Who are we reading?
Week Two: Indian Express
If you found the TOI’s profit driven approach to journalism disheartening, here’s a newspaper with a truly dramatic, “We stand by the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth” type history. Set in a world where reporters were on the run, haunted by financial worries and hunted by the government, the Express story opens with the Emergency.
Indira Gandhi is in full swing, it’s only been 25 years and India’s democracy isn’t looking too good. Only two newspapers stand up to her: The Statesmen in Kolkata, and Ramnath Goenka’s Indian Express.
When we study in history, about scary governments censoring their press, we are very rarely told how exactly they go about doing so. I for one always assumed that they just send out goondas to beat up and kill every journalist who gets in the way, but while that might be true in some cases, it’s a little too Hollywood/Bollywood for governments who are at least pretending to be a democracy. So how does it work? Well, to begin with they chumma file cases in court against you. Even if they know they won’t win, because court cases take up time and cost money (think Paranjoy Thakurta and the Adani Group).
In Goenka’s case, they threatened investigations into illegal transfer of funds under the pretence of restricting monopolies, they threatened to detain his son, they demanded exorbitant taxes through the Income Tax department, they briefly imposed pre-censorship in order to delay the release and distribution of the newspaper, they withdrew government advertisements and bullied the private sector to do the same, they seized the printing press property on false charges, they froze all newsprint funding from national banks, they even created a supervisory board of editors (K.K. Birla, A.K. Anthony and Kamal Nath) to transfer senior editors like S.M. Mulgaokar out of the country!
But Goenka and his team persisted and despite a hike in the price of their paper, readership increased. Two columns on the front page were left blank everyday in protest against having to pass all their content before a censor board. By 1977 however, Goenka was “at the end of his rope” and had almost given up his paper to Khushwant Singh when the general elections were announced by Kuldip Nayar and he was saved.
While this might make the Indian Express campaign against the Emergency sound like a one man show, there were in fact quite a few others involved. One of these was a man named Arun Shourie. Appointed Executive Editor in 1976, he was given carte blanche and soon grew well known for his “dedication to the truth” and fearless style of writing. Interestingly, by the late 1990’s Shourie flipped over completely into BJP politics, taking a strong pro-RSS stance and leaving his admirers in a fix.
By the 1980’s however, Goenka was at it again.
This time, not anti-establishment but anti-business-tycoon-taking-over-the-Indian-industry-through-corrupt-means-ment. Have you seen the Mani Ratnam movie Guru? The one in which Abhishek Bachchan’s character is based on that of Dhirubhai Ambani? Well, Mithun Chakraborty’s character in the movie is based on Ramnath Goenka. Hiring not his own staff, but S. Gurumurthy for the job, Goenka ran a whole series of exposés against Reliance, revealing their unethical manipulations of the market system. S. Gurumurthy himself was highly opposed to Ambani’s capitalist approach (he became well known later on for his anti-liberalisation stance) and was fervently committed to this campaign. He believed in “traditional Indian economic wisdom” and like Shourie, is now a pro-RSS guy.
It’s important to note that all this took place during one of the biggest wars in Indian industrial history: the war over Polyester. By standing against Ambani therefore, Goenka had chosen to side with Nusli Wadia (the man behind Bombay Dyeing). Ambani won the war.
Before we move on to what happened with the newspaper in its post-Goenka period, let’s take a quick look at what had happened before. While many refer to Goenka as the founder of the Indian Express, it was actually started in 1931 by an Ayurvedic doctor in Chennai. Clearly the ashtachoornam did not sit too well beside the reportage and the paper was soon bought over by Swaminathan Sadanand. Not that it did too well under him either, but I wanted to mention him because he’s the founder of the Free Press Journal. Fun fact: both Bal Thackeray and R.K. Laxman once worked as cartoonist for this journal. An even funnier fact: the former was removed for making fun of South Indians while the latter quit when the editors refused to let him make fun of communists.
Goenka got the paper only in 1935, making it what it is today.
And what is that exactly?
Following Ramnath Goenka’s death in 1991, an out of court settlement split the Express group in two. The Northern half with its seven editions went to Viveck Goenka (adopted grandson of Ramnath) and is known today as…
The Indian Express.
Like the TOI, this newspaper too has multiple editorial positions of Chief Editor, Managing Editor, Executive Editor, just Editor et cetera, but unlike the TOI it clearly differentiates on its website, between the Editorial members and members of the Management. Raj Kamal Jha (chief editor) is the most well known guy on board, nicknamed the “novelist of the newsroom”. He joined in 1996 after having switched from IIT Kharagpur to doing his MA in journalism.
On the management team meanwhile, are brothers Viveck and Anant Goenka and George Verghese.
Meanwhile, the Southern half with its nine editions, went to Manoj Kumar Sonthalia and is called…
The New Indian Express.
Yes, like a New Krishna Bhavan, or a New Ganesh Fresh Juice.
By 2007–2008, TNIE had become a pretty fancy newspaper. With a 40 page, full colour Friday supplement called Indulge for its Chennai and Bangalore editions, it’s also the only national daily to publish news from the Andaman & Nicobar islands every day. It’s Editorial Director is a senior journalist named Prabhu Chawla, who’s known for his explosive scoop of the Jain Commission report following Rajiv Gandhi’s assassination. I don’t know what the difference between his position and that of just ‘Editor’ is, but in 2015 G.S. Vasu was appointed Editor of the daily and now they’re both on the board.
In terms of circulation and readership it’s safe to say that TNIE fared far better than The Indian Express until 2014 when it was pushed out of the top 10 English dailies list. If you look at the Indian Readership Survey and the Review of Press in India in 2012 however, TNIE had a readership of about 6 million while The Indian Express wasn’t even mentioned at all.
Phew*
What an eventful history.
FURTHER READING:
