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BY
PAT LOVETT
A TRIBUTE
Mr. Pat Lovett as an individual was
little known outside his circle of friends.
It must, however, be added that his friends
were many, and that he was lavish in his
affections and none too particular, so long
as the recipient could boast of a touch of
amiable and piquant eccentricity in some form
or other. Pat Lovett lived a life in which the
sole criterion of excellence in a man was his
capacity to share a good, hearty " joke " and
the sense of humour, thank God, is found in
such unlooked-for places that Pat Lovett was
at ease more completely in a homely, convivial
environment than in high-brow society. If the
latter did come in at times in the tenor of his
life, the all-essential test must needs be ful-
filled. There was thus this, limit, but no other,
to the range of his friends.
But Mr. Pat Lovett as the 'Ditcher'
in the columns of the Capital was known
universally ; no limitation of any kind
applied to his popularity ; his sway was
acknowledged in all the far-flung provinces of
the country. Week after week, the Capital
2 JOURNALISM IN INDIA
came out with his Diary ; and week after week,
the Diarist's comments sometimes caustic,
uniformly spicy and always penetrating were
broadcasted "throughout the length and
breadth of the land " (as the saying goes) by
a goodly number of the provincial and local
papers. To Mr. Gandhi's weekly observations
in the Young India should be given the pride
of place in regard to the honour of being exten-
sively extracted by other journals ; the Ditcher
assuredly came in second for that honour.
The newspaper-reading public in India are
familiar with the Ditcher, but the vogue of the
" pen-name " was so great, and the repute
attached thereto so dazzling that the Ditcher
eclipsed Pat Lovett. The former appealed to
the heart and impressed the imagination of
hundreds and thousands of readers who scarce
bothered themselves to divine something of
the personality of the man as distinguished
from the writer. It follows then, that, as is
true of every writer of merit, the study of Pat
Lovett emphatically resolves itself into a study
of the Ditcher.
The Ditcher's Diary has been the "star"
feature of the Capital for over fifteen years.
As a good portion thereof is a commentary
TRIBUTE 3
upon passing events, there arises the need
of editing it before publication so as to
preserve all that is of abiding and universal
interest. This task must involve time and
labour ; and the publication of the Ditcher's
Diary in a book-form, which, I hope, will be
undertaken sooner or later rather sooner than
later may not appear for sometime to come,
Meanwhile, however, it has been found pos-
sible to make available in this brochure two
outstanding literary productions of the Ditcher
the first being the lectures on Journalism in
India which he delivered at the invitation of
the Calcutta University, and the second,
An Outsider's Odyssey, which was printed
early in this decade for ''private circulation
only." The plan of Journalism in India is
that it should be a kind of historical survey ;
it would, however, be truer to say that it is at
least as autobiographical as it is biographical
of Indian journalism. By the same token, the
Odyssey was intended to be a kind of personal
reminiscences ; but it would be equally true to
say that it is no less historical than autobio-
graphical. In other words, the dividing line
between personal history and the history of
journalism in these writings is thin indeed,
4 JOURNALISM IN INDIA
and almost imperceptible. The explanation
for this is simple enough. The Ditcher was
less a human personality than an out-and-out
journalist.
"It is only in journalism that the Celtic
Irish achieve distinction, for journalism is pri-
marily a matter of gossip and the Celtic Irish
can talk well" states St. John Irvine in a
monograph on Parnell. This somewhat ribald-
ish ipse dixit applies with great force to the
Ditcher. A good talker, an accomplished
writer, he was also an attentive listener. A
mere talker is also otherwise called a gossip-
monger ; a mere writer can never achieve any-
thing of note ; a mere listener may possibly
suit a bore. But a combination of the three
characters is rare ; and it is such a happy and
harmonious blend that accounts for the uni-
queness of personality which is the source of
the perennial charm and the universal appeal
of the Ditcher's writings.
Above all, the Ditcher typified that broad
humanity and urbane outlook which journal-
ism fosters when professed in the true spirit.
What if another sit beneath the shade
Of the broad elm I planted by the way,
What if another heed the beacon light
TRIBUTE ' 5
I set upon the rock that wrecked my keel,
Have I not done my task and served my kind ?
Be it said, that Pat Lovett did his task, as he
alone could have done it, and served his kind
with all the spontaneous, almost reckless,
generosity he was capable of.
C. S. RANGASWAMI.
JOURNALISM IN INDIA
LECTURE I
Journalism in India, Gentlemen, derives
from journalism in England, and in spite of
faults and shortcomings is a credit to the
parent stock. Patris est fdius, more espe-
cially in maintaining the most cherished
English tradition that it is the duty of the
political journalist to publish his opinions even
at the risk of fine and imprisonment ; there is
also another strong family resemblance in
making the leading article a potent factor in
shaping public opinion. In any historical
sketch of the newspaper Press in India, such as
my lectures must necessarily amount to, this
cardinal fact should inform both narrative and
criticism. True though it be that even the
most widely read newspapers in this country
cannot pretend to anything like the circulation
of the great London or English provincial
papers, it would be silly affectation to pretend
that the influence they wield is inconsiderable,
even in this paradise of bureaucratic authority,
the gates of which are opening slowly and
* First AdAarchandra Mooktrjet Lecture, delivered at the Asutosh
Building, Calcutta University, on Apr! 10. 1926.
10 JOURNALISM IN INDIA
published monograph on Parnell, that "it is
only in journalism that the Celtic Irish achieve
distinction, for journalism is primarily a
matter of gossip and the Celtic Irish can talk
well/' I belong to the race so contemptuously
dismissed, but if I can only justify this partial
and not quite honest ipse dixit in my address
to you, I will forgive St. John Irvine his
Orange bigotry and narrow vision.
In order to illustrate the advance made in
journalism in India in the last forty years I
cannot do better than to sketch its condition
when I enlisted as a private in the ranks. On
15th October, 1883, a date of blessed memory
a capital feast in my life's calendar I
joined The Times of India as an apprentice.
I had no journalistic training or experience
behind me ; so that my only equipment was
a good education, a stout heart, buoyant
youth, and perhaps that flair of the Celtic Irish
to which I have already referred ; but I was
lucky in my choice, for The Times was then,
as now, a leading Anglo-Indian daily, and
maintained a high tradition of literary
achievement of the utmost value to a neophyte
who regarded his profession as a profession
and not as a trade. It was a tradition estab-
JOURNALISM IN INDIA 11
lished by Dr. George Buist, a Scotch scholar
and scientist of eminence, and consolidated by
Colonel Nassau Lees, a famous Orientalist,
whose memory is still green and sweet with the
Moslem literati of Bengal. The latter was
sole proprietor when I joined the staff ; in fact
it was he who recruited me. Although at that
time he had definitely retired from India and
lived in England he still kept a hold on the
policy and conduct of the paper ; to his ex-
ample and bent was due a scholarly elan which
distinguished The Times of India among the
dailies of the country. Henry Curwen was
editor from 1880 to his death in 1892. I was
under his influence during the whole of my
apprenticeship of five years, and as it was
exerted with tutorial directness and solicitude
it powerfully affected my conception of the
whole duty of a journalist. From the start he
impressed on me the futility of literary toil
unless my aim was a complete mastery of my
profession. "Journalism/' he would say, "is a
severe and a jealous mistress, who will not
brook a rival in any shape or form. You must
give to her your days and nights and the best
that is in you. Her reward will not be mate-
rial wealth but the supreme joy of a great duty
12 JOURNALISM IN INDIA
well done/'
Curwen was a poet before he became a
journalist. He was related distantly to
William Wordsworth, the Lake Poet par
excellence. Before coming to> India he pub-
lished under the title of "Sorrow and Song" a
book of sympathetic studies of the literary
struggles of some famous poets. The poetic
imagination never left him in all his years of
practical journalism, but instead of handicap-
ping his progress it assisted his success, for
when he died the paper he still edited and
partly owned was securely founded in a posi-
tion in which it favourably compared with so
important an English provincial paper as The
Manchester Guardian. In the midst of his
editorial and proprietorial turmoil he found
relaxation in the writing of three novels of a
romantic character which appeared week after
week in serial form, adding not a little to the
popularity of the paper.
With all his romance and mysticism, how-
ever, Curwen was true to type in business. He
was a representative of the British Plantation
with very little use for Indian political aspira-
tions. Lord Reay, the advanced Dutchman, who
governed the Bombay Presidency, from 1885
JOURNALISM IN INDIA 13
to 1890, was Curwen's bete noir. The editor
could see nothing good in the Gladstonian
who gave to the Municipal Corporation of the
city of Bombay a liberal constitution which
for long years was the envy of every other city
in India. He concentrated in a farewell leader
the bitterness of soul which for five weary
years had been nursed by the British Planta-
tion against the statesman who was among the
earliest of the foreign satraps to perceive and
admit that, in the famous phrase of Parnell,
it was not possible to put bounds to the march
of a nation, and in accordance with this con-
viction, to give reality to Lord Ripon's solemn
promise of self-government. The Parthian
outburst of sustained vituperation was clever
but dishonest, yet it so accurately interpreted
the feelings of the dominant race that the full
text was cabled to London by Reuter and re-
produced by The Times and other organs of
English opinion. Curwen died less than two
years later without retracting a single article
of the faith so patristically expressed. He left
it to his successor as his last will and testa-
ment. Such is the irony of things that that
successor proved to be Thomas Jewell Bennett
who had hitherto been the right-hand man of
14 JOURNALISM IN INDIA
Grattan Geary, editor and proprietor of The
Bombay Gazette, the gallant champion of
Lord Reay's policy. Curwen had detected
with unerring instinct the Marian strain in the
young man from Bristol, who, before joining
Geary, had won his spurs by leader- writing for
The Standard, the London Conservative organ.
But Lord Reay did not monopolize all the
antipathy of the editor of The Times of India
and the constituency he represented ; a very
large share was reserved for Gladstone after he
had committed himself to the principle of
Home Rule for Ireland. Parnell was a dirty
dog, odious and infamous. I myself got into
sad disgrace on the night that Reuter
announced the results of the General Election
of 1885 at which 86 Irish Nationalists were
returned under the leadership of the Squire of
Avondale, the "Uncrowned King of Ireland/'
I was living at a hotel whose proprietress was
Irish but whose customers were mostly mili-
tary officers and Government officials. I
rushed into the dining-room where the com-
pany was assembled at dinner and proclaimed
the glad tidings. There was an ominous
silence, broken after a few tense moments by
the vicious snarl of a senior Civilian : " You
JOURNALISM IN INDIA 15
want a few more Phoenix Park murders I
suppose." I became a social pariah from that
night out.
Grattan Geary, who owned and edited
The Bombay Gazette, was an Irishman and
a Home Ruler at heart, but he had to be very
circumspect in his comments on the burning-
question of the hour. His tepidity was exas-
perating and it was vain ; it did not save him
from the hatred and malice of European
Society which would not allow him, although
he was President of the Bombay Corporation,
to present the address of welcome to Prince
Albert Victor, Duke of Clarence, at the landing
at the Apollo Bunder, the Gateway of India,
in 1890. He had, it was dishonestly alleged,
shown sympathy with the Fenians, which was
enough to damn him in the eyes of every
British patriot.
There was no Indian-edited English daily
at Bombay in those far off days, but Malabari
published as a weekly The Indian Spectator,
which in excellent English took an Indian
survey of men and matters. His views on
female education among Indians were received
with respect, but in matters of general policy
he did not count for much. Effective journal-
14 JOURNALISM IN INDIA
Grattan Geary, editor and proprietor of The
Bombay Gazette, the gallant champion of
Lord Reay's policy. Curwen had detected
with unerring instinct the Marian strain in the
young man from Bristol, who, before joining
Geary, had won his spurs by leader- writing for
The Standard, the London Conservative organ.
But Lord Reay did not monopolize all the
antipathy of the editor of The Times of India
and the constituency he represented ; a very
large share was reserved for Gladstone after he
had committed himself to the principle of
Home Rule for Ireland. Parnell was a dirty
dog, odious and infamous. I myself got into
sad disgrace on the night that Reuter
announced the results of the General Election
of 1885 at which 86 Irish Nationalists were
returned under the leadership of the Squire of
Avondale, the "Uncrowned King of Ireland/'
I was living at a hotel whose proprietress was
Irish but whose customers were mostly mili-
tary officers and Government officials. I
rushed into the dining-room where the com-
pany was assembled at dinner and proclaimed
the glad tidings. There was an ominous
silence, broken after a few tense moments by
the vicious snarl of a senior Civilian : "You
JOURNALISM IN INDIA 15
want a few more Phoenix Park murders I
suppose/' I became a social pariah from that
night out.
Grattan Geary, who owned and edited
The Bombay Gazette, was an Irishman and
a Home Ruler at heart, but he had to be very
circumspect in his comments on the burning-
question of the hour. His tepidity was exas-
perating and it was vain ; it did not save him
from the hatred and malice of European
Society which would not allow him, although
he was President of the Bombay Corporation,
to present the address of welcome to Prince
Albert Victor, Duke of Clarence, at the landing
at the Apollo Bunder, the Gateway of India,
in 1890. He had, it was dishonestly alleged,
shown sympathy with the Fenians, which was
enough to damn him in the eyes of every
British patriot.
There was no Indian-edited English daily
at Bombay in those far off days, but Malabari
published as a weekly The Indian Spectator,
which in excellent English took an Indian
survey of men and matters. His views on
female education among Indians were received
with respect, but in matters of general policy
he did not count for much. Effective journal-
16 JOURNALISM IN INDIA
ism was practically confined to The Times of
India and The Bombay Gazette until the
Guzeratee dailies, The Bombay Samachar
and the Jame-e-Jamshed, challenged the
monopoly. Their attacks were so insistent
and well-directed that their English rivals
thought it wise to retain Parsee reporters to
translate elegant extracts. In Calcutta and
at Madras Indian journalism employing the
medium of the English language made an
earlier start, and at the time of my narrative
The Hindu Patriot, The Indian Mirror,
The Bengalee and The Hindu had already won
their spurs and become antagonists to be
reckoned with by the Bureaucracy and its
supporters.
After this historical divagation I will,
with your permission, hark back to the
domestic economy of the typical newspaper
which made a real appeal to the general reader
forty years ago. The literary staff of The
Times of India, consisted of an Editor, an
Assistant Editor, a Sub-Editor, a Chief
Reporter (all imported from England), and
four reporters recruited locally, two of whom
were Parsees. The menage of The Bombay
Gazette was similar. I was an extra an
JOURNALISM IN INDIA 17
experiment with no counterpart in the rival
shop. There was a nondescript mob of press-
readers of all sorts and conditions, the same as
we see to-day even in the most elaborately
equipped newspaper offices. The indifference
of the average newspaper proprietor to the
quality of the proof-correctors is a puzzle of
Indian journalism. Any old has-been or
down-at-heels is good enough for the job
provided he has sufficient English to pass
proofs so as to drive the unfortunate sub-
editor to distraction. In most offices, yea even
in this year of grace, the sub-editor is also
the chief reader, and one of his most trying
duties is to make sense out of the " clean
proofs " (save the mark!) served up by half-
educated men whose wages are so lean that
they have to live on the smell of an oil-rag
and thus become the recognized tramps of the
newspaper world. Strange as it may tell to
posterity, the trial of the sub-editor has become
heavier since the introduction of type-setting
machinery.
The average Indian compositor of the Old
Law understood little, in most cases nothing,
of the sense of the copy he was hand-setting,
but he was wonderfully accurate in his combi-
2
18 JOURNALISM IN INDIA
nation of types to print a word he had
deciphered with uncanny wizardy. I have had
a, first proof at three o'clock in the morning,
just before going to press, of copy given to the
compositor half-an-hour before, which con-
tained hardly a mistake, literal or grammati-
cal. It was an extreme case I admit, the
compositor in question being a rare star of the
first magnitude ; but it is no exaggeration that
the general run of Indian compositors, in the
days before the advent of the linotype, formed
a Milky Way of glittering gems before whose
magnificence the lino-operators of to-day pale
their insignificant fires. Few of the old
brigade are left, and soon the species will be as
extinct as the dodo. When I remember how
their talent and conscientiousness made
amends for the incurable vices of the vagrant
readers I regret the passing with a personal
sorrow.
Rotary presses were unknown in India in
the Eighties ; there was therefore less haste in
getting the paper ready for the press but more
leisure to attend to its literary content. When
an outstanding public man made an important
speech late in the evening or after dinner on a
subject that was keenly agitating the public
JOURNALISM IN INDIA 19
mind, the reporters did not spoil the effect by
rushing a garbled summary into the compos-
ing room to be set up for the next morning's
paper; they had the good sense to agree to
print just a short note announcing the delivery
and value of the speech with a promise of a
full report on the following day. The practice
had advantages which to my mind are not
counterbalanced by the modern method in
which fulness and accuracy are often sacrificed
to speed of publication. At any rate the
author of the speech was flattered and the
public who looked up to him for light and
leading was satisfied that the newspapers had
given him a fair chance. Agnosco veteris
vestigia ftainmce. I am sadly conscious that
it were vain to attempt to restore the early
dispensation, but when one compares the
summary of a great debate in the Legislative
Assembly on the Reforms or the Bengal
Ordinance given by his pet daily paper the
morning after the event with the official report
appearing a fortnight later, he is prone to sigh
for the days when editors thought less of what
the Americans expressively call a " hunch/'
and more of a fair deal to all parties in the
disputation.
20 JOURNALISM IN INDIA
During the years of my apprenticeship
the proceedings of the Bombay Corporation
were carefully reported in both English dailies,
specially qualified reporters being put on the
job. They were not hurried ; a 24 hours' delay
in the appearance of their scrip made no
difference to the editor or his clientele ; the
consequence a true and unbiased account of
what had really taken place. By this means
the press materially assisted the municipal
reforms for which the citizens clamoured ;
further it encouraged that high sense of civics
for which Bombay has been distinguished
throughout the ages. Both Curwen and
Grattan Geary exacted from their reporters an
equipment which would, in these degenerate
times, be considered unconscionable for the
wages paid ; and wages were much lower then.
Although the purchasing power of the rupee
was greater in the last quarter of the Nine-
teenth Century than in the first quarter of the
Twentieth, newspapermen in India, forty years
ago, could boast with Sydney Smith that their
motto was : Tenui musam meditamur avena
" We cultivate literature upon a little dal
bhat." Ability to take a verbatim shorthand
note was sine qua non even in the most junior
JOURNALISM IN INDIA 21
member of the staff, and the latest recruit was
allowed six months to qualify. I hated the
mechanical drudgery of shorthand, but there
was no help for it. I had to devote to the
acquirement of a speed equal to the swift
torrential eloquence of Pherozeshah Mehta
laborious days and nights in which I could
have learnt, colloquially at any rate, four of
the chief Indian vernaculars. Public meet-
ings were always well reported in the Bombay
papers in those days, so also cases in the High
Court. In addition to this the papers alter-
nately provided the official reporters of the
proceedings of the Legislative Council. As
any member of the reporting staff might be
called upon at any moment to perform any of
the duties I have enumerated you will easily
understand how essential and logical was the
editorial exaction. I laid the balm to my
tortured soul that I derived much good from
the severe mental discipline, but I can honestly
say that my memory was ever quicker than my
fingers and far more reliable. Soon after my
apprenticeship was over I blossomed into an
editor, and I immediately made a joyous bon-
fire of my shorthand note-books. On the other
hand many a contemporary gloried in his
22 JOURNALISM IN INDIA
manual dexterity to the end of the chapter ;
and who am I to say that his was not the
greater distinction ?
In lines other than verbatim note-taking
reporters were encouraged to specialize.
Politics were above their sphere, and beyond
an editorial note on some law suit or pubilc
meeting they were not expected to ruffle the
tenor of the leader page. That was the
mysterious demesne of the Editor and the
Assistant Editor, helped by regular and
irregular contributors who belonged mostly to
the Indian Education Service, with odd Indian
Civil Servants and Military Officers thrown in.
The idea of an Associated Press had not then
been conceived, so there were many openings
for Special Correspondence, the editors being
liberal in that direction. I was fortunate to
develop a faculty of writing popularly on
sports of all kinds, and in the last three last
years of my connection with The Times of
India I travelled the length and breadth of
the country describing race meetings, pig-
sticks, and polo tournaments, yet these were
not all the ingredients of my olla podrida. The
writer of the article on newspapers in the
eleventh edition of the Encyclopaedia Britan-
JOURNALISM IN INDIA 23
nica mourns the passing from English
journalism of the old-time war correspondents
like William Russell and Archibald Forbes ;
with equal justification I mourn the passing
from Indian journalism of special correspon-
dents like Kipling, Rattray, Arnold Wright,
and most brilliant of all, poor Frank White.
The Associated Press does not, perhaps can
not, make good the deficiency, and the news-
papers have lost in consequence ci lustre
which made them attractive to men of educa-
tion and taste.
I have mentioned the association of the
Indian Education Service with journalism.
At Bombay it was intimate. The Elphinstone
College, the counterpart of the Presidency
College in Calcutta, was the workshop in
which were forged countless leaders that
appeared in The Times of India and The
Bombay Gazette, each of which had its
partisans. Professors Wordsworth and Forrest
affected the conservative organ ; Professors
Kirkham and Oxenham its liberal rival. It is
eternally true that no man of action can be so
consistently and cynically an advocate of
brutalism as your man of letters, and the
writers I have named in no way belied this
24 JOURNALISM IN INDIA
characteristic when their blood was roused to
fulminations ex-cathedra, the splendour of
which dazzled the professional journalist and
left him lamenting his own incompetence. But
on the whole this " Educational " connection
was to the good ; it imparted to the columns
given to the guidance of public opinion a
literary excellence and a sense of history and
logic which are certainly not salient qualities
of the commercialized journalism of to-day.
We used to race for sport in the Eighties and
early Nineties ; the horses were our pride and
skilful horsemanship our consuming desire
They race for big stakes nowadays and the
horses are mere pawns in a corrupt and debas-
ing gambling game. Commercialization
again ! It has entered every department of
life. Journalism in India could no more resist
the invasion than journalism in England or
elsewhere in the British Empire, for it had to
be recognized that the modern newspaper
depended for its financial success primarily
upon its receipts from advertisements ; and
blatant puffing, however crude in expression,
is dearer to the advertiser's heart than grace
of style.
The first signal triumph of the Indian
JOURNALISM IN INDIA 25
National Congress was the Indian Councils
Act of 1892, the first election under which was
held in the following year. This Act en-
franchised some recognized public bodies and
constituencies, and gave the members of the
Supreme and Local Legislative Councils the
right to put questions to Government on
matters of administration ; also the right to
discuss the annual budget. It is significant
of the slow and toilsome march of democracy
in India that no advance on this restricted
measure of Home Rule was made until the
Minto-Morley Reforms came into force fifteen
years after. But such as it was the Lansdowne
Act was a white stone in the progress of
journalism which has since proceeded part
passu with the expansion of political freedom.
The debates in the central legislature acquired
a new zest for the leading newspapers of India
which had consequently to be enlarged and
produced at a heavier cost. The day of the
modern manager had dawned and he has never
looked back. In a great newspaper, published
not a thousand miles from College Square, the
actual concrete manager is a far bigger man
than the misty editor in his many and
embarrassing manifestations. Until nearly
26 JOURNALISM IN INDIA
the last year of the Nineteenth Century the
editor was supreme, but now, when editorial
possibilities depend on financial resources, the
manager who owes allegiance to the advertisers
is apt to call the tune. Like the rest of us I
have had to move with the times and bow the
knee to Mammon ; nevertheless I look back
with pride to the days of my apprenticeship
when our inspiration and incentive sprang
from the thought so beautifully expressed by
Rudyard Kipling :
When only the Master shall praise us, and only the
Master shall blame ;
And no one shall work for money, and no one shall work
for fame;
But each for the joy of working, and each, in his
separate star,
Shall draw the Thing as he sees it, for the God of Things
as They Are.
The Lansdowne Act, you will allow me to
so call it for the sake of brevity, fundamentally
affected the Indian-edited Press by a decom-
position of primitive ideas and caused a clearer
appreciation of values not only among Indian
publicists but among their critics also, more
especially the Bureaucracy which had now to
"sit up and take notice/' as the common
phrase goes. A Press Act of the Lytton
JOURNALISM IN INDIA 27
pattern was no longer feasible, and the right
of interpellation by members of the Legislative
Councils encouraged Indian editors openly to
assume the mantle of Elijah and whip with
scorpions a Government whose policy they
denounced as unsympathetic and coercive.
I had to wait until 1897, when I finally
migrated from Bombay to Calcutta for keeps,
to get into intimate touch with Indian journa-
lists who employed the English language as
the vehicle of aspiration and polemic. Bombay
sported no important daily edited by an Indian
in the national interest. Soon after the birth
of the Congress, Pherozeshah Mehta, Thomas
Blaney and other liberal-minded citizens
assisted the foundation of an evening paper
called The Advocate of India, which pro-
mised to become the organ of the Congress
party, a promise never fulfilled for reasons it
is unnecessary to enumerate at this distance of
time. At the instance of Jehanghir Murzban,
who had become its sole proprietor, I took the
editorship in 1892. Its fortunes were at the
lowest ebb, and as an organ of political opinion
it counted for nothing. The only one of the
original promoters who took any interest in it
was Thomas Blaney who wrote unceasingly on
2S JOURNALISM IN INDIA
municipal affairs, reproducing and emphasiz-
ing the ipse dixits he had already let off at the
two weekly meetings of the Bombay Corpora-
tion of which he was a prominent and
influential member. His views on hygiene,
water-supply, and civism generally were sound,
and such were his services to the city that a
grateful community after his death com-
memorated him by a statue erected in front of
the municipal buildings. He could write good
plain terse Anglo-Saxon, but his knowledge of
polite literature was sadly to seek, and for this
ignorance I was more than once the butt of a
rival's satire. I had a small and limited staff :
myself, and two reporters who covered the
police and the law courts. It was difficult in
the circumstances to be meticulous in the
work of redaction. The humour of the situa-
tion was thrilling when, as on one occasion, I
rescued my poor repute from the very brink of
precipice. Communal riots had broken out
between Hindus and Muhammadans, and as
there had been much bloodshed the city was
placed under martial law. The opportunity
for an evening paper to snatch a scoop was too
good to be lost ; so for the nonce I deserted the
editorial sanctum (spare the pieces !) for re-
JOURNALISM IN INDIA 29
porting adventure, leaving the busy proprietor,
who had other things to think about and
manage, to send in the leaders for the day. I
got back from the stricken field somewhat late
one afternoon to find that the leader page had
been set up and was waiting only for the press
order. Having been through some stirring
scenes during the day I was in a fine frenzy to
rush my impressions into copy, but thank my
lucky stars I controlled my impatience to
glance through the first leader in which
Blaney made a scornful attack on The
Pioneer for daring to sneer at his beloved
Corporation. The Pi had the impudence
to say that a certain debate, in which Blaney
took part, reminded it of the famous colloquy
in which Sir Toby Belch and Sir Andrew
Aguecheek participated to the mirth of all the
world for all time. "Who cares a hang,"
exclaimed the irate Blaney, "for the opinions
of two obscure knights, probably ap-ke-waste
wallahs who got their titles for sitting on the
steps of Government House/' This sort of
thing was hilariously exciting but it was not
business, and soon Blaney ceased to write for
The Advocate owing, he averred, to my
professional jealousy which prompted me
30 JOURNALISM IN INDIA
either to reject his articles or to make a hash of
them. I was sorry to lose his co-operation,
and I have no doubt many missed his preach-
ments on the ideals of civism ; but then as
now, to adapt the famous apothegm of
Gladstone, the Press in India was the privilege
of the educated classes, not the patrimony of
the people, and an editor who valued the
reputation of his paper had to be careful of the
character of its literary contents.
To popularize The Advocate of India
and increase its circulation, which was
decidedly tenuous, I made a strong feature of
sport, and as the town had gone nearly mad
over cricket, especially over the international
matches between the Europeans and the
Parsees, my brain-wave carried me on its crest
to unexpected success. On the other hand, I
catered for the more intellectual of my readers
by writing twice a week a humorous skit on
the meetings of the Corporation ; but haute
politique I neglected almost entirely. The
National Congress doctrines had no direct
representation in the daily papers of Bombay
which were printed in English ; Indian
national aspirations, however, were lucidly
expounded and trenchantly defended by
JOURNALISM IN INDIA 31
Dinshaw Wacha in the English section of the
Guzeratee weekly, Kaiser-i-Hind. The Indian
Spectator was a law unto itself. Malabari was
amenable to no discipline but that self-imposed,
and he was utterly contemptuous of a party
badge.
When I came to Calcutta in the fall of
1897 to join The Indian Daily News of
happy memory, I discovered a hive of news-
paper industry of the existence of which I had
hitherto been ignorant. Not only were news-
papers more numerous than at Bombay, but
the field covered was far more extensive.
Both Anglo-Indian and Indian interests were
fittingly represented, and there was a strong
weekly Press, social, political, and technical,
such as did not exist in any other town in
India. The Englishman was admittedly
the leading Anglo-Indian paper with probably
the largest, but certainly " the most influen-
tial" circulation in Bengal. It sturdily
proclaimed without reservation the sentiments
of the Europeans to whom Lord Ripon was the
Devil incarnate. Its style was downright
what the poet Blake might have called " naked
beauty displayed " exactly what its clientele
demanded. It was still in the sole possession
32 JOURNALISM IN INDIA
of the Saunders family, and the most able of
the "J.O.B.'s" rode in the whirlwind and
directed the storm. His editor, Macdonald,
was a man after his own heart. The
Englishman was the first newspaper in
Calcutta to instal linotypes in the printing
room, but never at any time did its technique
approach that of its formidable rival, The
Statesman, which owes its admirable order
and array to its founder, Robert Knight, who
was also responsible for that other inspiration
of genius, the Sunday issue with its wealth of
" Special Shorts/' In those days the Chow-
ringhee oracle was the direct antithesis of the
Hare Street thunderer ; it fostered Indian
political aspirations with Non-conformist
conscientiousness and tentation, but when
S. K. Ratcliffe, the Fabian, was installed in
the editorial caserne, it became more Indian
than the Indian papers themselves. This
Augustan age lasted for three years, begin-
ning with the Curzonian Durbar which was
held at Delhi ostensibly to commemorate the
accession of Edward the Seventh to the
Imperial gadi. Ratcliffe was a slashing
leader-writer, bursting with all that pomp and
gallantry of a journalism which arrogates to
JOURNALISM IN INDIA 33
itself the right to govern the world. Many
people who did not agree with him liked to read
him : but furtively and shamefacedly. He left
India in 1906, and in 1911 the paper he edited
so ably in the Indian cause performed a
complete volte face. After that, in the hands
of J. A. Jones, the most uncompromising of
Anglo-Indians, it became the most widely
circulated paper in the whole of India, and the
best advertising medium. Jones was one of
the seven omniscient British journalists who
in 1907 signed a letter which appeared in a
prominent place in The Times (London),
in which they scorned the gross insinuation
that there was anarchism or revolution in
Bengal in consequence of the Partition ; but
like the other signatories he had been
hypnotized by Ratcliffe, the author of the
effusion ; as soon as the personal magnetism
of the Fabian was withdrawn Jones returned
to the normal mentality of a countryman and
disciple of Lloyd George of " Steel Frame "
renown. But all the glory of the change in
the fortunes of The Statesman did not
appertain to Jones ; a very substantial share
belonged to H. E. Watson, a capable Manager
of the modern type. He was imported to
34 JOURNALISM IN INDIA
control a big rotary press and its concomitants,
chief of which was a page of illustrations after
the style of the big London dailies. He
exploited the advertisers with fearless con-
fidence and advanced the rates to a figure that
made them gasp but yield. The Statesman
is now a very valuable property. According to
the ideas of the proprietors themselves its
market value is a crore of rupees. You may
legitimately deduct 50 per cent, for swelled
head, but even then you get a price extra-
ordinary for a newspaper in India which has
little or no job-work to support it. The
Times of India and The Pioneer possess
lucrative job presses, and the former has
struck oil with The Times of India Illustrated
Weekly, the fruitful idea of Coleman who
came to Bombay from The Times (London) ;
still the magnates of Chowringhee very
recently declined to join a newspaper combine
in India unless it was given a 75 per cent,
superiority over the other partners in the deal.
Had The Statesman remained for all time "The
Friend of India" of its founder's imagination
and Paikpara's hope, it would not have climbed
to the eminence of which it is so justly proud.
This truism suggests the melancholy reflection
JOURNALISM IN INDIA 35
that the Indian intelligentsia do not adequately
support the papers which
national cause. To so
zation I must put in a caveat
Madras where The Hindu, which
impress of the genius of
has the biggest circulation an
influence, having left the Anglo
Mail lumbering far in the rear.
'
its proud and comfortable position that
Bengalee to which Surendra Nath Banerjea
gave his best years and his most glittering
talents. Then weep ye sons and daughters of
Bengal.
To hark back to 1897, The Indian Daily
..News, then practically owned and actually
dominated by David Yule, held a position
midway between the ultra Conservative
Englishman and the tentatively Radical
Statesman. It gave much space to commer-
cial news and was well thought of in Olive
Street. Its political views were liberal. In
the description and criticism of sports of all
kinds it easily outstripped its rivals. It might
have become the most popular paper in
Calcutta if Yule had not refused working
finance just when the prospect was roseate. It
36 JOURNALISM IN INDIA
then passed into the possession of William
Graham, a clever lawyer with a ready and
sarcastic pen, and held its own under the
editorship first of Everard Digby and second of
K. K. Sen, until it was purchased by C. R. Das
and absorbed by Forward, the Swarajist
defender of the people's rights. Just before
the An ti- Partition, Fraser Blair, for some time
editor of The Englishman, added an evening
paper to Calcutta journalism. The start was
brilliant but staying power was lacking. Its
founder and editor is now on the staff of The
Statesman, and although it has been twice re-
incarnated it presents the tawdry appearance
of a has-been who is constantly missing the bus.
The weekly Press is a distinguishing
feature of Anglo-Indian journalism in Calcutta,
for nothing approaching its distinction and
power exists in any other city of India. In
1888 Shirley Tremearne, business-man who was
also a practical lawyer and an industrious
writer to the Press, founded Capital, a weekly
journal of commerce and finance. He gave it
form and temperament with such shrewd
insight that it jumped at once into the front
rank where it stands four-square to all the
winds that blow. Much about the same time
JOURNALISM IN INDIA 37
Pat Doyle, a Civil Engineer, started Indian
Engineering which, during his life time, was a
scientific publication of great merit. It will
interest you to know that Asutosh Mukerjea,
before he became world-famous as an educa-
tionist, contributed to its columns articles on
the higher Mathematics which attracted the
notice and received the approbation of scholars
in Europe and America. The light of other
days has faded and all its glory gone ! Indian
Engineering still lingers, a ghost of its former
self, but the profession prefers the guidance of
The Eastern Engineer in all technical matters.
The big war of 1914-18 gave the quietus to
two weeklies of old standing which we could ill
afford to lose. These were The Asian, a purely
sporting paper, and The Indian Planters'
Gazette, familiarly known as The Pig which
added a sporting supplement to its budget of
planting and general news. The Asian was the
creation of an Australian journalist named
Targett, the first in India to realize the now
generally accepted canon that advertisements
must pay the whole cost of a paper and more, if
financial success is to be achieved. In the last
quarter of the Nineteenth Century sport was a
consuming interest of the European Plantation ;
38 JOURNALISM IN INDIA
naturally The Asian became an imperial
authority and was read everywhere. The Pig
catered for a more restricted congregation with
a debonair virility which was always a refresh-
ment.
In 1904, I was offered and accepted the
editorship of The Indian Planters' Gazette,
and finally broke away from daily journalism
to which I had given twenty-one of the best
years of my life. It was a wrench for I had
been very happy battling in the storm and
stress for a place in the sun. A journalist's
portion was not all beer and skittles in that
time ; for one thing he was generally considered
" no class " by European High Society. I recall
a lurid illustration of this snobbery in a hotel
in Madras in 1889. Rudyard Kipling's inimit-
able letters, "From Sea To Sea" were appearing
in The Pioneer, and one night at dinner they
became the theme of discussion. An R. A.
Colonel, who held the post of Inspector-General
of Ordnance, was sitting at the head of the
table and was obviously bored. At long last he
chipped in with a question addressed to the
company at large : " Have you met any of these
writing fellows in the flesh ? They are the
most awful bounders imaginable, and I am
JOURNALISM IN INDIA 39
sure this chap Kipling is no exception." I
felt moved to protest and disclose my profes-
sion, but I recollected in time the classical
story of Rabelais and the Pope. If Kipling,
the pride of The Pioneer, was treated with
such disparagement by a bureaucratic high
priest, what would be the fate of an obscure
freelance like myself who professed an un-
popular religion and was an Irish Nationalist to
boot ? There was a time, not so very long ago,
when a Civil Servant, who acted as the Census
Commissioner, in his official report, bracketed
journalists with soothsayers and circumcisers ;
that was the exact measure of the esteem in
which the average journalist was held by the
Higher Bureaucracy. Recently there has been
a change in the attitude from contempt and
suspicion to respect and appreciation, not
because the profession has attracted men of
greater culture and respectability than for-
merly, but simply because the foundations of
bureaucratic arrogance and prejudice have
been sapped by the democratic tide which is
slowly but surely flooding the country. Since
the War we have seen journalists, European and
Indian, knighted for their services to the State
and to the public ; we have also seen Indian
40 JOURNALISM IN INDIA
journalists appointed Ministers of the Govern-
ment, and what is more, they have been
justified by their works. This triumph over
the powers of darkness is something to be proud
of and to be thankful for, but you will forgive a
scarred veteran for saying that the waiting time
was the hardest time of all. Yet believe me,
Gentlemen, the broad humanity which journa-
lism fosters when professed in the true spirit
enables me with all sincerity to end my first
lecture with the sentiment enshrined in some
favourite lines of Oliver Wendell Holmes :
What if another sit beneath the shade
Of the broad elm 1 planted by the way,
What if another heed the beacon light
I set upon the rock that wrecked my keel,
Have I not done my task and served my kind ?
PAT LOVETT.
JOURNALISM IN INDIA
LECTURE II
In my first lecture I attempted to trace the
influence of The Indian National Congress on
the development of journalism in this country ;
in this lecture the World War and its conse-
quences will form the staple of my evolutionary
theme ; but before spinning the texture of
another chapter in the history of progress
what Herbert Spencer would i*ave called
another stage in "the passage from un-
organized simplicity to organized complexity "
it is meet to hark back to an event arising
out of the Anti-Partition agitation which can
justly be claimed as a triumph for Indian
journalism. The arm and burgonet of that
campaign against bureaucratic reaction was
the editor of The Bengalee, the late Sir
Surendra Nath Banerjea, who organized public
opinion with a skill as rare as it was efficient.
The Minto-Morley Reforms may not have been
the absolute consequence of the passionate
revolt against the Partition of Bengal, yet it is
undeniable that the upheaval caused by Lord
Curzon's obduracy and Sir Bamfylde Fuller's
42 JOURNALISM IN INDIA
superciliousness hastened the gift of demo-
cratic pottage, which, though meagre in all the
essentials of representative government, still
gave promise of a more substantial measure by
acknowledging the right of Indians to the entry
into the hitherto sacrosanct Councils of the
Viceroy and the Secretary of State for India.
Two years later the Partition, Lord Morley's
"Settled Fact/' was annulled by King George V
himself at the Royal Durbar at Delhi, and
Eastern and Western Bengal were reunited to
form one presidency under a Governor in
Council. It was a famous victory won at great
cost, for Calcutta was dethroned from her long
metropolitan ascendancy among the cities of
British India, in order that Delhi might
become the official capital of the Government of
India. It looked like bureaucratic revenge for
the failure of coercion of the worst type to
muzzle the Press and intimidate Indian
Nationalism. The Indian Press of Bengal bore
the brunt of the battle with dauntless courage.
" The first in glory, as the first in place/'
It was in these boisterous years that the
Associated Press of India was born, and as it
has revolutionized the news half of journalism
in India a short sketch of its origin and growth
JOURNALISM IN INDIA 4S
is essential to my thesis. In the old days, before
the Curzon Durbar in 1903, the three English
owned dailies of Calcutta maintained Special
Correspondents at the headquarters of the
Government, their busiest time being when
those headquarters were at Simla. This was a
tactic of self-defence against the monopoly of
The Pioneer, then to all intents and purposes
the official organ. It was served by a capable
journalist, Howard Hensman, who was persona
grata to all the deii majores, civil and military.
Hence it came about that the front page of
'The Pi' was practically an official gazette the
contents of which were pirated and broad-
casted on publication. At Simla The English-
ynan was represented by Mr. A. J. Buck ; The
Statesman by Mr. Everard Coates, and The
Indian Daily News by Mr. Dallas who depended
for tit-bits from the departmental arcana on
his Bengalee assistant, Mr. K. C. Roy, the
cleverest news-ferret and "Scoopist" Indian
journalism has produced. He is much more
now, but that is another matter. Single-
handed none of these pickers-up of un-
considered trifles was a match for Hensman ; &o
it occurred to them to pool their resources to
prevail against the common foe. Buck and
44 JOURNALISM IN INDIA
Coates were the first directors of the Associated
Press with Roy, a kind of maid-of -all-work.
When the news agencies were organized in all
the important cities in India, Roy demanded a
directorship which was refused ; he promptly
cut away from the old moorings and started
on his own with his faithful henchman, U. N.
Sen. The Associated Press could not with-
stand the opposition of the Press Bureau and
the directors capitulated on the conditions
imposed by Roy who, they had to acknowledge,
was the mainspring of the comprehensive
machine. Later on Coates was bought out by
Reuter, and now the foreign and domestic in-
telligence published by all the "live" dailies is
supplied by the same agency which also enjoys
a certain amount of State patronage and
support. Recently a diminutive Richmond
has appeared in the field to challenge its title.
He flaunts a banner with the bold device,
" Free Press." His success depends upon the
support he can get from the Indian Nationalist
papers which are more numerous than those
English-owned, but not so wealthy. He is
making a brave struggle against tremendous
odds and if only as a corrective of the growing
officialism of the older agency deserves to
JOURNALISM IN INDIA 45
succeed. The Associated Press has destroyed
the old monopoly of The Pioneer, but at the
same time it has smothered original enterprise
and adventure in news-getting both at Home
and abroad. The rates for Press telegrams and
cables are still so high that even the most
widely circulated papers are capable of no more
than merely spasmodic efforts to supplement
the service of the general intelligencer, which
on the whole deserves our applause for ' a brave
office set up to enter all the news of the time
and vent it as occasion serves/ Its story might
appropriately borrow for its caption the title of
Ben Jonson's merry comedy The Staple of
News. From this bare outline it is not hard to
appraise the influence of Mr. K. C. Roy in the
development of the modern newspaper in
India. He has never been an editor, nor, in
spite of the important part he has taken in
politics since the Montagu Reforms came into
action, has he been a political writer of emi-
nence ; nevertheless his instinct, it would be no
exaggeration to call it genius, for the staple of
news has proved a more potent factor in bring-
ing Indian journalism up-to-date according to
Western notions than any editor in the last
forty years.
46 JOURNALISM IN INDIA
Another event which calls for more than a
passing word before I come to the World War
was the foundation by Sir Pherozeshah Mehta
of The Bombay Chronicle in 1913, with
Mr. Benjamin Horniman, late of The States-
man, as editor. Sir Pherozeshah's original
intention was to purchase The Bombay Gazette
to counteract the sinister influence of The
Times of India, which, during the editorship of
Lovat Fraser, had assisted Mr. Harrison,
I.C.S., Accountant-General of Bombay to
manoeuvre a caucus to hurl him from his gadi
in the Municipal Corporation of whose liberal
constitution he was the real author. He was
frustrated by Sir Frank Beaman, one of the
directors of The Bombay Gazette, who still
lives to oppose with a vehement pen the aspira-
tions of Indian Nationalists. Undaunted bv
./
the rebuff, Mehta set to work to collect funds to
start a brand new daily paper, which, after the
fashion of Minerva, should issue from Jove's
head fully equipped. When I met him at the
Royal Durbar at Delhi in December, 1911, he
told me that he had at last obtained the where-
withal and asked me to get him a manager
whom he could send to London to purchase
machinery. I did not know then that it was
JOURNALISM IN INDIA 47
his intention to offer me the editorship ; he
seems to have taken it for granted that I would
come at his call whenever it was made, a far
from unreasonable presumption considering
how closely he and I had been connected during
my career in Bombay. In the absence of a
direct offer I fixed up, on my return to Calcutta
from Delhi, with the proprietor of (Capital, the
late Mr. Shirley Tremearne, who appointed me
editor, a position I still hold. In March, 1912,
came Sir Pherozeshah's call which alas I had to
refuse. He was deeply hurt, for he never wrote
to me again, and he died before I could see
him and explain. I have not ceased to regret
this sad ending of a friendship of thirty years.
We were both the victims of those cross pur-
poses which the spiteful Fates are so fond of
contriving to plague poor mortals. Under the
guidance of Sir Pherozeshah Mehta, Horniman,
accomplished journalist, made The Bombay
Chronicle a power in the land. When the guid-
ance and restraint of the wise and moderate
Gamaliel were withdrawn, Horniman's
impetuous politics brought him into conflict
with the Government of Bombay which went to
the extreme of deporting him in April, 1919.
The Fourth Estate gasped, but refrained from
48 JOURNALISM IN INDIA
active agitation against the tyranny. Horni-
man's friends in the Legislative Assembly
more than once attempted to force his recall
from banishment, but the Government was
inexorable. Some months since the exile
defied the powers of darkness by returning
without leave. The Government took no notice
in spite of public ovations at Madras and
Bombay. " The Public Danger " of seven years
agone was treated like an extinct volcano,
which was worldly wise.
The Horniman episode is a painful
reminder of the peril of the journalist in India
who dares to be outspoken in his criticism of
the Government, but candour compels the
admission that there is far more liberty allowed
to the British-edited newspapers than to those
edited and owned by Indian Nationalists. If
Mr. Horniman had remained a member of The
Statesman's staff it is highly improbable that
he would ever have been an object of the
tender attentions of the Police. He was the
reputed author of the articles headed
"Hardinge must go" which appeared in The
Statesman when the capital was changed from
Calcutta to Delhi. They were "hot stuff," bu
nothing happened to the paper in consequence
JOURNALISM IN INDIA 49
As the editor of an Indian-owned paper which
propagated an extreme nationalism he was,
from the official point of view, in a different
position entirely. The Indian Press has
always been and is to-day, what the late Sir
Surendra Nath Banerjea called, a "great instru-
ment of propagandism ;" hence the vigilant
antipathy of the Bureaucracy in marked
contrast to the tolerance shown to the British-
edited section. Professor Rushbrook Williams
in India in 1919 indicates the reason for this
difference when he writes, "Now, as a rule, if at
any given moment the administration of India
is seriously attacked in the Indian-edited
Press, it can rely upon a certain measure of
support from the English-edited Press." This
is putting it very mildly, for the order to-day is
that if an administrative measure is attacked
by the Indian-edited Press it is the duty of the
British-edited Press to defend it with all its
ordnance. In the Dictionary of National
Biography it is recorded of Lord Metcalfe that
his greatest service to India, in his short ad-
ministration of a year as acting Governor-
General, was the Act of 15th September, 1835,
which removed the vexatious restrictions on
the liberty of the Indian Press. It would fill a
50 JOURNALISM IN INDIA
bulky tome simply to enumerate the measures
taken by many of his successors to undo the
noble work of that "able and sagacious
administrator, of unimpeachable integrity and
untiring industry/' Only the other day the
Government of India forged a new instrument
of torture which even The Statesman could not
approve, and forced the compliance of the
Legislative Assembly by a strangle-hold. In
Calcutta itself last month only the timely inter-
ference of the High Court saved two important
Indian editors from being imprisoned under
the new Security Act for publishing what two
such learned judges as Rankin (Barrister) and
Chotzner (Civilian) described as a legitimate
piece of news. Lord Metcalfe, in reply to a
deputation which waited on him to urge the
emancipation of the Indian Press, said : "We
are not here in India merely to maintain order,
to collect taxes and make good the deficit ; we
are here for a higher and nobler purpose, to
pour into the East the knowledge, the culture,
and the civilization of the West/' To that
sentiment the Bureaucracy has given lip-
service in the intervening 90 years, but in its
heart it still regards a free Press as an un-
mitigated nuisance and an abomination in the
JOURNALISM IN INDIA 51
sight of the Lord. The only journalist it has
any use for is the sycophantic fugleman of its
own brave deeds and shining virtues. I admit
with delight that in my long career as a journa-
list in India I have met scores of Government
officials, many of them Civil Servants, who
have expressed the highest admiration for a
journalistic independence, especially when it
issued in cultured satire and spicy comment.
I happened to be at Bombay in the Yuletide of
1917 when Mr. Samuel Montagu and Lord
Chelmsford were there taking notes for their
intended Reforms. I lunched with a Depart-
mental Secretary one day and the conversation
veered round to the official relations with the
newspapers. After condemning Mr. Horniman's
politics most heartily he admitted with the
same warmth that it was a tonic to read his
articles. Later on, a very much higher official,
when discussing a certain ultra-official British
editor, exclaimed : "He is very proper you
know, but oh so dull/' Yet none of these broad-
minded officials would condemn the vicious
system which would emasculate the Press in
India as an organ of public opinion. I wonder
how long it will take the Bureaucracy to realize
that the most ingenious way of becoming
52 JOURNALISM IN INDIA
foolish is by a system. Readers of the articles
on "The Press in India" which my friend Mr. S.
C. Sanial contributed to The Calcutta Review
more than 15 years ago which articles I am
glad to hear are to be republished in book form
shortly will remember that in the early days
the Anglo-Indian Press was the victim of
official zoolum. In April (a fateful month for
journalists in India) 1823, Mr. John Adam, the
Acting Governor- General, expelled from India
Mr. James Silk Buckingham, the proprietor
and editor of the Calcutta Journal because he
dared to censure the abuses of the East Indian
Company's administration. The paper was
suppressed. These high-handed proceedings
entailed great pecuniary loss, and redress was
recommended by a Select Committee of the
House of Commons in 1834 ; but it was not until
long afterwards that the East Indian Company
acknowledged the injustice of the proceedings
by granting Buckingham a pension of 200 a
year. I am afraid there is no such luck in
store for Mr. Horniman, who, game to the end,
is about to start another daily paper in the
Indian Nationalist interest. Ardentum frigidvs
insiluit.
A far-reaching consequence of the World
JOURNALISM IN INDIA 53
War in the polity of India was the reform of
the legislatures by inoculating them with the
germs of representative government. It was
a reward for the fine service to the Empire in
the days of its heaviest trial by India's soldiers
and India's taxpayers. It is a commonplace
of military science that modern warfare no
longer consists of isolated engagements
between professional armies ; it means the
mobilization of all the resources of the nations
in conflict. India grasped the fact and rose to
the occasion with splendid loyalty and
enthusiasm. In the general effort the co-
operation of the Indian-edited Press was in the
last degree edifying, considering the tempta-
tion and provocation it had received to sulk in
a Cave of Adullam. The Bureaucracy, for the
first time in all its history, went out of its way
to propitiate this 'great instrument of pro-
paganda/ Publicity Boards were established
in diverse centres and clever officials were
appointed to be nice to the men who not so
long since were regarded as scum by the
Secretariats. Tours were organized to enable
Indian journalists to see what was going on at
the battle fronts, and in many other ways their
importance was officially flattered. I shall not
54 JOURNALISM IN INDIA ,
easily forget the apotheosis of Panchcowrie, the
gallant editor of The Nayak, in the quadrangle
of Government House when Lord Ronaldshay
was King of Bengal. That was a halcyon time
for Indian editors, and although of short dura-
tion its memory is sweet. There was, however,
even then a fly in the ointment and strange to
say it was discovered by the first British
journalist whom the Government of India had
knighted for meritorious service to the State
through the medium of his paper. Sir Stanley
Reed, editor of The Times of India, with sub-
lime abnegation offered to place his talents and
experience at the disposal of the Government
for six months, free, gratis and for nothing, to
be employed in the all-important work of
publicity and propaganda. The offer was
accepted with warm gratitude by the Viceroy,
and he was put in charge of the Publicity
Bureau at Simla. The enthusiasm of the Head
of the State was not shared by the permanent
officials offended by this slur on their omni-
science. They took a mean revenge by denying
the interloper the status and powers of a
Secretary to Government which were the
essentials of efficiency and success. Neverthe-
less Sir Stanley Reed worked wonders with an
JOURNALISM IN INDIA 55
inadequate equipment and proved to the
chagrin of the sun-dried bureaucrats that given
an equal chance he would have made just as
good a statesman in India as Lord Harms-
worth or Lord Beaverbrook in England. This
brings me to a paradox which is bound to tickle
the risible nerves of my audience. The British
editor in India cannot become a favourite with
officialdom unless he supports the Government
through thick and thin. His motto irust be,
"The Government right or wrong" ; on the
other hand although he be the most egregious
whole-hogger he cannot hope for a place in the
Councils of the nation. An Indian editor can
legitimately aspire to membership of the
Viceroy's Council or to the ministry in a local
Government, not so the Britisher. The reason
why I cannot tell, but the fact remains. Nay,
the invidious distinction goes farther. Indian
journalists have been nominated by the
Government of India to the Council of State
and the Legislative Assembly, but British
journalists look in vain for similar preferment.
The Statesman, it is true, has provided from its
staff two legislators, one imperial, one provin-
cial, but both were elected by the European
constituency of Calcutta, not nominated by the
6 JOURNALISM IN INDIA
Government. The limit of official appreciation
of the British journalist is a seat in a Municipal
Corporation. He is good enough as a bumble,
but as a mugwump bah. Yet such is the un-
reasoning and dog-like fidelity of the British
Press in India to-day that it shows no resent-
ment but carries on the good work to which it
has put its hand, namely, hot refutation of
Indian criticism of administrative abuses.
Robert Knight was the last of the advocati
diaboli of the old regime.
An unexpected result of the War has been
a reduction in the number of British-owned and
edited daily papers and more than a corres-
ponding increase in those run absolutely by
Indians. In Calcutta, for instance, we had
before the War four of the former class,
namely, The Englishman, The Statesman, The
Indian Daily News, and The Empire. There
are now only two, The Indian Daily News
having been absorbed by Forward, the
Swarajist organ, and The Empire having
become an Indian property. At Bombay The
Times of India stands alone for the British out-
look. At Madras The Madras Mail occupies
the same position of solitary grandeur. The
slump in trade which followed close upon the
JOURNALISM IN INDIA 57
hectic boom excited by the Armistice is the
chief reason for this contraction. Advertise-
ments fell off and circulations decreased, and as
a British -edited paper is a much more costly
business than its Indian counterpart the
weakest went to the wall. In politics the
British daily papers have come to represent
one stereotyped view, so that more than one of
them in any centre is an expensive super-
fluity. The conditions of the Indian Press are
markedly different. Politics and religion are
so mixed that points of view are numerous and
likewise the instruments of propaganda.
Indian papers are not all self-supporting, but
that is in most cases a secondary consideration
with their owners. On the other hand no
British individual or company would dream of
running a paper which is a perpetual tax on
his purse. It may seem a rash thing for me to
say, but it is my considered opinion that with
the evolution of representative Government,
which cannot be checked in India any more
than in other parts of the Empire, the influence
of the Indian Press in politics and administra-
tion will increase at the expense of the British
fans. The future is for the Indian journalist,
and his training is a paramount question which
58 JOURNALISM 1$ INDIA
the universities of India will have to tackle in
earnest. English is not only the common
language of your intelligentsia I might with-
out exaggeration call it their mother tongue
it is also the common bond of Indian nationa-
lity. Without any intention to belittle the
value of the vernacular Press which caters for
the commonalty, it seems to me self-evident
that Indian journalism, which employs the
English language as its vehicle of expression,
will be the journalism that will count while
Home Rule is being fought for and when Home
Rule has been won. Now it is a truism that
Indians, who are ready writers of expressive
and grammatical English, are alumni of the
universities ; when the system of secondary
education in this country is revolutionized it
may happen that there will be a number of
young men, who, by gaining the school-leaving
certificate, will also have acquired that facility
of writing idiomatic English which is a sine
qua non in an Indian journalist's equipment ;
but that time is not yet. For a generation and
more the universities must be the recruiting
grounds for the Indian Press. In its history
lawyers have taken the foremost place ; they
are still in the forefront to-day. Whatever
JOURNALISM IN INDIA 59
may be said of their casuistry and their
propensity to forensic dialectic it must be
.accounted to them for grace that they have
established and maintained a very high
literary standard in editorials bearing a close
resemblance to the fine prose of the mid-
Victorian Press in England. It is pretty
certain that, as the development of democracy
in India increases the power of the Indian
Press, journalism will become more and more
attractive to young lawyers, especially as the
remuneration is bound to keep pace with grow-
ing prestige. In the circumstances would it not
be of the greatest value to the cause of Indian
Nationality to raise journalism to the dignity
of an academic career ? If journalism could be
added to the system of Post-Graduate studies
of Calcutta University I feel sure, to put it
commercially, there would be a cent, per cent,
profit on the stern persevering promotion
necessary to overcome the obstacles in the way.
Journalism would become a profession drawing
to itself young men of brains and ability, and
that is what is wanted in India. "The sugges-
tion of a school of journalism at Columbia
University in the U.S.A. came from a man of
the people, Pulitzer, a journalist, who had to
60 JOURNALISM IN INDIA
work for his own education, and in spite of the
handicap made good to a phenomenal degree ;
yet he was shrewd enough to realize that there
should be a better system, so that those who
were to take up a career fraught, when that
career was a downward one, with so much peril
to the public, should be trained under auspices
that would tend to develop character." I
quote Mr. George Henry Payne, the historian
of journalism in the U.S.A. "We have no
Pulitzer's in India, but there are among us
millionaires to whom it would be a fleabite to
endow a chair and found a school. They could
not give of their abundance to a nobler cause/'
In my long Indian career of forty-three years
I have had to do with hundreds of Indian
journalists, many of them intimately associated
with me in the conduct of a newspaper. What
struck me forcibly was the vast difference
between those who wrote leaders and the work-
ing reporters whose business was the collection
of news ; the former were men of culture with
scant knowledge of technique ; the latter
devoid of culture but with a keen nose for a
"story" and an instinctive sense of display.
This contrast is to be found in an English news-
paper office but not to such an amazing extent.
JOURNALISM IN INDIA 61
The English reporter, as a rule, tries hard by
study and observation to improve his style and
obtain a grasp of affairs, not so the Indian
reporter who is content to go to the end of the
chapter as he began by pelting the long-
suffering news-editor with valuable information
in execrable language. The conditions which
chiefly contribute to the perpetuation of
groundlings in the lower ranks are the manus-
cript eloquence of our public men aad the
vicious co-operation of penny-a-liners destroy-
ing originality and initiative. The only way
to suppress these evils is to make journalism a
profession instead of a trade as wooden and
dishonest as a modi's or a kyah's.
I have refrained, gentlemen, as much as
possible, from loading these lectures with
personal reminiscences of journalists, English
and Indian, who figure prominently in the long
vista of departed years which is the solace of
my autumnal mood, for had I once begun I
could not have ended within the compass of a
fair-sized book. I may say at once that my
memories of them are all happy. Rivalry and
competition, hard knocks and swift retribu-
tion I have experienced in abundance, but no
sting to leave a festering sore. The prevailing
62 JOURNALISM IN INDIA
spirit was regimental loyalty which might
lead to temporary conflict but at the same
time engendered mutual respect and profes-
sional pride. Had I my time over again with
a fairy godmother to give me a choice of voca-
tions I would plump without hesitation for
journalism which is the only life in spite of its
strange vicissitudes, its bitter trials and its
glorious poverty. To quote the American
poetess, Mary Clemmer,
To serve thy generation, this thy fate
" Written in water," swiftly fades thy name;
But he who loves his kind does, first and late,
A work too great for fame.
PAT LOVETT.
AN OUTSIDER'S ODYSSEY
"Ut pueris placeas, et declamatio
fas." JUVENAL.
CHAPTER I
INTRODUCTORY
It was a saying of Napoleon that there is
no such thing in life as accident ; what is
commonly so-called is fate misnamed. The
lesson of my own life inclines me to accept the
philosophy, and without the slightest intention
of making converts I proceed to the demonstra-
tion in self- justification.
My adoption of journalism as a means of a
living often seemed to me the accident of an
accident, but it is significant that once in I
made no serious attempt to break away and
engage in some other occupation less laborious
and more remunerative, although opportuni-
ties were not wanting. The position I
eventually attained in the profession, after
much picturesque vicissitude, compels the
belief that it was fate which, in October, 1883,
took me into the dingy office of The Times of
64 JOURNALISM IN INDIA
India in search of employment. I was armed
with a letter of introduction to the editor,
Mr. Henry Curwen, from Mr. Mathew Starling,
a leading barrister, who was for many years
Clerk of the Crown in the Bombay High Court.
I was engaged at once as a junior reporter,
although I had not a scrap of journalistic
experience to commend me. By the same
token, neither Mr. Starling nor Mr. Curwen
acted on the conviction that he was assisting me
to my real vocation. The former merely dis-
charged a family obligation by disposing of me
without trouble or responsibility ; the latter
wanted a hand, and as I was a well-favoured
and well-educated youth he thought me good
goods for the wages he was prepared to pay.
In the five years I worked under him he never
once encouraged the hope that by patient
industry, or from a sudden awakening of
dormant genius, I would get to the top, arid
make a decent living by newspaper work ; on
the contrary, after he had time to take my
measure, he often and often urged me to
employ the influence of men in position, whose
favour I had gained, to obtain an appointment
in which my abilities would have more scope,
and my industry be rewarded with a salary
AN OUTSIDER'S ODYSSEY 65
sufficient to maintain the status of a saheb.
Whether he thought I would never have the
pretension to hold forth pontifically on public
questions, or the lack of training in a news-
paper office in England would always be a bar
to my advancement in India, I know not ; this
I do know : the left-handed encouragement I
got from my first editor was well calculated to
drive me out of journalism almost as soon as I
had entered it.
Having found me a billet, my benefactor,
Mr. Starling, took no more notice of me. As a
matter of fact I did not thereafter court his
attention. I realized that I was very small
potatoes and did not quarrel with the proposi-
tion. My editor, also, did not unduly bother
his head about my progress. He handed me
over to the sub-editor, Mr. Arnold Wright,
who, the Chief Reportership being in commis-
sion, made up the Reporters' Diary. I was put
through my facings, not by being shown how,
but by being told to discover things for myself
as soon as possible. The only advice I ever
had from Mr. Wright was, "Read The Times
and you won't go wrong/' I read United
Ireland instead, much to the disgust of the
editor when he heard it. There never lived an
5
36 JOURNALISM IN INDIA
Orangeman who hated Irish Nationalism and
its protagonist, Parnell, the god of my idolatry,
so bitterly and so unreasonably as this kins-
man of John Curwen, the panegyrist of
American liberty. But in the early eighties
and long, long after Home Rule for Ireland was
an abomination in the sight of Anglo-Indian
society, so that Curwen's ostentatious im-
placability may have been no more than a pose
to ravish a clientele he would have as his very
own.
My early development as a journalist was
like Topsy's transition from infancy to girl-
hood. "I specs I growed." Mr. Wright, who
was not unduly inspiring or sympathetic,
insisted on proficiency in shorthand, if I would
make a passable reporter worth the pittance of
4, which I received once a month. Pitman's
Phonography then became a vexation worse
than the French irregular verbs of my college
days ; but I had to overcome my disgust of the
grind or go into a wilderness where parental
manna had ceased to fall. By dint of laborious
hours in the law courts I at last acquired the
dexterity to take a fair note, but as long as 1
remained a reporter to the daily Press there
was nothing I hated more than to have to
AN OUTSIDER'S ODYSSEY 67
record verbatim and reproduce the effusion of
some riotous wind-bag, and the Lord knows
the species swarmed in Bombay when I began
my quest.
It is a comfort that life is full of compen-
sations. The Providence watching over the
wandering Celt was more than kind to me in
my tribulation. After the first year of my
novitiate I had comparatively little short-
hand work to do. The wide-awake sub-editor
discovered my ability to write intelligently on
all kinds of sport, and as there was no one in
the covenanted staff who could do likewise, I
was released from a drudgery I detested to
engage in a labour I loved. Before I came on
the scene outside experts were employed to
provide accounts of horse-racing, jackal hunts,
polo, cricket and football matches, and athletic
meetings. They were, for the most part,
amateurs of independent means and therefore
expensive ; but the cost was not grudged, for
sport was most important to a daily paper
which catered for the sahebs, who made it the
religion of their leisure. When he gave me
charge of the department, the editor added
two pounds to my screw, thus effecting a big
economy.
68 JOURNALISM IN INDIA
I soon became well known in sporting
circles, and for years my reputation in Indian
journalism was of a writer on sport ; that and
nothing more. When I left Parsee Bazar
Street in October, 1888, Mr. Curwen, who was
angry at my defection, was still good enough
to certify that "I was a first-class reporter,
quick and intelligent, and especially good at
sport/' Hinc totam infelix vulgatur fama per
urbem. None of my friends and well-wishers
believed me capable of the heavy 'legitimate ;"
none would have me anything else but
"Doggy" the sporting scribe. Nevertheless T
crowned my career by becoming the editor of
Capital, a journal famous throughout the
world for its authority in the economics and
politics of India. It took me 28 years to reach
that goal. I had to live down a reputation,
than which there is nothing harder, especially
if an undiscerning public decides that you are
lucky above the common to have gained it, and
in your vanity you hug the distinction.
CHAPTER II
THE ANGLO-INDIAN PRESS OF BOMBAY
The Higher Commands
The change that has taken place in
Anglo-Indian journalism during the years of
my experience is one of degree, not one of kind.
It is remarkable that the daily papers that
count are not more numerous to-day than in
1883, and they are nearly the same. At
Bombay, just before the War, a paper of liberal
tendencies, once popular and influential, died
of senile decay, but the gap has been filled by
a radical sheet of hectic heat. The Old
Brigade has, with one notorious exception,
been true to tradition. The early characteris-
tics remain, but there is evidence of vigorous
growth. There is now far more enterprise in
the collection of news, foreign and domestic,
and photography is often empolyed to
illustrate the letterpress. Greater attention
is paid to technique and display, and with the
introduction of the linotype and the rotary the
printing is immensely superior. The commer-
cial side of journalism is better understood ;
70 JOURNALISM IN INDIA
advertisers and subscribers are sought for,
often meretriciously. On the other hand the
old literary standard has not been maintained,
and there has been a contraction of influence.
Now more than ever does a paper belong to the
province in which it is printed and published ;
beyond the confines it exerts no authority and
excites little interest. The Pioneer of the
eighties and nineties of the last century has
ceased to exist ; we have only its ghost. The
monopoly, which the higher bureaucracy and
the military caste did their best to perpetuate,
was killed by the ubiquity of the Associated
Press of India, a twentieth century pheno-
menon and also by a hardening of local self-
sufficiency.
At Bombay in 1883 two Anglo-Indian
dailies divided the support of the English -
reading public. "Divided'' is perhaps too
harsh a term to use in this connection, for the
majority of subscribers were common to both.
Those were the days of small circulation, little
public curiosity, and happy tolerance of
putting by for to-morrow what was incon-
venient to print to-day. There was not much
to choose between The Times of India and The
Bombay Gazette in news-mongering ; neither
AN OUTSIDER'S ODYSSEY 71
was out for "scoops ;" the only real rivalry was
in the manufacture of opinion. Every poli-
tician and critic wished to read the leaders in
both papers, so they bought both in order to
compare blast with counterblast. There was
no love lost between the editors who were in a
high degree antithetical. Mr. Grattan Geary,
who owned and edited The Gazette, had
previously edited The Times and for a while
had Mr. Curwen as an assistant. They dis-
agreed in every particular. Mr. Geary
purchased The Gazette from Mr. J. M.
Maclean, who, by his outspoken criticism of
the bureaucracy, had made it a power in the
land. It stood for progressive liberalism with
a marked sympathy for Indian aspirations.
The new editor added a proclivity for
Parnellism, and was contemptuously referred
to in the Byculla and Bombay Clubs as "The
Fenian/' the most opprobrious epithet then
known to Anglo-India. The Times under
Mr. Curwen became ultra conservative, an out-
and-out-supporter of the bureaucracy, and an
exponent of that extreme Anglo-Indianism
which regarded any concession to Indian
claims as treason to its own domination. It
was the cult of the Orange Lodge translated to
72 JOURNALISM IN INDIA
India. It will be easily understood how much
sectarian bitterness there was between the
high commands when with an Irishman's
perversity or ill-luck I enlisted under the
wrong flag. This feeling increased to rancour
when Lord Reay, an advanced Radical,
became Governor of Bombay in succession to
Sir James Fergusson, an old-fashioned Tory.
Mr. Geary supported with a heart and a half
"The Dutchman" and his pro-Indian policy.
Mr. Curwen flouted the degenerate Chief of
Clan Mackay, and after five years of uncom-
promising opposition, dismissed him with
Canning's famous sarcasm : "The fault of the
Dutch is giving too little and asking too
much/' This vulgar ad captandum comment,
though puerile, offensive, and maliciously
untrue, tickled the gallery to which Curwen
was playing with an unerring commercial
instinct ; and Reuter cabled it to London to
delight Printing House Square and the
Unionist caucus. After Lord Reay came a
long succession of Unionist Governors under
whom The Times consolidated its position.
Before Curwen died, in 1892, it was the most
popular and powerful paper from Belgaum to
Quetta. With his rival's increasing success
AN OUTSIDER'S ODYSSEY 73
Geary lost his head. Having run with the
hare he attempted to hunt with the hounds
and came an awful cropper. Before his death,
some years after Curwen's, The Gazette was
moribund. It was discredited even by the
Indians to whom it formerly appealed. The
educated native of Bombay, more especially
the Parsee, has no use for the Vicar of Bray.
In 1883, Mr. Curwen's assistant editor
there was only one such as long as I remained
with the paper was Mr. Samuel Digby,
brother of the famous Mr. William Digby, one
of the idols of Indian Nationalism. If he was
a Liberal in those days he certainly dissembled
his love. The rank and file saw little of him,
and the general impression was that he was a
colourless second-in-command. He had suc-
ceeded a man named Boyd, who, while acting
as editor, ran the paper into a libel suit, a sin
against the Holy Ghost, according to the code
of the proprietor, old Colonel Nassau Lees.
Boyd had to go, and Digby took warning. He
left the paper at the end of 1886 and his faint
footprint in the sand was soon obliterated.
His subsequent career in London was so
respectable, his den at the National Liberal
Club so open to Indian Progressives, that
74 JOURNALISM IN INDIA
there can be no doubt he was in the wrong
caserne at Bombay. The only personal re-
collection I have of him was his reception of a
hot protest against the want of tact of the
Chief Reporter, who, without consulting my
inclination, had posted me to describe a
lecture on "The Inquisition in Mexico" by an
American Minister at the Methodist Church.
I was the only Catholic on the reporting staff,
and my militancy was the joke of my associates.
The Chief Reporter's motive was therefore
either malicious or mischievous. I was just in
the mood to resent either. I had attended,
before breakfast, the execution of a Persian
gentleman with whom I had been familiar on
the racecourse. I had spent a fagging day in
the Sessions Court reporting and describing a
murder case in which the accused was an
Eurasian miner who had shot his wife ; in the
evening I had played in a big football match.
It was atrocious that I should have to end
such a day listening to an ignorant diatribe
against my own religion. But there was no
getting in touch with the Chief Reporter who
had gone to Bandora acourting. I had to go
to the lecture (the Lord save us), and I
returned to the office near mid-night simply
AN OUTSIDER'S ODYSSEY 75
furious. There was a light in the editor's
room ; I made bold to enter without being
announced. Digby, who was then acting for
Curwen, was pouring over the proof of hi&
leader. Without giving him a chance to
resent my intrusion I poured forth my hot
heart. I don't remember what I said or how
I said it, but I do remember that he seemed
highly amused. When I pulled up, he agreed
that the Chief Reporter had been guilty of
doubtful form, but he added quickly, "Why
not go and .write exactly what you feel.""It
would not be printed/ 7 said I, with something
of a scoff. "Leave that to me," he replied
kindly. I have often regretted that I did not
preserve a cutting of my report. All I wrote
did not appear, but even after Digby's
judicious redaction it was fiery enough to
excite the terrible wrath of the Reverend
Mr. Gladwin, Editor of The Indian Watchman,
the organ of the American Wesley an Mission.
The polemical uproar that ensued was
glorious balm for my wounded feelings. I
was only 22 and dearly loved a row.
To return to the staff. When Mr. Digby
left The Times it seemed to us a matter of
course that he would be succeeded by
76 JOURNALISM IN INDIA
Mr. Arnold Wright, who had been with the
paper from 1879. He was an able all-round
journalist, industrious and conscientious. But
Curwen had other views. He brought out
from London a Mr. Romanes, a leader-writer
of some note, and Mr. Wright left India, like
many another faithful steward, unhonoured
and unsung. Mr. Romanes did not stay long,
the work was uncongenial and there were
better prospects in England. Instead of pro-
moting the sub-editor, Mr. Furneaux, Curwen
again imported a superior journalist from
London. He was a Mr. Mitchell. He could
write vivaciously on most topics, did quite well
as assistant editor, but came to grief when he
was left in charge on Curwen going home on
leave. Some critics were inclined to blame
the grandmotherly interference of Mr. G. W.
Forrest, the Elphinstone College Professor of
English History, whom Curwen had asked to
give an eye to things ; but I am afraid poor
Mitchell would have wilted in any case. He
was too Bohemian to carry corn. After him
came Mr. Sarle, who was with the paper when
Curwen died. I left Parsee Bazar Street a
month or so after he arrived, but we became
well acquainted when I was editor of The
AN OUTSIDER'S ODYSSEY 77
Advocate of India in the next decade. That
reminiscence belongs to a future chapter.
The first assistant editor I knew on The
Bombay Gazette was a brilliant Irishman
named Drury. His divorce was sudden, and
according to rumour was due to incompati-
bility of temper with the predominant partner,
not an easy man to get on with. In 1884,
Mr. Thomas Jewell Bennett came to The
Gazette from the London Standard, and
soon proved that he could accommodate
himself to all circumstances. He remained
with Geary for eight years, wrote leaders in
favour of Lord Reay's pro-Indian policy, of
Parnell and Irish Home Rule. But Curwen
must have discovered in him an adroit and
professional advocate, who could argue as well
on the other side, for in his will he directed
that Bennett should be offered the editorship
of The Times with the option of buying his
share, an opportunity the Gazette man did
not let slip.
So much for the Higher Commands. It
will be gathered from what I have written that
in the first lustre of my odyssey the rival
editors completely represented their papers
and shaped their destinies. Curwen left the
78 JOURNALISM IN INDIA
commercial side of The Times to Mr. C. E.
Kane, who laid the foundations of the splendid
job press on which the great material prosperity
of the whole enterprise rested. Geary quarrelled
early with his manager, Mr. Jehanghir
Murzban, and attempted to run the business
himself. The result of this self-sufficiency was
fatal. The Gazette is extinct ; The Times is
probably the best newspaper property in
India.
CHAPTER III
THE ANGLO-INDIAN PRESS OF BOMBAY
The Rank and File
The editors and assistant-editors of The
Times and The Gazette, to whom I have given
so much attention in the last chapter, were the
sahebs of the Press. They could afford to join
the leading social clubs, Byculla, Bombay, and
Yacht ; and their covenant gave them a patent
of respectability which was rarely disputed.
Both papers imported their Chief Reporters
from England, but on a minor covenant from a
social point of view. These non-coms started
on Rs. 250 per mensem, and, therefore, could
aspire to nothing more expensive or toney
than a second-rate hotel in the Fort, or a
shabby-genteel boarding house in the Grant's
Buildings, usually kept by a superior Eurasian
widow and much affected by covenanted
trades-assistants. If their luck was in they
would in time become sub-editors on Rs. 500
per mensem, but that was the limit of their
aspiration.
As long as Curwen remained editor of
80 JOURNALISM IN INDIA
The Times the rule held fast that a journalist,
who came out to India as a Chief Reporter,
could never become a real saheb. That pre-
judice was at the bottom of his refusal to make
Arnold Wright assistant-editor in succession
to Sam Digby. I fancy that Geary, who was
brought up in the same tradition as his rival,
would have been as true to prejudice if he
could have afforded the expense of importing
an assistant-editor when Bennett left him.
Mr. Plinston, who was then sub-editor, there-
after combined the two offices until Geary's
death. Under Mrs. Geary, the widow, who
inherited the property, he became an editorial
Pooh Bah, editor, assistant-editor, and sub-
editor, all in one. The first ranker to obtain a
commission on The Times was Mr. (now Sir)
Stanley Reed, who came out as Chief Reporter
in 1897. By that time the Bombay Gymkhana
and Y.M.C.A. had greatly democratized
European Society in Bombay, and the old
gradations of caste had practically dis-
appeared. For all that, Reed was extra-
ordinarily lucky. Furneaux, a sub-editor oi
the old school, retired soon after his advent
and he got an early rise. Bennett, the editor,
and Lovat Fraser, the assistant-editor, were
AN OUTSIDER'S ODYSSEY 81
like himself, Bristol journalists, who had risen
from the ranks. All three fraternized. When
Bennett left Bombay in 1901 on a vain quest
of Parliamentary honours in England, he
appointed Lovat Fraser editor, Reed being
advanced assistant-editor in contradiction of
all precedent. In 1907, the gadi, founded by
Curwen, was for the first time mounted by a
man, who began his service as a subordinate.
I wonder if the founder turned in his grave.
The stupid injustice of Curwen 's prejudice is
glaringly illustrated by the fact that the
ranker-editor has ruled with remarkable
success for ten years, and given the gadi a
lustre unqiue in the annals of Anglo-Indian
journalism. The Glasgow University in 1909
conferred on Mr. Reed the honorary degree of
LL.D. Lord Hardinge made him a knight in
1916. Poor Arnold Wright ! Reed's superior
in every branch of journalism.
Shortly after I joined The Tiw.es, Mr. J.
H. Furneaux arrived from England to fill the
vacancy of Chief Reporter. He became sub-
editor in 1887, and Mr. R. D. Hughes was
imported for the minor post. Neither was
above the average. Of the former, I have
already written ; the latter eventually gave up
6
82 JOURNALISM IN INDIA
journalism for trade, and practically founded
the Bombay Presidency Trades Association, of
which he was the first secretary. The Gazette
imported three Chief Reporters while I was
with The Times Messrs. Williams, White
and Flint son. All were a cut above the
ordinary. The first-named, after a spell of
sub-editorship, returned to England to join
The St. James's Gazette. Frank White, one
of the most brilliant youngsters to seek a
fortune in Indian journalism, was drowned off
Goa, having fallen overboard Lord Brassey's
famous yacht, "Sunbeam/' After lingering
on The Gazette to assist at its obsequies,
Mr. Plinston became secretary of the Bombay
Yacht Club in the green autumn of his days.
In the chapter on Anglo-Indian literature,
which Professor Edward Farley Oaten has
contributed to the fourteenth volume of the
Cambridge History of English Literature, he
writes : "Anglo-Indian literature is, for the
most part, merely English literature strongly
marked by local colour/' The same may be
said of Anglo-Indian journalism. No attempt
has ever been made to rear a school racy of the
soil, such as exists in Australia, South Africa
and Canada. It is still an axiom that the
AN OUTSIDER'S ODYSSEY 83
journalist, who has not been trained in
England, is not of much use. Journalism as
a profession has not, therefore, attracted the
best brains of the Domiciled Community.
Eurasian editors and reporters of merit have
not been numerous. Anglo-Indians, who,
without Home training, have made successful
editors, may be counted on the fingers of one
hand. Educated Indians have not been en-
couraged by the Anglo-Indain papers except
as occasional correspondents and news-
gatherers. Whether this is good or bad for
the country, and for the prestige of journalism,
I need not stay to discuss.
Among the privates of the reporting
staffs of The Times and The Gazette, there
were both Indians and Eurasians. Each
paper employed two Parsees. Mr. Nanabhoy
Chichghar of the former, and Nanabhoy
Masani of the latter, were cousins. They were
well educated, but neither, if I remember
rightly, had a university degree. They were
expert shorthand writers and invaluable in
reporting law cases and the proceedings of
public meetings. Chichghar remained a
journalist to the last, winding up with a
Guzeratee paper of his own. Masani left the
84 JOURNALISM IN INDIA
Press, before he reached middle age, for the
service of the Bombay Corporation, which
offered him an easy competency and a provi-
sion for his old age. Both these amiable men
were firm friends of mine, and I owe not a
little to the introductions they gave me to
leaders of the Parsee community, but for
whom this outsider might never have reached
a haven of rest.
Two other Parsee reporters of my day
died in harness. Mr. Cursetjee Screwallah of
The Times was, what in Ireland we affec-
tionately call, a "character." His knowledge
of the English language was not profound, and
he had a lofty contempt for Linley Murray.
My first lessons in sub-editing were learnt in
making ordinary English of his rhapsodic
Carlylese. But he was an untiring ferret for
news. He knew everybody and had the gift of
the Paraclete. He could make even the
taciturn Superintendent of the Detective
Police talk like a gossip at a christening :
'Tm Screwallah," he would say, "and I worm
it out of them." Not bad for a junior reporter
on Us. 60 a month. His greatest pride, how-
ever, was that there was no reporter, in
Bombay, who could fill the account of the
AN OUTSIDER'S ODYSSEY 85
arrival or departure of some swell with a
longer list of names of those present. This
was an asset of considerable value, for the
vanity of publicity was rampant among
Indians who hoped to bask in the sunshine of
official patronage.
Darashaw Chichghar of the Gazette did
for his paper much the same work as Cursetjee
Screwallah for us, but he was a different kind
of man entirely. He had had a fair English
education, was highly esteemed in his own
community, and had private means, which
made him independent of his salary. He took
to journalism for the influence it gave him in
the law courts and the Secretariat. He
perfected a system of abbreviations, which
made him almost equal to a master of phono-
graphy. He was the pink of gentility, always
carefully groomed and precisely habitted.
Nobody could write so comprehensive an
obituary notice of an Indian worthy, especially
if he were a Parsee.
Besides myself there was no other
European junior reporter on The Times until
the last year of my service, when Mr. David
Finder joined. He is still on the staff. There
was, however, a flamboyant Eurasian, named
80 JOURNALISM IN INDIA
Thomas Holt ham, who had a local reputation
as a poet, because he had parodied The
Deserted Village. His powers of description
and narrative were respectable, but he never
made a serious study of affairs, and was happy
in a riotous Bohemianism which eventuated in
emigration to Australia. The Gazette had a
smart local hand named Cyril Avron, who
might have distinguished himself in the
higher grades of the profession had he not died
young from consumption. He had been a
medical student before becoming a reporter.
He was enterprising and ambitious, and by
steady reading and observation was fast
making up for the lack of a college education.
A remarkable personality was common to
both papers. We called him "Lundy," because
he was lame and erratic. His full name was
Lynn Pereira. He was an Anglo-Portuguese
from Cochin. He belonged to a family which
in the days of sailing ships had given many
hardy mariners to the Indian Mercantile
Marine. He himself had served for some
months before the mast, but an unfortunate
fall from a yard to the deck had permanently
lamed him and compelled him to abandon the
sea for a more precarious living ashore. He
AN OUTSIDER'S ODYSSEY 87
"did" the shipping, the hospitals, and the
morgue for both papers. He was a most
amusing raconteur when half seas over, and at
all times a cheerful soul, who paid all debts to
the masthead.
Such were the privates of the Anglo-
Indian Press in Bombay when I enlisted. No
locally engaged reporter could hope to earn a
salary of more than Rs. 200 a month, no matter
how smart and capable. As in Government
service so in journalism, nobody counted but
the Covenanted. If a local man would find
himself he must emigrate and gain fame. He
might then return to some rival of his early
love. That is how I became editor of The
Advocate of India. In Calcutta and Madras
the local prophet had more honour, but what
was true of Bombay was generally true of the
leading Anglo-Indian dailies of the rest of
India. The condition persists to the present
day. It has added another caste to this
country of innumerable castes. In England
and elsewhere approved merit is the only
passport to distinction in journalism ; in India
the outsider, who does not possess the cachet
of a London covenant, has only a dog's chance.
CHAPTER IV
THE INDIAN PRESS
A few words will suffice to introduce the
Indian and Vernacular Press of Bombay. In
1883 there were no daily papers written in
English and edited by Indians to proclaim the
Indian point of view. There is none to-day.
In this phase of the development of journalism
Bombay has, so far, taken no part, which
passivity is in strange contrast with the
activity of Calcutta and Madras. The
Advocate of India was started in 1886 with the
blessings and, I believe, the pecuniary support
of Mr. Pherozeshah Mehta and Dr. Thomas
Blaney. Its mission was to keep Indian
politicians in countenance, but it never
became the accredited organ of the Bombay
Presidency Association or any other political
body. Its first editor was an Eurasian named
Gomes, who had received his training on The
Statesman of Calcutta. To conceal his
Portuguese origin he was related to Madame
Alice Gomes, the famous singer he assumed
the name of Bailey ; his brother, also a journa-
AN OUTSIDER'S ODYSSEY 89
list, became Howell. Bailey came to Bombay
as Chief Reader to The Bombay Gazette. He
was the moving spirit in establishing The
Advocate as an evening paper, but except his
association with Mr. Robert Knight there was
nothing to recommend him as an exponent of
Indian aspirations. As a matter of fact he
had very little knowledge of the policy of
Young India, and less sympathy with the
cause. Dr. Blaney wrote a good deal for the
paper on municipal affairs and materially
assisted the agitation for the reforms finally
granted by Lord Reay. Bailey failed egre-
giously as an editor, and returned to Calcutta
to become a sub-editor on The Statesman, his
old paper. Mr. Jehanghir Murzban bought The
Advocate, after he quarrelled with Mr. Grattan
Geary and left The Gazette. He also bought
at nearly the same time the Jame-Jamshed
from Mr. K. M. Shroff. The Advocate then
became a liberal paper with an Indian political
flavour. In 1894, when I was editor,
Mr. Murzban sold it to Mr. F. F. Gordon, a
reporter of The Bombay Gazette, who had
made some money by reporting a notorious
libel suit at Hyderabad. He soon dropped all
pretension of liberalism and Indian nationa-
90 JOURNALISM IN INDIA
lism, the paper became an aggressive supporter
of the bureaucracy. The Indain National
Congress had to wait until 1912 for an
accredited organ at Bombay. Shortly after
the Royal Durbar at Delhi in December, 1911,
Sir Pherozeshah Mehta set seriously to work
to accomplish his long cherished design of
publishing an English daily paper at Bombay,
to voice the political opinions of educated
Indians, and at the same time to expose the
increasing autocracy of the Indian bureau-
cracy. He would have been glad to have it
edited and produced solely by Indians, but
this he found to be impracticable. He offered
me the editorship, but I declined, for the
editorship of Capital was then within my
grasp, and besides I could not accept the whole
of my life-long friend's political platform. He
secured Mr. Benjamin Horniman as the first
editor of The Bombay Chronicle. My refusal
was providential, for I could never have done
what Mr. Horniman succeeded in doing, and I
would have fallen very short of the expecta-
tions of my friends. Much water had flowed
under the bridges since I left The Advocate of
India in 1895.
In the eighties there was at Bombay an
AN OUTSIDER'S ODYSSEY 91
excellent weekly paper edited by a Parsee and
written wholly in English. I refer to the
famous Indian Spectator, which propagated
the gospel of Mr. Byramji Malabari, the
messiah of female education in India. Another
Parsee weekly, The Rast Goftar, published an
English supplement, which was written by
Mr. Kaikoshroo Kabrajee, a shrewd publicist,,
who also had a big vogue as a novelist and
dramatist of Parsee social life. Later on
another Guzeratee weekly, the Kaiser-I-Hind,
also published an English supplement which
was written by Mr., now Sir Dinshaw Wacha,
whose forte was finance and political economy.
But this weekly Press was a thing apart from
the life of the English reporter who met none
of its representatives in association or con-
flict. I had to become an editor before I
realized its status and value.
In my experience there has always been a
vigilant and enterprising vernacular daily
Press in Bombay, the best of the papers being
edited and produced by Parsees, who use
Guzeratee, the language of the market-place
and rialto, as their medium. In 1883 the
Bombay Samachar and the Jame-Jamshed
had, as now, the largest circulations. Both
92 JOURNALISM IN INDIA
were staffed by men who could write English
&s easily as their mother tongue. Two
reporters stand out in bold relief in my
memory : Kapadia and Shastri, who hated
each other like poison. The latter belonged to
the priestly caste and always wore the white
turban which distinguishes the dustoor, but
he was a priest of the kidney of Father Prout,
and many a merry junket I had in his com-
pany. Kapadia might have passed for a
village schoolmaster. He was snuffy and
stuffy, but you had to get up early to steal a
march on him. The Par see Press was intensely
tribal, and although it has moved with the
times in the collection and presentment of
news, its appeal is still confined to the Parsees.
CHAPTER V
POLITICS IN THE EIGHTIES
In the first five years of my career politics
in India were generally interesting ; often
exciting. The last days of Lord Ripon, the
best-beloved and at the same time the most
hated Viceroy India has had since the Mutiny,
were enlivened by the fierce racial tumult over
the Ilbert Bill. The outstanding event of the
Viceroyalty of Lord Dufferin was the birth of
the Indian National Congress at Bombay.
These were imperial matters affecting all the
educated classes of the country. Of more local
concern was the agitation for the reform of the
constitution of the Bombay Municipal Cor-
poration which at long last won to victory in
1888. I would be wanting in candour to
insinuate that I was at all impressed by these
affairs of such far-spreading consequence. To
the best of my recollection I did not even
try to understand their purport or signi-
flcance ; yet all the time I was following with
the deepest anxiety the vicissitudes of the
Irish struggle for Home Rule, pouring over
94 JOURNALISM IN INDIA
every speech made by Parnell, Dillon, Healy,
Sexton, and O'Brien, also the great orations of
Gladtsone on a subject he had made his own.
At this distance of time it seems strange to me
that whereas the politics of my native land
stirred me to the depths, those of the land of
my adoption left me cold. But the reason is
plain. I was very young when I entered
Indian journalism not quite twenty years of
age and my editor decided that my metier
was sport. Politics were at a discount in the
sporting circles in which I hunted, and it ife
not unfair to say that they treated all the
serious things of life with cavalier levity. I
readily adapted myself to the environment and
for three years my time was pleasantly, if not
profitably, employed.
It was not until the end of the epoch that
the gravities of public life began to appeal tc
me. I owed the new bent to a memorable
association at Ahmedabad with the late Sir
Pherozeshah Mehta, then, and until the close
of his long and honourable career, the first of
Indian statesmen. He was one of the counsels
engaged in a cause celebre in which an Indiai)
Civil Servant was tried by a commission of hit
peers for a peculiarly sordid offence. I wa*
AN OUTSIDER'S ODYSSEY 95
the special correspondent of the Times of
India; it was my first essay in an unfamiliar
genre. There being no hotels at Ahmedabad,
and as the dak bungalow was full of officials,
many of those connected with the trial stayed
at the Railway Station, where the waiting
rooms were many and comfortable, and the
catering of the Goanese bulter, Mr. Athaide,
wholesome and satisfying. Gladstone's Home
Rule Bill was then the burning question of
English politics, and it was the inevitable and
invariable topic at our dinner table. The dis-
cussion was excellent refreshment after a long
day in court. The Englishmen, to wit, Mr. J.
D. Inverarity, the famous leader of the Bombay
Bar, Messrs. Frank Chalk and Reginald
Gilbert, solicitors as famous, were, after the
manner of their kind, Unionists to a man. It
was their delight to make me frantic by their
clever perversions of Ireland's case ; I was no
match for them, but when I was fit to cry with
rage, Mehta would come to the rescue, and the
combat of wits took on a different complexion.
Cum duplicantur lateres venit Moses. The
Parsee publicist had a complete mastery of the
Irish question in all its aspects, historical,
religious, and economic ; and his presentation
96 JOURNALISM IN INDIA
was so lucid and forceful that my tormentors
soon became listeners instead of disputants.
What attracted me most of all was his adroit
application of the logic of Gladstone to the
conditions of India, in many cases similar to
those of Ireland. This led me to study the
grievances and aspirations of the Indian
school of politics of which he was the most
brilliant leader. It made me realize that
sport was not the whole of life in India, but
only its recreation.
Printed and published for the Banna Publishing Co.,
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