Journalist versus public man

IT is not always or often that the public in this country is treated to so interesting an intellectual duel as was recently witnessed at a public function in Madras. The occasion was the unveiling at the office of The Hindu of the portrait of its late Editor, Kasturi Ranga Iyengar; the participants in the duel were men of no less eminence and standing in our public life than Mahatma Gandhi and Srinivasa Sastri. The Mahatma, who performed the unveiling ceremony, set the ball rolling by describing what he considered to be the peculiar function of a journalist. Referring to what he believed to be the distinctive characteristic of Iyengar as the Editor, he said: “Those who followed the columns of The Hindu cannot fail to recognise that whenever they saw a change in the editorial policy, it was because with an unerring instinct he recognised which way the country was going or which way the wind was blowing. It may be said that this was a defect in him, but I do not consider it to be so. If he had taken upon himself, as I have, the role of a reformer, then he would have to give expression to his own individual opinion, no matter what the whole country around him thought of it. I think that also is a phase in the country’s life; but that is not the peculiar function of a journalist. A journalist’s peculiar function is to read the mind of the country and to give definite and fearless expression to that mind.” Sastri, who presided on the occasion, dissented both from the general proposition laid down by the Mahatma and from its attempted application to the case of Iyengar.