If M. C. had not become a Journalist

“History”, wrote Iswara Dutt, “will record that two men read dangerously at Bangalore (?) in earlier years. One was Winston Churchill and the other is our own Chalapathi Rau. He read everything he could lay his hands on – literature, history, politics and what not.”

It is an odd juxtaposition, W. C. and M. C., but singularly appropriate. Both read widely and wrote copiously; both had a thorough grasp of the historical forces that shaped human destiny; and both were masters of English prose. Churchill was the subject of one of M. C.’s brilliant literary sketches and both revelled in the art of the profile.

The comparison need not be pressed; farther as Churchill was also one of M. C’s. early antipathies. M. C. admired Churchill as a man of letters and leader of a nation in distress but fired his ten-pounders against the arch-imperialist. For, M. C. was patriot first and everything else next. “We may love English poetry, but we cannot but hate the bacilli processes of British imperialism.”

M. C. prepared himself, even while he was a student, to bear the “agony of Golgotha” as a soldier in the battle for freedom. He seized his pen and wielded it like a sword. He served the country as a journalist at a time when journalism was a blind alley and stuck to one newspaper, which was always in the red, out of a sense of loyalty to Jawaharlal Nehru and his ideals of socialism, secularism, self-reliance and non-alignments.

The relationship between Nehru and M. C. has few parallels in history–between an editor and a Prime Minister. It started formally and deepened into brotherly affection as the years went by. Nehru respected M. C.’s editorial integrity; M. C. admired Nehru’s humanism and vision. Yet, Rau remained a “sceptical observer”, of the wielder of immense power. “I wanted nothing from him except to be left alone….Even when I was sitting next to him, I could be as detached in time as if he was a potential Caesar and I a potential Brutus.”

There were many influences on M. C.’s life. From Iswara Dutt, one would think, he caught the flair for pen-portraiture. To Rama Rao, as he himself acknowledges, he owed his “love of work, earnestness, freedom from cynicism and pride in the profession.” From Nehru, humanism, the essence of his personality. How he learnt his first lesson in humanism from Nehru has been told by M. C. himself.

He had joined the National Herald in 1938 and was in charge of the Foreign News page during the war years until 1942 when the paper was forced to close down. Nehru took interest only in the edit page and the foreign news page. Nehru happened todrop in at the Herald’s office one day. “He asked me what was the news. ‘Oh, another twenty British aircraft brought down over London,’ I said casually and another fifty killed. ‘Don’t you think that is enough,’ he said. I felt rebuked for the first time in my life, sincerely ashamed, and I hope I have been more human ever since.”

Apart from men, books, on which M. C. literally fed himself, shaped his thought and outlook. The list of books he gives in his article “Books in my life” is a daunting one. Unfortunately, the books he read were mostly in English, and one suspects that he had neither the time nor the inclination to go to the classics either in his own mother-tongue or in Sanskrit. This lead to his taking a certain oblique view of Indian culture, identifying it with externals like casteism, untouchability, dowry, ceremonial piety, greed and so on. He was frankly an agnostic and, as he did in a review of a book on Lord Venkateswara, he looked for “What God can do for man.” It was only late in life that he realised that he had made a mistake in ridiculing the Ramayana like Aubrey Menen–” it seems vain todeny the blood, whatever, the intellect’s liking for subtleties.”

M. C. found much to find fault with in Hindu society. He wanted a “regenerative protestantism.” He was himself some­thing of a protestant and knocked the “no-changers” with the lance of his biting wit and sarcasm. He lashed at conservatives and effete traditions, customs and beliefs with tomahawk fury.

M. C. wrote in a hard, granite-like style, without a touch of poetry–the effervescence of his younger days when there was a “tumbling of similes and metaphors” and the “deep rhythm roll of thought broke into words of embroidered foam” had cooled long ago. “I have not found books in running brooks,” he said. But this did not prevent him from appreciating the poetry of Sarojini Naidu or Nehru’s sense of rhythm. Writing about Nehru’s autobiography, M. C. says: “There are passages which are moving for their pathos, for their undertones, for the stillness and sadness and for their simple but rich prose rhythms and this has made the book dear to those who love to have their history served with a personal touch. But it is not poetry, major or minor; it is the stuff of which poetry and life are made that make it both a fairy-tale narration and miniature self-portraits.” M. C.’s models were Swift and Shaw.

M. C. emerged as a biographer late in life. It is a moot point whether M. C., as a biographer, fulfilled the promise of his youth as a painter of miniature portraits in words. It would appear that his long years of toil in daily journalism proved to be both an advantage and a handicap. In his biography of Nehru, the narrative is overburdened with factual information; there is no discernible style. To give an example:

“The months were passing with undertones of passion and excitement. Jawaharlal had his moments of relaxation and serenity and he was sometimes in a reminiscent mood. He watered a plant which he had planted at the Delhi Geological Park. He decried dissensions and often called for vigilance. At Ludhiana he said on July 8, that it was the plight of the Kisans that had drawn him to politics. Gulzarilal Nanda led a nine-man team to inquire into poll reverses. On August 4, he acclaimed the Test Ban Pact, for which he had worked, as a big step towards disarmament.”

To the if’s of history one may add: “If M. C. had not become a journalist...” If M. C. had not lost himself in the “drudgery” of daily journalism, he would have made a mark as a historian. And history in M. C.’s hands would have become, with Clio brooding over him, a literary repast as it happened with W. C. Then, what exactly did I. D. mean when he said that W. C. and M. C. read “dangerously?”