A hundred years of Anandabazar Patrika: In black and white and red

A voice of protest, of struggles and aspirations, Anandabazar Patrika embodied the spirit of a nation in the making, writes Rudrangshu Mukherjee

Legacies are difficult to create, easy to obliterate. Newspapers, usually read over the morning cup of tea, have short memories and are remembered even less by their readers. Thus, the fact that Anandabazar Patrika is one hundred years old is a significant, if overlooked, milestone in the world of Indian journalism and the culture of Bengal.
 
The first edition of this daily appeared on March 13, 1922, which that year was Dol Purnima (Holi in north India). As if to mark the auspiciousness of the day, the first edition was printed in red. The significance of the choice of colour, however, did not escape the leading English newspaper in Calcutta of the time, The Statesman, which noted that the new daily at its very moment of birth was defiantly waving the banner of protest. Anandabazar Patrika had nationalism as its zodiac sign. This in the 1920s meant protest against the oppression of British rulers. Nationalism also signified hope – the hope of a nation in the making – and Anandabazar Patrika embodied this hope. It was self-consciously a part of history being made through struggle and through aspirations. Vande Mataram was the herald of the paper, and remains so even today.

 
The two friends, Prafulla Kumar Sarkar and Suresh Chandra Majumdar, who took the momentous decision to publish a newspaper called Anandabazar Patrika, were both ardent nationalists who had been jailed by the British. Prafulla Kumar’s son, Asoke Kumar, who took over from his father in the 1950s, had also been incarcerated by the British in 1932 when he was only twenty. In Bengal, Anandabazar Patrika became the voice of Indian nationalism. Those who worked in the paper saw themselves as freedom fighters. The coming of Independence changed this and the altered perspective was articulated in an editorial written on the occasion of India’s independence. The editorial warned that the celebrations of August 15, 1947 should not divert attention from the responsibilities that lay before the nation. The newspaper had to face the challenge of the transition from being an actor in the drama of a nation in the making to a bearer of the onerous tasks of making the nation.

 

Under the helmsmanship of Asoke Kumar, Anandabazar operated within the overall Nehruvian consensus, which was beginning to break down by the early 1960s under the impact of food shortages, slow economic growth and growing social inequalities. In West Bengal, Anandabazar’s natural habitat, the challenges were even more severe. The state was plagued by the problem of the influx of refugees from former East Pakistan, resulting in overpopulation, rising unemployment and growing social discontent. Violent demonstrations and destruction of public property on the streets of Calcutta and in the districts threatened the Congress, the ruling party in West Bengal till 1966. The violence was led first by the undivided Communist Party of India and later, after the party split, by the CPI(M).

 
Ideologically, the newspaper’s priorities were clear: it stood steadfastly against the forces of disruption represented by the communists. Asoke Kumar began the process of transforming a daily dedicated to the cause of nationalism into a professional newspaper capable of reporting on and assessing the emerging contemporary reality without fear.
 
Around 1970, when Anandabazar Patrika was battling Left rule in West Bengal, there happened another epochmaking event in which the newspaper became involved. This was the liberation of Bangladesh. One could say that given that it was a Bengali paper, Anandabazar Patrika could not avoid being involved in atragedy and triumph that affected the lives of millions of Bengalis. Within the newspaper and its operations, the event also threw into prominence a young man, recently returned from Britain after having interned under the legendary Harry Evans. This was Aveek Sarkar, the eldest son of Asoke Kumar. Aveek commissioned stories, photographs and first-person accounts to depict the war of liberation. Anandabazar Patrika thus became a household name in urban Bengal. Behind the scenes, he helped to set up the independent government of Bangladesh, which was then working out of Calcutta. The words “household name” is used advisedly since prior to this the Bengali literati read The Statesman .They began to think of Anandabazar Patrika as asecond paper because of its extraordinary and courageous coverage of the war.

 
Aveek’s role in the newspaper was enhanced by the sudden and untimely death of his father in 1983. He took over his father’s editorial mantle and his second brother, Arup, began to look after the business side of the operation. It seemed a heaven-made division of responsibilities. But even before his father’s passing, the editorial vision of the media house had become apparent. In the late 1970s and early 1980s, aseries of decisions were taken to expand the ambit of the family-owned organisation. This involved the launch of a series of English publications – Sunday, New Delhi, Business Standard, and The Telegraph. To this was added a Hindi magazine, Ravivar.

 
It was obvious that a deliberate effort was being made to move beyond a Bengali presence and gain an all-India one. There was another equally important aspect. For each of these publications, dynamic and professional journalists were appointed as editors.
 
MJ Akbar was the founder editor of both Sunday and The Telegraph; T N Ninan became the editor of Business Standard; SP Singh took on the reins of Ravivar; and Khushwant Singh edited New Delhi. A weekly dedicated to sports was also started and for Sportsworld the editor appointed was not a journalist but a celebrity-expert, Mansur Ali Khan Pataudi. Another celebrity, Aparna Sen, was brought in to edit Sananda, a magazine for women. Aveek remained editor-in-chief but the editors had the autonomy to run the publications as they wanted, provided excellence was not compromised. It was evident that in editorial matters steps were being taken towards professionalisation. The voice of the professional and the expert was becoming prominent. All these publications, except for New Delhi, were successful and made a mark in Indian journalism. When Akbar left the organisation, Aveek became the editor of The Telegraph and hired Vir Sanghvi to edit Sunday .The quest in these publications and in the flagship paper, Anandabazar Patrika, was excellence. The selection and presentation of stories and photographs, in the layout, in the choice of columnists – all that makes a newspaper/magazine more attractive and readable – were benchmarked with global best practices. Anandabazar Patrika became a regional language paper only in its language and script. Its outlook was national and global. The brand ABP, as the publishing house came to be known, was only coincidentally based in Calcutta. That coincidence, however, was not without significance. ABP was West Bengal’s only success story.

 
The aspiration to establish excellence made ABP act like a magnet for journalists. It became a kind of nursery where young journalists learnt the craft and went on to become famous. Similarly, many of the finest columnists began their career as columnists on one or the other of the ABP publications – Ramachandra Guha, Pratap Bhanu Mehta, Ashok Mitra, Ashok Desai, Gopalkrishna Gandhi, Mukul Kesavan to name a few.
 
Reading the emerging trends of globalisation, other noteworthy initiatives were put in place. These undermined the notion that ABP was a regional player. ABP and Penguin Books went into a venture to form Penguin India. Negotiations were opened with Financial Times to have acollaboration with Business Standard; this was scuppered by vested interests but it established ABP as the first mover in the field of bringing foreign capital and expertise in print media. From here it was but natural that in the early 21st century ABP would enter the television space, first by partnering with Rupert Murdoch and then independently.

 
All this is part of the editorial history of ABP, which is the abbreviated form of Anandabazar Patrika. The institution has changed its character, and may even have lost its wider vision and pioneering zeal. It has shrunk in its intellectual horizon. I wou ld like to argue that the pursuit of excellence cannot run against the current of socio-economic forces. The cancer of dec line has afflicted Bengal for over many decades. ABP valiantly ran against it but the emperor of maladies finally won. To invoke John Donne, no institution, like no man, is an island. ABP’s challenge is its hundred-yearold past: to speak to a national audience as it did in its halcyon days or to speak in the echo chamber of Bengal’s provincialism?