Power, Press and Politics: Half a Century of Journalism and Politics

By Alok Mehta

How was god-man Chandraswami exposed despite the tantric guru's close association with prominent leaders and media barons?
How did Alok Mehta expose the Fodder Scam in 1990 that eventually led to the arrest of Lalu Prasad Yadav?
How did editors and investigative correspondents reveal murky arms deals, such as the Bofors scandal?
Is 'paid news' the new normal in Indian media? How did this game of corruption start?
What were the political pressures on senior editors like Vinod Mehta and Kuldip Nayar that led to their resignation?

Power, Press and Politics is a groundbreaking, insider account of the workings of the Indian media-both print and electronic, and English, Hindi and regional publications-from acclaimed journalist and Padma Shri awardee Alok Mehta. Deriving from his experience spanning across 50 years, Mehta brings to life these incidents and cases as he had been right in the eye of these storms. Starting his career from a news agency and a Hindi daily, Mehta had worked with leading media houses, such as The Times of India, Hindustan Times, Outlook Group, Dainik Bhaskar and Naidunia, sharing a close association with some of the finest editors and journalists of the country.

Citing various landmark cases and judgements, Mehta throws light on the delicate balance between the media and judiciary, both of which are crucial to the health of our democracy. Having helmed the Editors Guild of India, he has had the privileged access to various significant reports, which have been included in this splendidly researched work. A powerful commentary on the Indian media, this is a must-read for media students, institutions and anyone who wishes to understand the working and challenges of the media.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
• Release date: Apr 28, 2021
• ISBN: 9789389867732

Book preview

In a career spanning five decades and as a witness to the powers of politics, Mr Alok Mehta has had a distinguished career of being one of the most independent editors, political commentators and authors in India. His book Power, Press and Politics is an insider’s view of the challenges and successes of the Indian media. I hope this book creates awareness about ethics in the field of media and to the new generation.

—Kailash Satyarthi

Nobel Peace Prize laureate, 2014

It is difficult to imagine a better moment in the history of media for the publication of this remarkable narrative by Alok Mehta. The questions of media credibility and false news are a focus of attention worldwide, and, above all, in those countries where the media has traditionally played a central role in safeguarding democracy. Indian media, long renowned for their courage, volubility and colour, is confronting its own particular ‘moment of truth’. To read Alok Mehta’s eyewitness account of 50 years as a leading journalist and editor is almost like reading an autobiography of India’s traditional press corps.

One emerges with not only a far better-informed view of the role the press has played in India’s history as an independent country but also with deep insights into the role it has played in the governance of the country. As Mr Mehta relates: ‘An ideal tradition of journalism has been of not succumbing to the pressures of politicians and financial bosses.’ But increasingly, some media seem to exist entirely to promote the aims of politics and business. Understanding the nuts and bolts of editorial independence, including the role of the Editors’ Guild, means to be far better-equipped to fight tomorrow’s battle of media values. We all owe to Alok Mehta a debt of gratitude for sharing with us his years of experience and his wisdom.

—Mark Runacres

Former Deputy High Commissioner to India and India Advisor to the Confederation of British Industry

This big book roars like the Ganges in flood, collecting all sorts of memories, information and documents along the way. Positioned near the centre of India’s complicated media world for 50 years, Alok Mehta lays out what he has learnt as he has worked in both Hindi and English languages and occupied all-India positions that have given him a rare national perspective. Anyone with an interest in Indian media will be entertained, titillated and informed. And anyone studying a specific topic will want to check out Power, Press and Politics for background information, intriguing vignettes and illustrations of Indian media’s weaknesses and strengths.

—Robin Jeffrey Visiting Research Professor, Institute of South Asian Studies, National University of Singapore

Alok Mehta’s book is a rare resource for journalists, media institutes, universities, colleges of journalism and mass communications, media planners, political and social workers, professionals in the business of corporate communications and, above all, common readers to understand realities of the Indian media world. Alok Mehta memoires have honesty, pace, credibility and readability. The perspective and the nuanced maturity that Alok Mehta brings out in various aspects in his book is genuinely a 360-degree perspective. The book is scholarly and experiential at the same time.

—Annurag Batra

Author, TV show host, Angel Investor, Founder, Exchange4media Group and Chairman and Editor-in-Chief, BW Businessworld

As Warren Christopher has said—‘Without a free and independent media, true democracy is unattainable.’

Three pillars of democracy are expressly envisioned by the Constitution of India. The fourth pillar, which is the media or the press, has emerged on its own and assigned to itself the role of acting as watchdog of democracy and its three pillars. The press acts as a bridge between the three pillars of democracy and the people, by providing a medium whereby they can communicate with each other, openly and closely, but maintaining a dignified distance. Media wields a powerful influence on legislature and executive. Even the judiciary is not immune from such influence as can be seen from the Constitutional Courts often taking suo motu cognisance of various public issues highlighted in media. An extensive discussion is ongoing on ‘trial by media’ founded on the apprehension that media reports are prone to influence the judicial decisions, unwittingly and indirectly. Hence, the need for self-restraint and self-regulation on the part of media to safeguard against its likely evil impacts, though not intended and not foreseen.

Shri Alok Mehta is a very senior journalist, a name highly acclaimed in the field of journalism. He is a thinker too, blessed with the faculty of churning the facts and articulating well the cream of ideas. He has authored about 20 books by this time.

The present book touches and deals with almost all the aspects of journalism in a democratic country. He has gone to basics, spinning around the philosophical thoughts and has not hesitated in touching several controversies, intrigues and scandals. He has tried to analyse the interrelationship and interconnectivity of politics with power, not avoiding corruption and criminality which invade politics, and through it the governance. The media exposes several undesirables, though the exposure may not succeed in finding out solution, but such exposure does serve as a preventive and as a valve against explosion. The role of media during the Emergency, exposing god-man Chandraswami’s political clout, political pressures on senior editors like Vinod Mehta and several other such live anecdotes, have given a tickling bone to the book. Shri Alok Mehta’s effort at sticking to the facts and the truth, coupled with his journalistic insight, have given authenticity to the book. Anyone concerned with or interested in learning more about power, press and/or politics would find the book interesting, rather fascinating, and will also add to their knowledge many ideas on the subjects the book deals with.

—Justice R.C. Lahoti

Former Chief Justice of India

POWER, PRESS AND POLITICS

POWER, PRESS AND POLITICS

Half a Century of Journalism and Politics

Alok Mehta

BLOOMSBURY INDIA

Bloomsbury Publishing India Pvt. Ltd

Second Floor, LSC Building No. 4, DDA Complex, Pocket C – 6 & 7,

Vasant Kunj, New Delhi, 110070

BLOOMSBURY, BLOOMSBURY INDIA and the Diana logo are trademarks of Bloomsbury Publishing Plc

First published in India 2021

This edition published 2021

Copyright © Alok Mehta, 2021

Pictures © Alok Mehta, 2021

Photo Selection of Pictures Courtesy Jharna Nagar and Mukesh Kumar

Alok Mehta has asserted his right under the Indian Copyright Act to be identified as the Author of this work

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording or any information storage or retrieval system, without the prior permission in writing from the publishers

This book is solely the responsibility of the author and the publisher has had no role in the creation of the content and does not have responsibility for anything defamatory or libellous or objectionable

Bloomsbury Publishing Plc does not have any control over, or responsibility for, any third-party websites referred to or in this book. All internet addresses given in this book were correct at the time of going to press. The author and publisher regret any inconvenience caused if addresses have changed or sites have ceased to exist, but can accept no responsibility for any such changes

ISBN: PB: 978-9-3898-6771-8; eBook: 9789-3898-6773-2

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To my inspiring editors:

Rajendra Mathur, Manohar Shyam Joshi, Vinod Mehta and Ajit Bhattacharjea

CONTENTS

Foreword by Mammen Mathew

Acknowledgements

1. The Journey from the River to the Sea

2. The Pressures of Politics and Wealth

3. The Mirror of Political Power

4. The Black Chapter of the Emergency

5. Love-Hate Relationships

6. Business Models and Practices

7. Three Decades of Paid News

8. Historical Role of the Editors Guild of India

9. Is the Media losing Its Credibility?

10. Investigative Journalism and Sting Operations

11. New Threats and Trends Versus the Editor

12. Political and Economic Pressures (1960s to 2020s)

13. Attacks on the Media

14. The Media and the Judiciary

Annexure I

Annexure II

Annexure III

About the Author

Photos

FOREWORD

Alok Mehta and the Golden Mean

The world is a fabric we weave daily on the great looms of information, discussions, films, books, gossip, little anecdotes. Today the purview of these looms is enormous—thanks to the internet, almost everyone can take place in the process, taking responsibility and not, lovingly and hatefully, for better and for worse. When this story changes, so does the world. In this sense, the world is made of words.

How we think about the world and—perhaps even more importantly—how we narrate it have a massive significance, therefore. A thing that happens and is not told ceases to exist and perishes. This is a fact well known to not only historians, but also (and perhaps above all) to every stripe of politician and tyrant. He who has and weaves the story is in charge.

Olga Tokarczuk, the 2018 Nobel laureate for Literature, told this to a packed audience at Stockholm on 10 December 2019. She was delivering the eagerly awaited speech while accepting the Nobel.

The Polish novelist and activist is no journalist, and she spoke mostly of the art and craft of writing, particularly fiction. But, I thought the sentence—‘A thing that happens and is not told ceases to exist and perishes’—summarised what we journalists do in this world. We are here to tell the story and not allow a thing that happened to perish.

My long-time friend and co-warrior in many a battle for the cause of the media, Alok Mehta, has realised the role and predicament of the journalist more than many others. That is why he is the most eligible to note that ‘when a soldier suffers an injury, he is immediately provided with treatment, but it is hard to understand editors’ wounds and pains. And, treatment of those pains is even harder’.

‘Editors’ fairness and dignity make them stars, but very few people know their travails and struggles’ is a lesson Alokji learnt from his own experience spread across half a century. And his book, Power, Press and Politics, is an unprecedented exploration in the unfathomed ocean called the Indian media.

Aristotle was no journalist, but I am tempted to recall his theory of the ‘Golden Mean’ to describe the art of a conscientious journalist in balancing his convictions and the public good.

What Aristotle called the ‘Quantum of the Mean’ was the mean of two extremes—the excess side and the deficiency side. He believed that the human imperative was to find a balance between two vices. You could be afraid of everything or you could be fearless. Striking a balance was seen as the philosophical foundation of being morally good.

Practising virtue becomes an exercise in intellectual reasoning in Aristotle’s ‘virtue ethics’. He would want you to find the middle ground. A person can be courageous; at the same time, he recognises the limits imposed.

That the women and men in media are duty-bound to tell what they believe is the truth and gather evidence to back up the truth is a hyper-cliché. The need to balance the public’s right to know and the individual’s right to privacy go parallel to the search for truth. Any journalist worth his mettle, I believe, tries to apply Aristotle’s Quantum of the Mean, unknowingly perhaps, to a scenario that the philosopher never had in his mind.

‘It is wrong to exploit innocent victims, but the public at the same time should get a visual taste of the event’ is a refrain I often hear from the visual-media professionals. In a profession where objectivity is under constant and tremendous pressure from visible and invisible elements, Aristotle’s Golden Mean cannot aspire to be upgraded to the Golden Ratio of Mathematics is a realisation that forms the bottom plate of the edifice that is the Indian press.

The definition of the ‘Golden Ratio in Mathematics’ as a special number found by dividing a line into two parts so that the longer part divided by the smaller part is also equal to the whole length divided by the longer part has always baffled me. For mathematicians, the Golden Ratio is the fundamental constant of nature, present everywhere, from flower petals to DNA molecules. Great art creations such as ‘The Last Supper’ by Leonardo da Vinci have their solid foundations in the Golden Ratio. But, that journalism cannot have such a constant against the harsh realities of the ever-changing world is the empirical realisation we are constantly exposed to.

At the same time, we the media are destined to experiment with, cautiously at times, the molecules of information in the larger interests of our country and its democracy.

Even physicists, from the late John Wheeler to MIT’s Max Tegmark, tell us that it is trivially obvious from the implications of both classical and quantum physics that reality is indeed made up of information. John Wheeler’s declaration that ‘if you haven’t found something strange during the day, it hasn’t been much of a day’ is best entitled to be the motto for a journalist.

Alok Mehta’s book is, in fact, an enormous storehouse of information on the Indian media and its kaleidoscopic interplay with the Indian polity during the last half a century, of which not many days failed to qualify for John Wheeler’s definition.

The task of Alokji in elaborately chronicling the times with all its key players has not been an easy one. We find him struggling to find and maintain the Golden Mean of fairness, meandering through a labyrinth similar to that of Gabriel Garcia Marquez’s Macondo.

I, for one, salute Alokji and envy the photographic memory that enables him to narrate the inside stories of media houses and political parties in great detail. The politics of Indraprastha has always been inseparable from the journalism of the national capital and vice versa and naturally, a whole lot of politicians, journalists and power brokers step in and out of the book with Alokji’s editorial comments. The parade is intensely multilayered but many-splendoured. Alokji laments the decline and fall of the idea of the editor over the years. There have been non-journalistic reasons for the sacking of several editors, including some of the iconic faces of Indian journalism. I don’t think anybody can wish the practice away, terming it a period phenomenon. It was news to me that Vijaypat Singhania wrote a long letter to his editor Vinod Mehta detailing names of the politicians and industrialists against whom no news ought to be carried in the Indian Post. I would still like to read it, and Alokji should have made the names known.

I found several interesting stories in the volume, like how Ramnath Goenka gave a managerial job to Feroze Gandhi in the Express Group. Feroze Gandhi, in spite of being married into the Nehru family and representing the ruling party, didn’t hesitate to raise his voice against the Congress government. He was instrumental in tabling the Insurance (Amendment) Bill in the Parliament to control insurance companies. This resulted in the Dalmia Insurance Company coming under the scanner. He also raised voice against the Mundhra group getting unfair benefits from the government. Alokji narrates how this cornered Finance Minister T.T. Krishnamachari, who was a friend of Ramnath Goenka, into a serious political crisis. It was then natural for Feroze Gandhi to lose his Indian Express job.

And thank you, Alokji, for reminding me that the bill granting immunity to journalists covering parliamentary proceedings was introduced by none other than Feroze Gandhi. It was repealed following the declaration of Emergency, to be thankfully brought back after the censorship days.

I could relive the days of the Emergency through the detailing by Alokji who watched the drama from ringside. We in Kerala were far from the steamrolling of the days; much from the steam too.

As a journalist, I would like to keep in my mind the names of the 27 journalists who signed the resolution on the morning of 28 June 1975, deploring the imposition of censorship following the declaration of Emergency. The names in the order of signatures are N. Mukherjee, R. Bajpai, B.H. Sinha, Raju Nagarajan, A. Mani, Sumi Sridharan, Ashim Chowdhury, V. Raghavan, Anand Vardhan, Virender Kapoor, S.C. Raje, Subhash Kirpekar, A. Rahman, Arvind Ghose, Balbir Punj, V.P. Bhatia, Vijay Kranti, Vedpratap Vaidik, Om Prakash, Prabhash Joshi, U.A. Sumya Prakash, Gopal Sharma, Irfan Khan, Jayant Mehta, S. Bhagnagar and R.D. Gupta.

History has got a habit of forgetting names, and it’s in the fitness of things that this book enshrines all 27. I haven’t come across these names in any other book or on a wall of fame celebrating the freedom of press.

And here is a gem of an observation from my compatriot Shankar Pillai on closing down his historic cartoon magazine Shankar’s Weekly–‘Dictatorship cannot afford laughter, because people may laugh at the dictator and that wouldn’t do.’

Cartoonists could be prophetic.

The narration of the role played by R.K. Karanjia and his Blitz in Indian journalism opened a nostalgic tabloid before me. I was an ardent reader and fan of the Blitz during my Mumbai days when K.A. Abbas’s ‘Last Page’ used to be my first page.

The Indian media should be very thankful to Alok Mehta for going deep into the phenomenon of paid news and its evolution in the country. The historical perspective given is very valuable for those who study the media in our country in the right earnest. The author is so worried over the problem, which is as bad as an epidemic, that he goes into a number of specific cases in great detail.

Alokji served as the president and general secretary of the Editors Guild of India and as a member of the Press Council of India. His wide and varied experience both in print and broadcast gives an unusual tensile strength to his narrative.

Only a few well-known editors of our country have written their autobiographies, and so the struggles that go into the making of an editor largely remain in the realm of the unknown. The history of a country would remain incomplete without the story of how its press fared, how it was muzzled from time to time and how it has survived, often with injuries.

Alok Mehta, in this book, has played the role of a well-informed and well-meaning observer of men and media. And in the bargain, I’m very happy to note, he comes out as an editor of great insights.

Mammen Mathew

Chief Editor

Malayala Manorama

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

I am grateful to the following editors, publishers, senior journalists, the Editors Guild of India, the Press Council of India, the National Union of Journalists (India), the media experts and friends with whom I had the opportunities to interact and interview during my long career as well as for this book: Mr Mammen Mathew, Mr Kailash Satyarthi, Mr Mark Runacres, Mr Robin Jeffrey, Mr S. Nihal Singh, Mr B.G. Verghese, Mr Kuldip Nayar, Mr Ajit Bhattacharjea, Mr S. Sahay, Mr Rajendra Mathur, Mr Manohar Shyam Joshi, Mr Kanhaiya Lal Nandan, Mr Ramesh Chandra, Mr Inder Malhotra, Mr Baleshwar Agarwal, Mr Hiranmay Karlekar, Mr Vinod Mehta, Mr H.K. Dua, Mr Hari Jaisingh, Mr Sachidananda Murthy, Dr Suresh Mehrotra, Ms Coomi Kapoor, Mr Anurag Batra, Mr Man Mohan, Mr Aniruddha Bahal, Ms Ritu Sarin, Mr Saikat Datta, Mr N.K. Singh, Mr Achutanand Mishra, Mr Madhusudan Anand, Ms Meha Mathur, Mr Ranjan Bakshi and Mr Ras Bihari.

I also thank them for their support and approval to use their views or some background information from their books: Editor Unplugged by Vinod Mehta (Penguin Viking, 2014), Beyond the Lines by Kuldip Nayar (Roli Books, 2012), First Draft by B.G. Verghese (Tranquebar Press, 2010), The Emergency by Coomi Kapoor (Penguin Viking, 2015), Ink in My Veins by S. Nihal Singh (Hay House India, 2011).

I am also thankful to Mr Praveen Tiwari, publisher at Bloomsbury Publishing, who persuaded me for almost two years to write and complete this book, and his colleagues Ms Shreya Chakraborti and Mr Nitin Valecha. I want to thank my daughters, Arunima and Astha, and my sons-in-law, Saikot and Shubhankar, who always encouraged me to write my experiences of the last 50 years in the field of journalism.

1

The Journey from the River to the Sea

Editors are great commanders of pen-warriors. Be it an era of the sword, the cannon, the tank, the fighter aircraft or ships or missiles or whatever, the commanders have to keep preparing for the moment to come. They definitely don’t have to be in the fight all the time, yet every day they have to face challenges of ideologies, writing something extraordinary and keeping their teams consistently alert, accurate, restrained, sharp, honest, unbiased and successful. When a soldier suffers an injury, he is immediately provided with treatment, but it is hard to understand an editor’s wounds and pains. And the treatment of these pains is even harder. Millions of people are overwhelmed with the miracles of the pen—they praise and criticise. Editors’ fairness and dignity make them stars, but very few people know of their travails and struggles.

During the years of my journalistic life, I got the opportunity to work closely with editors, publishers, owners of media establishments and politicians from a young age. I was lucky enough to have got opportunities of working with a number of editors, known as some of the best, besides keeping in touch with many senior editors and working as an active office-bearer of the Editor’s Guild of India. I had opportunities to understand the struggles behind their successes. Only a few well-known editors wrote their biographies, but most of them did not get it printed in any newspaper or book. Thus, they didn’t bring to light their struggles. Therefore, I feel it necessary to give a glimpse of the darkness, claws, hardships and hazards lying behind these glittering positions. At every step, one needs to cross a ditch for the nectar urn. Like Shiva, one has to gulp down poison himself. One has to rise after falling down. Even when one’s subconscious feels hurt, he has to write to make the society feel his presence. After having dived deep into the river, he has to come afloat and swim to the shore. There is no end to editors’ races, swims and flights. They remain committed to writing till the last breath.

I neither find it relevant to compare journalism during the Indian Independence Movement with the later period nor is it possible for me. The impact of the Indian-Independence-Movmement journalism continued even after 25 years of Independence. I feel fortunate that from 1970, there were opportunities for me to understand the emergence, struggles and defeats of editors. It will not be unfair to say that it was an age of revolutionary change in journalism. The expectations from editors also changed at every level. I have seen changes in roles. Politics, power, capital, corporate and market demand, expectations of readers in areas, cooperation and opposition from co-workers—I have seen it all.

First of all, I take up the struggles of Rajendra Mathur, one of the best Hindi editors of modern India. He started writing even as a college student and later as English Faculty at Gujarati College in Indore, op-ed pieces for Naidunia, a leading newspaper in Madhya Pradesh. His comments on national and international affairs mesmerised the readers as well as the managers and the editor-in-chief of Naidunia, Rahul Barpute. Therefore, in 1970, while going for an editorial expansion of the newspaper from an 8-page entity to a 12-page one, they made Rajendra Mathur leave his teaching job and join the newspaper as a full-time editor. A few months later, on the basis of a written competition in a workshop, I got an offer to join the editorial department as a sub-editor-reporter instead of a part-time correspondent at Ujjain. At such an early age, there was no question of thinking otherwise in accepting such an attractive proposition. The proposal was all the more attractive as it contained the pride of being the first journalist directly selected by Rajendra Mathur. Regardless of the limited staff in the editorial department, the morning and evening meetings of news and other editorial content were held like in British journalism. In these meetings, there was a lot to be learnt from Rajendra Mathur’s amazing editorial leadership capabilities. In spite of being the junior-most and the youngest, after only a few months, Mathurji asked me to write for the editorial page. He would sometimes assign to me the responsibility of writing an entire feature page or getting a page laid out.

Absolute freedom in the news and writing, but the use of restrained language and being factual continued to add to the reputation of the newspaper. Rajendra Mathur enjoyed a deep bond of friendship with Sharad Joshi and Prabhash Joshi, who had been working in the newspaper even before Mathurji joined as a full-timer. Naidunia was established jointly by Labhchand Chhajlani, Narendra Tiwari and Basantilal Sethia. Rahul Barpute was the editor and had no financial investment in the venture, yet his opinion had no less weight than that of other partners. Abhayji was responsible for the daily coverage and keeping in touch with the circulation and advertising departments. Rajendra Mathur focused his attention on the quality of news and views. Rajendra Mathur and Abhay Chhajlani were of the same age and were loved by all. Being a pro-independence-movement newspaper, the environment there carried a lot of impact on those times. There was a continuation of hot debates on sociopolitical and international issues. Though Rahul Barpute, Rajendra Mathur, Abhay Chhajlani and Narendra Tiwari used to have gross disagreements on many issues, they always came up with a definite common opinion in front of others. The problem started when Rajendra Mathur proposed to take the newspaper out to new territories. The institution had limited capital, but the editorial quality was excellent. I was young, yet I could understand that Rajendra Mathur had the support of Rahul Barpute and Narendra Tiwari.

During the first one-and-a-half years at Naidunia, I learnt so much while working from 10 AM to midnight that my aspirations grew and I started feeling that the national capital, Delhi, would be a better place to work for me. Rajendra Mathur and Abhay Chhajlani explained to me that Delhi is a sea and I might lose my identity. But I thought it necessary to accept the challenge and decided to avail the opportunity of becoming a correspondent for the Hindusthan Samachar news agency. I had Mathurji’s blessings with me; therefore, after three months of probation in September 1971, I didn’t have to return from Delhi to Indore. In the ocean of national journalism, waves drove me this way and that, but I stuck in Delhi and could save my identity.

Coming back to Mathurji, I need to mention that around 1978, the Times Group called Mathurji to join them, but due to some unsuitable terms and conditions, he did not accept this offer. Then, the famous writer and founder of the Times Hindi weekly Dinman, S.H. Vatsyayan ‘Agyeya’, joined as the editor of Navbharat Times. He succeeded in availing the services of the Hindi writer Shani, international radio journalist Gauri Shankar Joshi, Professor Siddheshwar Prasad and so on, yet the management did not give him full freedom to create a better team of journalists for the expansion of the newspaper. I know this fact as he had formally interviewed Ram Sharan Joshi and me, but the management didn’t clear his proposal. At that time, I was working for Saptahik Hindustan. After a few months, I joined Voice of Germany as a Hindi editor and went to Cologne.

In the meantime, in order to retain him, Naidunia, Indore, made Rajendra Mathur its chief editor. Between 1978 and 1982, he was also appointed as a member of the Press Commission and, thus, had more opportunities to have interactions with the senior management of the Times Group as well as other media groups. However, in Naidunia, his desire for expansion of the area of operation kept troubling him. Those who raise the issue of editorial supremacy after the year 1990 or 2000 should also look at the fact that famous editors like Agyeya, Rajendra Mathur, Manohar Shyam Joshi, S. Nihal Singh, Kuldip Nayar, B.G. Verghese and Khushwant Singh also had to deal with managerial constraints and often had to leave those institutions.

In the early months of 1982, managers started preparing for improvements in Navbharat Times. With a view to buying a new printing press, the general manager of the Times Group, Ramesh Chandra, arrived for the Drupa Trade Fair of printing machines in Düsseldorf, Germany. During his visit to Cologne, we met for dinners at my residence. My friend Madhusudan Anand and I were unwilling to stay on in Germany. Like in Indore, I was feeling restless due to limited scope in Cologne. It was during those discussions that the idea of approaching Rajendra Mathur again with an offer of better service conditions came up. Though I had not resigned from the Saptahik Hindustan and could go back there, I consented to join Navbharat Times, provided Rajendra Mathur joined there as the editor.

In July 1982, I returned from Cologne and met Mathurji in Indore. He confessed to me that he was prepared to join Navbharat Times but only after a few months. He advised me to take up the offered job of a political correspondent at Dinman. I did that. When Mathurji joined the Navbharat Times in October, he started publishing my news items, even though I was in Dinman. Naturally, this troubled the old-timers. However, Mathurji had come to rejuvenate the newspaper. He opened all fronts to renovate journalistic patterns. It took almost a year in getting me shifted over to Navbharat Times as a special correspondent. Rajendra Mathur had this particular trait of being unflinchingly fair and sharp in putting forth his opinion in all situations without any impact of the ideology of or relations with the person sitting opposite him. He didn’t hesitate in welcoming chief ministers, union ministers, or Opposition leaders on tea at his office or residence. But at the same time, he did not hesitate to publish authentic news items or writing critical comments against those very people. The leaders and their supporters in the Congress, the Sangh–Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), socialist parties and the communists remained confused about him. They could never decide whether to appreciate or condemn the editor of Navbharat Times. In fact, Rajendra Mathur’s journalism showed a mirror to the system without causing or spreading panic. I recall two–three such instances involving me. The real name of the much-talked-about tantric Chandraswami was Nemichand Jain. He also had some relations with the Jain family of the Times Group and occasionally used to be their guest. Once I wrote an explosive news item highlighting Chandraswami’s political conspiracies. When I submitted the story, the news editor, Parasdas Jain, noticed it.

He ran to me and said, ‘Do you know him?’

I said softly, ‘Yes, I have known him for years—Chandraswami, who cheats politicians.’

The news editor said, ‘Brother, just try to understand—whatever he is, he also stays in the guest house of the owners of this institution. Do you know what will happen on publication of this news?’

I replied calmly again, ‘Let Mathur sahib think over what will happen! Now, please show him the report. If he does not think it right, then he will tear and throw it. I will not mind. I only know my editor. I have nothing to do with Chandraswami or owners.’

The news editor went to Mathurji and spoke about the report and showed him a copy. Mathurji read it and returned with an ‘okay’ tick without making any changes and saying, ‘You please print it!’ Who would dare argue with him? Later, six–seven reports busting Chandraswami appeared in the newspaper. I never knew whether he had to talk to the management on the issue or not. This is an example of his boldness.

The second story is related to the Rashtrapati Bhavan. Giani Zail Singh was the President of India at the time. He had great respect and affection for Hindi editors and journalists. He had a lot of regard for Rajendra Mathur as the editor of Navbharat Times and was a regular reader of the newspaper. It carried Sharad Joshi’s satire column, which made sarcastic remarks on Gianiji, among other political people. I too enjoyed good relations with him, and once, on my request as an office-bearer of the Press Association, Gianiji invited all special correspondents and their spouses for high tea. However, within a couple of years, when terrorism made an upswing in Punjab, I filed a report for Navbharat Times that contained serious information, such as the stay of a person related to terrorist activities in Rashtrapati Bhavan’s guest rooms. Mathurji did not remove even a single