Media History Monographs 16:2 (2013-2014) ISSN 1940-8862
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Media History Monographs 16:2 (2013-2014) ISSN 1940-8862 Speculating “National”: Ownership and Transformation of the English- Language Press in India During the Collapse of the British Raj Deeptanil Ray Jadavpur University ABSTRACT The imminent collapse of the British Raj in India following the Second World War marked the formal entry of Indian big business speculators into the English-language newspaper business. It was more than a transfer of ownership from British to Indian hands: it merged the Indian speculators’ cravings for respectability, their becoming editor-proprietors of newspapers published in the colonial language of power, with a desire to expand the frontiers of what essentially were city-based dailies. Recording its disaffection with the overtly nationalist histories of the Indian press, this article outlines the historical circumstances in which the newspaper business in India functioned prior to the entry of the Indian big business speculators. It concludes by delineating the horizons of expectations of the English dailies in India conceiving “national presence” in the soon to be post-colonial future. ©2013, Deeptanil Ray Speculating “National”: Ownership and Transformation of the English-Language Press in India During the Collapse of the British Raj With the end of the Second World War, singly, two and a quarter centuries after the the press situation in the geographical zone yet first newspapers appeared in print in the to be marked and territorially designated as the Indian subcontinent, specific histories of the Republic of India was undergoing a decisive English-language press in India in the colonial shift. While the press photographer’s flashbulb era remain few; still fewer, histories of various camera occasionally chose to record moments Indian-language newspapers which were anti- of pain, misplaced glory, peasant uprisings, pathetic to colonial rule.2 More serious are the religious riots, mass killings, an Empire’s utter conceptual problems which have not always inability to sustain its rule and the exodus of been clearly confronted by researchers of the more than five million refugees across new Indian media: the hitherto unexplained transi- imagined borders, the newspapers themselves tion of newsmaking businesses from colonial- were changing. This was a period when ism to post-colonial identities and the deli- different clans of the Indian big bourgeoisie berate insistence on a nationalist history of the who had profited much from the war made a press in India, the general negligence of frenzied rush to secure shares of British questions concerning ownership, and the enterprises, and some of them chose the path ahistorical foregrounding of the “missionary to glory and enhanced prestige by becoming journalism” of Indian-owned newspapers to editor-proprietors of English-language news- the extent that we are made to forget that papers. There were others, who had provided newspapers in British India were also busines- financial help to newspapers owned by Indians ses run for profit, both economic and symbol- in the past; they now thought of hitching the ic.3 fortunes of their other businesses to the As this article will try to demonstrate, the prestige associated with the English-language changes that occurred in the English-language newspaper business. When the fears of press in India during the final days of the Bri- “sedition” seemed to disintegrate before tish Raj had little to do with the missionary Britain’s “shameful flight, by a prema-ture zeal of a unitary pan-Indian “nationalism,” hurried scuttle” (as the old imperialist Winston which denies the complexities of the rise of Churchill prophesied during the first debate different forms of proto-nationalist move- over the Labour Party’s Indian Independence ments of resistance among the colonized peo- Bill at the British House of Commons1), the ples in the Indian sub-continent and their va- business of making “news” in India suddenly ried use of print.4 Nor does the “nationalist” appeared more lucrative than ever before. past attributed to the English-language news- Apart from the Statesman, which passed into paper fit comfortably with the history of com- Indian hands during the 1960s, all the major mercial newsmaking in India. Rather, the British-owned newspapers in India were changes and transformations of the English- acquired by Indian speculators in the space of language press in India during the twilight of ten years after the war. And serious plans were the Empire had more to do with the Indian afoot for expansion. big bourgeoisie and other newspaper proprie- A description of these acquisitions and the tors speculating on a “national presence” for expansion attempts of older newspapers their newspapers, and their desire to secure during this period is usually missed in the prestige and profit under a sympathetic post- various histories of the press in India. Distres- colonial state and its new leaders. Deeptanil Ray is JU-SYLFF Doctoral Fellow at the Department of English, Jadavpur University, India, and currently employed as a Project Fellow at the School of Cultural Texts and Records, Jadavpur University. His primary research interest is in the history of print culture in the Indian subcontinent. [email protected] Media History Monographs 16:2 Ray Newspapers, colonialism, Baldeo Das Birla, a Marwari banya,7 arrived and the Indian big bourgeoisie at Calcutta in 1896 fleeing from the plague in There is a popularly-held view that the In- Bombay, and with money amassed from dian big bourgeoisie were hostile to British im- gamb-ling on daily prices of opium. In perialism before the transfer of power in 1947. Calcutta, the old colonial capital of British- The proper view would be to see most of occupied India, Baldeo Das traded in wheat, them as immediate beneficiaries of the British silver, and oilseeds, and with his eldest son, gov-ernment’s “positive policy” of promoting Jugal Kishor, set up a firm which was one of limit-ed industrialization in British India after the leading exporters of opium to China.8 the First World War, while it followed the During the First World War, the Birla family recom-mendations of the Indian Industrial entered the cotton and gunny business. Commis-sion (1916-18), and through the Reaping huge speculative profits during the setting up of Tariff Boards. This policy helped course of the war, it emerged after the Tariff earlier com-pradors like the Tatas and other Boards as a major player in the textile, jute, Indian textile magnates who had reaped paper and sugar industries, apart from floating enormous benefits during the First World War insurance companies and a bank.9 While it to explore newer pastures; the grant of confidently explored different business government subsidies (protection) to the iron trajectories, and maintained a fine balance and steel, cotton, paper, jute, cement, and between differing business objectives—on the heavy chemicals industries led to the one hand, serving British imperial interests emergence of powerful new groups within the that included the efficient and profitable Indian business scene (going by the family handling of military contracts during the names of Birla, Sri Ram, Poddar, Dalmia Jain, Second World War, and on the other, Surajmull-Nagarmall, Ruia, Thapar, Chettiar, generously funding Gandhi and the Indian Naidu, Goenka, et cetera) whose economic National Congress on grounds of “nation- interests were closely interwoven with the alism”—the Birla family was cautious in the interests of the British imperial system in case of newspaper business. India.5 The Birlas were the consistent funders of The basic prerogatives of the British M. K. Gandhi’s journalistic ventures, the imperial system (“a capitalist order of society, Harijan and the Young India. After the Civil international collaboration between capitalists Disobedience Movement (1930), they of all countries, avoidance of drastic social extended generous help to the English- changes and respect for the fundamental rights language newspaper Hindustan Times, which of property”) were not contested for all was launched in 1924 by two die-hard practical purposes by anti-colonial Indian Congress loyalists and representatives of the economists and politicians when these Akali political intelligentsia in the Punjab capitalist groups built up their own “miniature Province, Madan Mohan Malviya and Lala capitalist system”; the only opposition that Lajpat Rai. In 1931, the Hindustan Times had they faced was from the secessionist demand shut down in general protest against the Press of the All-India Muslim League when it later Act passed by the British Government,10 staked its claim for a separate Muslim state.6 particularly protesting against a demand of Rs. Some of these comprador families supported 5000 as security from the paper. It reappeared Indian-owned newspapers to argue for their after three months with a great increase in its causes and run their advertisement; most circulation. Earlier, Malviya had converted the found proto-nationalist newspapers as newspaper to a public limited company with a convenient vehicles for boosting their social declared capital of Rs. 1,25,000, while issuing prestige that was denied to them by the shares in the name of “donors”; his manager snobbish affectations of the British-owned later recalled that the biggest donor was a “rich newspapers. The Birla family’s participation in young Marwari magnate” Ghanshyam Das the newspaper business during the colonial Birla,11 who also paid