Power of written word

Gurbachan Jagat

I was in school in Pune when I started reading newspapers. The Free Press Journal came to our home and that is what I read beginning with the sports page and then moving on to others, while missing out on the editorial pages. Then there was Russi Karanjia’s Blitz and again, the last page by KA Abbas (and the picture of some gorgeous model or the other). Those were the glory days of the Non-Aligned Movement and Panchsheel brought to us in great detail by Karanjia’s exclusive interviews with Nehru, Nasser, Tito, Sukarno, etc. It was a time when India punched above its weight and as Arthur Miller famously said, ‘A good newspaper, I suppose, is a nation talking to itself.’ Progressing to college, my exposure to newspapers grew: The Times of India, Hindustan Times, The Indian Express, The Statesman, The Tribune, et al. Alongside, my interest in the editorial and op-ed sections also grew, as it should have with editors like Frank Moraes, Girilal Jain, JJ Irani, S Nihal Singh, Arun Shourie, Kuldip Nayar, S Mulgaonkar and many more. Along with them, there were hordes of distinguished journalists and columnists who dug up stories and offered incisive and candid analyses. They were independent, they were bold, they were men and women of material and moral integrity who were not beholden to anyone for the positions they occupied. This was because they truly represented the voice and will of the people. They spoke for the people to power, they were the medium, they were the media.

In college, I used to enjoy going to the library or the newspaper easel. I liked to buy them (from within a student’s allowance), feel and smell the fresh copy. I occasionally wrote for the college magazines and a letter to the editor once in a while. A thrill used to run up my spine while seeing myself in print. Up to this time, I had no occasion to interact with journalists and was mostly in awe of them. At one stage, I was so enamoured of the profession that I wanted to join it but then fate and family intervened and I joined the Indian Police Service in 1966. In the beginning of my career, I got posted in the districts of Kapurthala, Bathinda, Patiala and Amritsar as Superintendent of Police. I had the opportunity of meeting district-level journalists regularly. They were usually many notches below in calibre to those at Chandigarh or Delhi. One also interacted with politicians of various hues mainly about local news and the law and order situation. Whenever I was posted to a new district, my only request to journalists was that they write their stories but also report our side. This was easier said than done. One journalist summed it up: a story about the police had to be negative to get published and read; an ‘all is well’ story would go directly to the shredder. I met journalists, in fact sought them out. They moved among people and politicians and carried a host of information.

Then came Emergency, which tested everyone in every profession, a time when some cowered and crawled and some stood up tall. Some came up with blank spaces in place of editorials, others got used to publishing handouts of the government. I remember a telling remark of the late Giani Zail Singh when he was the Punjab CM. I was SSP, Patiala, and during one of his visits in 1975, he asked me to accompany him in his car. Lala Jagat Narain was the owner of the Hind Samachar group of newspapers and was detained in a Patiala jail. The CM asked about his health in a sarcastic manner and then remarked that now is the time to enjoy ruling, no more worrying about what such people write. I could see his tension-free demeanour and the truth of the statement. Newspapers were not worth reading during the period except for a column here and there. With the end of Emergency and in the decades following it, there was great political uncertainty and a general decline in public institutions, political parties and bureaucracy, which also affected the profession of journalism. The giants were no longer seen, the shadow of owners was growing longer and that of the government also. Moral and intellectual integrity were degraded in society as a whole, but people still tried to glean some truth from the newspapers. However, gradually, the corporates took over and the editors ceded this space. There were honourable exceptions among professionals and institutions and they still remain. There were some great investigative stories by journalists of repute, carried by newspapers of integrity.

Then came my long innings against militancy in Punjab, beginning in Amritsar and ending in various HQ appointments in Chandigarh. I will take up Amritsar and Chandigarh together. From the beginning to the end, rare was the journalist who wrote the truth or did not publish press notes issued by militants. In my office in Intelligence, there was always a regular flow of journalists and tea. I explained it to my seniors as follows: journalists and Intelligence officers both seek information and based on it both analyse it. Journalists had direct access to certain sources which we did not and they also had sharp, analytical minds. The challenge, however, was to control what you gave away, but receive plenty in return. Besides, I enjoyed talking to them as they have a wicked sense of humour. There were innuendoes against me for entertaining journalists but, these were brushed aside. I must point out that like police personnel, the journalists in Punjab were also exposed to grave threats from the militants and it is a fact that many such brave men and women lost their lives. Such situations of terrorist threat and proxy warfare by a foreign power demand that regular channels of communication between the journalists and governments are kept open to maintain the delicate balance on concerns about security, human rights, civil liberties.

To quote Joseph Conrad, “My task which I am trying to achieve is, by the power of the written word, to make you hear, to make you feel — it is, before all, to make you see. That — and no more, and it is everything.” It is the ability to write that makes us uniquely human. Through the written word, we are able to communicate over time and space. It has helped shape our civilisations, our science, our religions. We learn from the experience of others and this is precisely how a good newspaper talks to a nation and its people. In the modern age, this written word is available to us in real time through our phones but, the writer and the institution which enables him remain the pivot and we restrain and confine them at our own peril. For, in doing so, we bottle up the very freedom and creativity that humans seek to better themselves. The Renaissance with its intellectual movement of ‘Humanism’ is largely credited with the advance of Europe out of the middle ages. It would have been lost without the written word. Newspapers in all their forms (to my generation, it was the exciting crackle of fresh newsprint; to generation Z, it might be the happy ping of phones) are the daily dose of information and knowledge we seek — the ‘windows to the world’. The advancement of civilisation is based on the free flow of this information, now more than ever as we enter the digital age. For, the phone enables institutions and governments to instantly reach out to vast dispersed populations which, in good hands, can lead to great advancements and in the hands of mischievous elements, be an instrument of despair and misdirection. Let us strive to keep our windows open to the fresh air of knowledge and not let our future get shaped by those who through the spread of fear and falsehood would have us close these windows to a winter of despair.

— The writer is ex-chairman of UPSC, former Manipur Governor and served as J&K DGP

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