The Hindu & me   

Growing up with it

By L.C. Jain

Verdict: Idli level of passion! That was the reaction of some of us gathered in the café of the Delhi University in August 1945 on being shocked to learn from Som Benegal — one of our fellow `Madraasi' students — that The Hindu had reported the dropping of the atom bomb on Hiroshima in just a one column headline, and, that too, on page 5. We recovered soon realising that the shock was not in the headlining of the news but in the dropping of the atom bomb which had wiped out the entire population of Hiroshima and two days later the second bomb on the major Japanese port town of Nagasaki and the U.S. describing the results of the bombing as `excellent'. (Incidentally, a less known fact of the period is that the U.S. pilot, Colonel Paul Tibbits, who dropped the atom bomb on Hiroshima, was later posted in the American Embassy in New Delhi).

Next year in 1946, I came face to face with The Hindu, as the first librarian of the Indian Council of World Affairs (now known as the Sapru House Library). The first few pages of The Hindu were all ads — a cultural shock — having been used to the Delhi papers. Appadorai, who was Secretary-General of ICWA, soothed me explaining that The Hindu regarded big headlines as sensational journalism, even vulgar.

In 1948, I moved as close to The Hindu as one living in Delhi could. B. Shiva Rao was the Special Representative of The Hindu in Delhi. He lived in a spacious bungalow in which he offered me a room courtesy Kamaladevi Chattopadhyaya whom I had joined for rehabilitation of refugees. I found I was living with The Hindu day to day with Shiva Rao ever on the phone to Madras breaking news.

Thanks to Shiva Rao, I saw The Hindu in new light. I learnt two historic facts. One, that The Hindu was born in support of nationalist forces when an Indian Judge was sought to be slighted by a White-owned local paper.

Two, the owner of The Hindu, Kasturi Ranga Iyengar, had offered, in 1919, one of his houses in Madras to Rajaji and also invited Gandhiji to stay there as his guest.

Next I remember The Hindu bringing out an edition from Delhi. It was to splash the Bofors story on the first page. When I landed in South Africa in 1997 as the Indian High Commissioner, I found that The Hindu was the only Indian paper which had a senior correspondent, M.S. Prabhakara, stationed at Cape Town who often enabled me to see developments there in a historic perspective.

Four years ago, I shifted from Delhi to Bangalore. Since then we reach out for The Hindu first from the pack of five dailies, both for news and the editorials. If truth be told, I have not missed Delhi.

(The writer is a former diplomat.)

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Stories in this Section

• An early lesson at a concert
• 'It belongs to all of us'
• Growing up with it
• Those shattering editorials
• The wealth in the archives
• Striking the right note on reform process
• Presentation always fair and full
• Correcting Churchill
• A 'born fighter' and his close ties
• A case of love at forty
• 'I have one grievance'

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