba Rau. Swarajya became a powerful organ of independent opinion despite its formal affiliation to the Swatantra party. This was possible because of Rajaji’s presence. He had his formal allegiance to the party which he himself founded. But since no party had any authority over him, he considered himself above any discipline from outside. He believed in self-imposed discipline. He often criticised the Swatantra party without letting it down ina crisis. The Swarajya during his association became a very powerful weeklybecause of his own writings. His weekly column, entitled Dear Reader, was possibly the most widely read column in Indian journalism, though the paper itself did not make much progress in terms of circulation. His writings somehow reached a very wide public. PTI often released excerpts from his Dear Reader column.

No subject was too high or too low for him, including sex. But he would discuss every issue, not with a view to flattering the readers by confirming their fads and fixations but with the object of shocking them by emphasising the hitherto unsuspected suspects of a live controversy. He always itched for a fight unlike Nehru who violently resented dissent. Rajaji would set his readers thinking. He treated them as his equals, again unlike Nehru to whom all animals were equal, but some more equal than others. Nehru also considered himself a journalist because of his ties with National Herald. But he was too emotional and egoistic to analyse a problem or interpret a situation or assess a person with the scientific detachment of one with an open mind. Rajaji was well-equipped to perform the triple functions of the journalist, namely, to inform, to interpret and to investigate. He was a great champion of the free press. In his own words:

“‘I am a sort of gadfly,’ said Socrates in ‘his defence before the Athenian people.’ ‘The State is a great and noble steed who is tardy in his motions owing to his very size, and requires to be stirred into life. I am that gadfly which God has attached to the State, and all day long and in all places am always fastening upon you, arousing and persuading and reproaching you. You will not easily find another like me, and therefore I would advise you to spare me’. Athenian democracy condemned Socrates to death but his words carried a truth that is immortal. Great Governments benefit by criticism, without which they are bound to deteriorate in self, complacency and unchecked self-will. After independence, patriotism and public co-operation in India have swung to the other end of the arc, and the Indian press has gone all out for praise and admiration leaving the Prime Minister of India in a dangerous state of loneliness, for unqualified adulation day in and day out is loneliness...The daily press which at present flourishes, in a business sense, is daily chiming concord and approval and in all doubtful cases waits to form an opinion until the Prime Minister indicates his own, and contributes but little or nothing by way of criticism. The need is great for a gadfly weekly-paper, which is not over-weighted by finance and the consequent fear of losing money, which can close down any time and start again any day without serious loss, and which is governed by a sense of truth and public welfare and does not look to mass popularity or votes or the power derived from pleasing people. But to be a gadfly of the Socrates-pattern, one must have in some degree the qualities of Socrates, regard for truth, purity of motive and utter obedience to the voice of God within one’s heart. We may not all attain Socrates’s level in these respects, but we may all try to be on that road. Everyone concerned with public affairs and who is older than sixty knows what powerful and healthy influence the very poor newspapers of the old days, with a paying circulation that rarely reached 10,000, wielded in those days. Papers now printing a lakh and proudly asking for advertisements on that basis carry far less influence than those old daily newspapers. They have almost lost the habit of adverse criticism either of Government of their small ineffective adversaries.”

“News may be served by the daily press, but a good high class weekly has the privilege of educating the public in thought and appraisement, which I fear the daily press is not adequately or at all doing. Democracy to be good government requires statesmen who educate and guide the people and are not merely politicians occupied in conserving their popularity for future power. Without guidance, adult suffrage and democracy based thereon will confirm the worst fears of those Indians who opposed the movement for independence and allied themselves with the British during the struggle. The press should not only aim at reflecting and forecasting public opinion but should try to educate and give guidance to the reading public. The rotary machine has come and with it the doubtful blessing of large capital. The independence of the press has been adversely affected by this revolution in the Indian press. The small well-conducted high quality weekly can supply a felt want and render great national service.”

This passage is from the Swarajya weekly of July 14, 1956. SwaraJyaunder his stewardship had become the small but irresistible weekly he had in mind, read, not because of the advertisements it carried nor the spicy half-truths and untruths it purveyed but because of its perceptive and provocative editorial writing. Swarajya had been identified with Rajaji as Young India and Harijanand earlier Indian Opinion in South Africa had been with Gandhiji and Kesariwith Tilak. One can mention any number of small, tidy and influential dailies and weeklies of the pre-independence years which were tally the projections of their editors: To mention a few less famous ones, Kamakshi Natarajan’s Indian Social Reformer, Lala Lajpat Rai’s People, C. S. Rangaswami’s Indian Finance, C. Y. Chintamani’s Leader, T. Prakasam’s Swarajya (Daily), Khasa Subba Rau’s Swatantraweekly, which later became the instrument of the Khasa-Rajaji team assuming a new name, Swarajya and Sadanand’s Free Press Journal, which in its present form has neither the sleek look of an affluent paper with mass circulation nor the powerful thrust of an aggressive paper with a mission catering for a qualityreadership.

Rajaji was thus a journalist in the sense in which Gandhiji was. Both treated journalism, not as an end in itself, but as a means to an end, the end being public good. They were both super-communicators, not because of their professional expertise, but because of their rapport with the masses. They both had the same objective. The pursuit of excellence, not for its own sake, the style of professional admen, but for the good of the country, which they rightly believed, was not negotiable. In fact for the good of the world in general. Rajaji was neither a rightist nor a leftist, neither a traditionalist nor a modernist, neither pro-East nor pro-West. He supported whatever was clean, progressive, original, authentic and morally sound, intellectually stimulating and spiritually elevating with a sharp relevance to the situation at a given moment.

In the ’60s, during my Bombay days, work or vacation often took me to Madras, where, among other things, temple-going interested me most. There were three shrines I considered particularly sacred: the Kapaleswar Kovil at Mylapore, the Parthasarathy Kovil at Triplicane and the Swarajya office at Kilpauk. On occassions I might have skipped the first two, but never the third.

The magnet at the Swarajya office of course was the presence of Rajaji, a conversation with whom was spiritually and intellectually most nourishing. The range of his interests was so wide, the quality of his perceptions so rich and the thrust of his logic so lethal that his callers had nothing to say in his presence. At the same time, being a true democrat, he had great concern for the other people’s opinions, which he would respect only if defended convincingly. Knowing his interest in saints, I once suggested to Mr T. Sadasivam: “Would you like to meet Swami Muktananda of Ganeshpuri? I can take you there.” “No, thanks”, he replied. “I am happy with my two acharyas: the Sankaracharya of Kanchi Kamakoti Peetham and Rajagopalachari.”

Once, during one of my visits to him, Rajaji said to me teasingly: “So you are a champion of modern art. I think it is the biggest legpull of the century. How is it different from the doodles of a child? A child is at least innocent and spontaneous.” I had no answer.

On another occasion: “I am happy that you have been critical of Nehru’s China policy. I have reproduced one of your Chiaroscuros in my Dear Reader column. Have you seen it? Nehru has messed up the domestic policy. But his foreign policy is even a bigger mess.

On yet another occasion: “You working journalists have been wasting your rhetoric on a wrong cause, freedom of the press. Whose freedom? Not yours, surely. If it is yours, it is freedom to air your personal views at other people’s expense. How do you expect your proprietors to give up their perfectly legitimate right to hire and fire you? They have not invested millions in their newspapers just for the amusement of their editors. If you were an employer, would you give your staff the same freedom, the sort of freedom that you now demand as an employee? I am not suggesting that the working journalists have no case. But I think they weaken it by overstating it.”

Rajaji’s work on the Swarajya was not confined to writing. He was equally good at looking after the production side, i.e. selection of type faces, choice of headings for articles, make-up of the page, subbing of a most conscientious and meticulous nature–he would not pass a single misplaced comma or a miss-spelt word or name or a wrong and inelegant turn of phrase. His proof-reading and subbing were as exemplary as his own prose which was crisp, vigorous and sensuous. He was against overwriting and flat writing. He believed that if one was truthful, one’s expression would automatically come alive. No effort was needed. Like Gandhiji, he wrote direct, simple and unadorned prose, which demanded maturity, integrity and sensitivity of the highest order. Rajaji never allowed anything shoddy or substandard to appear in print. He would critically examine allitems before publishing them. Even the cartoonist could not escape his vigilant eye. Cartoonist Ranga tells us that Rajaji not onlysuggested subjects to him but illustrate his ideas in line for his guidance. Ranga has collected a large member of Rajaji doodles.

Rajaji’s journalism was not confined to his routine at the Swarajya. He often wrote for other papers articles, or if the editors didn’t accept them, letters on subjects of public importance. Since he never wrote for money it did not matter to him whether his contributions appeared as letters or as articles. What concerned him most was the sort of reader response that his pieces provoked. He wrote provocatively, because without debate and discussion democracy, according to him, was an expensive luxury for an underdeveloped nation.

Indeed Rajaji stoodout among his contemporaries because of his multifaceted genius and many-splendoured character and personality. Whatever he did he did with the elan and expertise of one specially trained for it.No wonder that he left a legacy of highly responsible and enlightened journalism to his successors who have an uphill task, should they choose to follow in his footsteps.

“Rajaji is a person of strong convictions and strong beliefs, who has adhered to them....He accepted basically Mahatmaji’s approach to various problems. Nevertheless, at no time did he become a person who unthinkingly accepted anyone’s dictum, even Mahatmaji’s. All our minds did not function quite critically in the presence of Mahatmaji because of our faith in him. Rajaji’s faith in Mahatmaji was tremendous; but he never allowed his mind to slip away. If he did give in to somebody, he did so consciously and deliberately, after arguing the matter. Therefore, Rajaji, whether he sometimes disagreed with us or very often agreed with us, brought an extraordinarily keen and analytical mind to bear on every question that came before us.” ...

PANDIT JAWAHARLAL NEHRU
–From a speech made on July 24, 1948