A couple of weeks ago, this newspaper decided to shift the section, “From the Archives”, from the Variety page to the Comment page. Readers liked the move and felt that this, indeed, gave a glimpse into our past and provided an opportunity to view our present without losing the historical perspective. It also helped us realise that though much has changed, some undercurrents remain constant. For instance, the two news items from April 2, 1965, reproduced on April 2, 2015, read as if they are reports of the present. “Pakistan in no mood for talks” is about the competitive dynamics that defined the relationship between India, Pakistan and China over the last half a century. “Rift in world trade union body” reminds us that the political orientation of the member-nations determines the trajectories of any multilateral negotiation.
The query On March 23, 2015, the newspaper reproduced its Editorial of March 24, 1931 on the execution of Bhagat Singh and his colleagues in Lahore on its 84th anniversary. One of the foremost chroniclers of Bhagat Singh’s life, Prof. Chaman Lal, expressed doubts about the date of the Editorial. His contention was that Bhagat Singh, Rajguru and Sukhdev were executed on March 23, 1931 between 7 and 8 p.m. He said that even the Lahore newspaper, The Tribune , could carry the news only in its March 25 issue. “News to papers in Delhi, Calcutta, Madras, etc. is not likely to reach faster than Lahore. Even if it would have been known to The Hindu or other papers, writing an Editorial on the same, which is generally written and finalized in the daytime itself, is not possible under the communication and printing technology of those days. So in all probability, the Editorial could have been written on 24th March, 1931 day time, as news became known by that time and may have been carried in the issue of 25th March, 1931,” he wrote.
He tried to check the archives of The Hindu in Delhi for confirmation, but access to the 1931 issues of The Hindu was not immediately available and hence, he wanted the office of the Readers’ Editor to clarify the dates. His letter drove me to the index and library of The Hindu . I found that the date of the Editorial, “A grave blunder”, was indeed March 24, 1931 and was on page 8. But, I was stumped to see detailed reportage of the executions, performance of last rites, protests, and statements from leaders like Gandhiji, Nehru, Malaviya and Patel on page 9 with the dateline March 24. How did the newspaper manage to carry the statements issued on March 24 in its March 24 edition? Was Prof. Chaman Lal right? Was there a problem in ascribing the dateline in those days?
The answer lies in history The answer lay in the history of the newspaper. The Hindu was launched as a weekly on September 20, 1878. It became a tri-weekly, published on Monday, Wednesday and Friday, from October 1, 1883. On April 1, 1889, it became an evening daily. In 1939, in the immediate aftermath of the Second World War, the newspaper moved to its present premises in Chennai, and became a morning daily on November 7, 1940. In fact, this year marks the 75th anniversary of the newspaper becoming a morning broadsheet. As an evening paper in 1931, it had enough time not only to carry an Editorial but also to look at the multiple strands of events that followed the execution of Bhagat Singh across the Indian subcontinent.
My search, following Prof. Lal’s query, also helped me realise that this newspaper was committed to providing comprehensive coverage of the day’s events to make sense of the prevailing politics and current affairs. Let me look at the coverage of two days — March 23, 1931 and March 24, 1931. A report from the correspondent in Lahore on March 23, gave details of the last petition heard by the Chief Justice of the Punjab High Court as the possibility of the execution was looming large before the Karachi Congress that was slated from March 24, and there was a report from Karachi about doubting the party’s continued participation in the Round Table Conference.
The March 24 issue recorded the fact that the Congress leadership, comprising Gandhi, Nehru, Rajaji, Patel and other members of the Congress Working Committee, was at the New Delhi railway station on the night of March 23 en route to Karachi when the news of the execution reached them. The newspaper also documented the series of futile legal attempts made on March 23 to save the Lahore Conspiracy Case prisoners: filing of a habeas corpus petition and its failure, the next attempt to get leave for appeal to the Privy Council and its rejection, leading to the final move of sending a special leave petition to Viceroy Irwin and the Law Member. There was also a detailed report that recollected the facts of the case starting from the murder of Saunders, ASP, Lahore to the Special Tribunal’s verdict of pronouncing the death sentence.
For me, reading the pages of the 1931 copies of this newspaper provided an insight into the present architecture of the paper, whose foundations were laid many generations before: a credible suturing process of multiple pieces of information to create an integrated narrative that offers trustworthy news, enabling readers to form a perspective.
readerseditor@thehindu.co.in
