Who are we reading?
Week Four: The Hindu
One of the hardest things about researching a story, is deciding how far back to go. When I sat down to begin this series, my plan was to start with online media and trace back to “The First Ever Indian Newspaper” because I thought that would be unconventional and cool. So the first name I typed into the search bar was The Wire. A terrible decision for someone on the lookout for history because The Wire has a rather short one. It was founded in 2015. What’s more, the motive behind its conceptualisation is intrinsically linked to the history of The Hindu which meant of course, that I had to begin by researching The Hindu.
So far we have looked at newspapers that are advertisement driven, industrial-giant driven, politically driven et cetera. Now let us look at the Great Indian family driven newspaper.
In 1877, a man named T. Muthuswamy Iyer became the first Indian to be appointed as a judge to the Madra High Court. His appointment was however, severely criticised by The Native Public Opinion—a newspaper run by Anglo-Indian press and in order to counter this “native opinion”, a group of Indian nationalists—known as the Triplicane Six—created The Hindu. Freedom fighter G. Subramania Iyer was appointed editor in 1878. Now the name Iyer got me excited because I thought I could make a snide reference about The Hindu being a family of Smart Iyer Boys, but unfortunately, G. Subramania Iyer’s legal advisor S. Kasturi Ranga Iyengar took over in 1905. And thus begins the story of Kasturi & Sons.
But before we get there, here’s a quick look at what The Hindu came to be known for in the 20th century. A newspaper with many nicknames, it was often referred to as the “Old Lady of Mount Road”, just as the TOI was called the “Old Lady of Bori Bunder”. And when it wasn’t Old Lady, it was “Maha Vishnu”—a name that grew from its tendency to go into an Ananthasayanam (sleeping posture) at the first sign of controversy. Jawaharlal Nehru once described it as “eminently a paper of the bourgeois, comfortably settled in life” and during the Emergency, when G. Kasturi was editor, it even meekly supported family planning.
How then, did it become a paper that we associate with left-leaning journalism? The answer lies in the late 1980’s.
Enter: N. Ram—great grandson of Kasturi Iyengar, vice-president of the Students’ Federation of India, close friend of P. Chidambaram, cricketer, atheist and an intellectual in favour of good old, Triplicane Six style advocacy. In 1987 when Chitra Subramaniam famously investigated and exposed the Bofors Arms Deal Scandal (that eventually led to the defeat of the Congress in the 1989 general elections), N. Ram worked with her to publish the first in a series about it in The Hindu. This of course, did not quite please his uncle G. Kasturi, who as editor at the time, promptly refused to publish the rest of their articles and dramatically exiled N. Ram to work with Frontline and Sportstar instead.
(Note: their stories were finally published by The Indian Express and The Statesman)
Now The Hindu is based in Tamil Nadu so any history of it without the mention of Jayalalithaa would be an incomplete one. Those of you who have read my series on her will remember the 213 defamation cases she filed, and in 2003 a bunch of those were stacked against The Hindu. Readers too began to complain of its anti-Amma stance. In other words, a space opened up for N. Ram to make his big comeback. And when he did, he promised to be “editorially objective”. In the years that followed however, The Hindu was accused of being Sinophilic in its coverage of China’s advancements in Tibet and pro-Sinhalese in its coverage of the LTTE—N. Ram was awarded the Sri Lanka Rathna in 2005.
(Fun fact: Arthur C. Clarke was awarded the same for his writing after he moved to Sri Lankan to pursue an interest in scuba diving.)
Then in 2009, N. Murali reviewed the status quo from a business point of view and realised the need for fresh perspectives and professionalism rather than continued family hegemony. He suggested that they fix a retirement age at 65, which would have forced N. Ram to retire in 2010 and N. Ravi in 2013. However, in some muddled “I said this, you said that” kind of way, N. Ram refused.
Jump forward to mid 2011.
Siddharth Varadarajan, formerly in charge of the Delhi edition, is appointed editor of The Hindu (under N. Ram who remains editor-in-chief) and becomes the first non-family member on the editorial board. Calling this a move by N. Ram to prevent editorial succession by any other family member, N. Murali, N. Ravi, Malini Parthasarathy and Nirmala Lakshman all resign and a three month legal battle through the Company Law Board ensues. By January 2012, Varadarajan is editor-in-chief and another non-family member Arun Anant is appointed the company’s very first CEO.
(Note: Anant has been on the marketing teams of all three rival newspapers—The Economic Times, The Hindu and then in 2013, The Hindustan Times.)
In 2011 the TOI had launched a massive advertisement campaign against The Hindu, urging Chennai to “Wake Up To The Times”. While some say the drastic changes in the editorial board were inspired by a recognition of the need for professionalism by both N. Murali and N. Ram, others point to this advent of competition into The Hindu’s home turf as the trigger. “Whether the Chennai readers woke up to Times or not, The Hindu certainly did” they said when in 2012, The Hindu launched a counter campaign titled “Stay Ahead Of The Times”.
For a while it looked as though The Hindu was finally getting out of its family-bogged stagnation, but in 2013 N. Ram returned. Yes, we have finally reached the part of the piece where The Wire comes in. Varadarajan was re-designated to contributing editor and Anant was removed from his post of CEO. Both promptly resigned from the company and other editors P. Sainath and Praveen Swami were quick to follow suit. One of the reasons cited for this sudden interference, is the court case filed by Subramaniam Swamy against the company concerning the legality of appointing “foreign citizens” as editors of national newspapers (Varadarajan is an American citizen).
Anyway, the paper returned to the hands of the good old great-grandsons and great-granddaughters of S. Kasturi Ranga Iyengar, with N. Ravi as editor-in-chief and Malini Parthasarathy as the paper’s first ever woman editor.
Although The Hindu still ranks third highest on the Indian Readership Survey, its readership dropped between 2012 and 2013 from 2.1 million to 1.4 million. It picked up a little in 2014, raising to 1.6 million. The surveys for 2015 and 2016 aren’t out yet, but those would be interesting figures to compare because in 2016 (following the release of their Mumbai edition in TOI territory) Malini Parthasarathy resigned and a new editor Mukund Padmanabhan was appointed.
Today, some of people who write for The Hindu include Shiv Vishvanathan, Omar Rashid, Venkatesh Ramakrishnan, Vijaita Singh, Ashwani Kumar, Chinmayi Arun, Ramachandra Guha, Jean Dreze and Amartya Sen.
FURTHER READING:
