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BOOKS
Past
on Paper
Self-Congratulation
With Perspective
By
Sudeep
Chakravarti
History In
The Making
Ed by Prem Shankar Jha
The Hindustan Times Ltd
Pages: 198
Price: Rs 1,500
Alandmark
is always a time for celebration. An opportunity to say, "Look at
me, I made it", and then have well-wishers pour in with applause,
throw a party as a power statement and launch commemorative products.
At 75, The Hindustan Times (ht) has done the first two. The third began
with a postage stamp last year and has ended just days ago with the content-rich
volume, History in the Making.
Frankly,
I was a bit sceptical when I hefted the lavishly produced volume thinking
I would have to plough through pages of self-congratulatory prose. Thankfully,
the publisher of the volume, ht Editorial Director and Vice-Chairperson
Shobhana Bhartia, and the volume's editor and former ht editor, Prem Shankar
Jha, have wisely chosen to let the fact that The Hindustan Times is Delhi's
largest newspaper with a growing presence countrywide, speak for itself.
Instead, the volume focuses on taking the reader back where it started-the
when, why, and how. On little known stories about how the newspaper was
in fact started by the Akalis, and then sold to Madan Mohan Malviya and
ultimately to Ghanshyam Das Birla. Besides being an already established
entrepreneur and financier, and a confidant of Mohandas Gandhi, Birla
was also a generous financier of ht, in which he bought controlling interest
in 1927. The volume touches on how difficult it was to get news, fight
the mostly British overlordship and covert control of pre-Independence
newspapers in English. It provides a ringside view of history in the making,
as well as fascinating insights into India's legendary newspaper editors
like Durga Das, Sham Lal, Pothan Joseph, Edatata Narayan and cartoonist
Shankar, all of whom had early stints at ht. These, along with images
from ht's gallery, deliberately chosen to give a feel of the relatively
inaccessible 1920s to early '70s rather than the deja vu '80s and '90s,
raise the value of the book from a birthday photo album to a large slice
of 20th century Indian history.
This commemoration
is not about politics, it's a pat on the back with generous bits of perspective.
And it's one the reader can easily share—somewhat different from
getting to know an old lady from Boribunder—and a whole lot fresher.
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