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| Adatata Narayanan, Aruna Asaf Ali |
By Rajiv Shah
Alternative media, as we know it today in the age of information and communication technology (ICT), didn't exist in the form it does today during or around the time I joined formal journalism at Link Newsweekly as a sub-editor in January 1979. However, Link, and its sister publication Patriot, a daily—both published from Delhi—were known to have provided what could be called an alternative media platform at a time when major Delhi-based dailies were controlled by media barons.
Founded by two Left-of-centre freedom fighters, Aruna
Asaf Ali and Edatata
Narayanan (who was also a prominent journalist and a former Communist Party member), Link began publication in 1958, and Patriot was started in 1963. The two together, no doubt, provided me with enough opportunities and freedom to write and report on whatever I observed around me for 14 long years, until June 1993. Married to a semi-Left, Nehruvian slant, their orientation seemed to suit me, given my then Left-wing ideological leanings.Alternative media, as we know it today in the age of information and communication technology (ICT), didn't exist in the form it does today during or around the time I joined formal journalism at Link Newsweekly as a sub-editor in January 1979. However, Link, and its sister publication Patriot, a daily—both published from Delhi—were known to have provided what could be called an alternative media platform at a time when major Delhi-based dailies were controlled by media barons.
Though, compared to other big dailies published from Delhi like The Times of India, Hindustan Times, and The Indian Express, Link-Patriot didn’t pay well—one reason many of those who found greener pastures would leave—I never made the slightest effort to “jump” over to another paper. Perhaps I thought—and I don’t know if I was wrong—that the freedom Link and Patriot gave me wouldn’t be found elsewhere.
What, however, disturbed me throughout my 14-year stint, which included working as Moscow correspondent for Patriot and Link from 1986 to 1993, was their blind adherence to whatever was happening vis-Ã -vis not just the Soviet Union but the entire Soviet bloc, as it existed until the USSR collapsed in 1991.
Such was the adherence that before I went to Moscow in February 1986, I was made to meet the Soviet ambassador. It was supposed to be a courtesy call, and the meeting was so lackadaisical that I never cared to remember what he had told me—except for the excellent coffee.
A recent social media interaction via an encrypted chat gave me some idea of the type of reliance Link-Patriot had on the Soviets. I am sure, through some channels, the Soviets must have been financially helping the papers, but I never cared to find out.
Ironically, such was the Soviet involvement that even divisions within the journalists’ ranks of the Link House—the building which housed the twin publications—were influenced by how Moscow behaved. The interaction revealed that in the late 1960s, an “uprising” took shape in Link House, inspired by the Soviet-led August 1968 Warsaw Pact intervention in Czechoslovakia!
Taking a cue from what this social media interaction revealed, adding few of my personal experiences, here I am trying to summarize the type of relations Patriot-Link had with the Soviet Union.
During the late 1960s, Czechoslovakia, under its then-leader Alexander
Dubcek, began showing signs of restlessness with the controlled economic system and the Soviet Union's “iron grip” on the Eastern Bloc countries. Dubcek started tinkering with his country's economic policies and spoke of democratic freedoms, which alarmed Soviet ideologues and army generals. They, in turn, cautioned Leonid Brezhnev, then the Soviet supremo.
Alarmed by KGB feeds from Prague, Brezhnev ordered Warsaw Pact troops to crush Dubcek's ambitions, and this had repercussions—imagine!—in Link House. The next day, All India Radio broadcast a commentary on the Czech developments. The commentator was Patriot special correspondent Balraj Mehta. He wholeheartedly supported Dubcek's plans to loosen the shackles of state control on the media, among other things.
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| Brezhnev, Dubcek |
Like Brezhnev in Moscow, Narayanan in Link House was highly alarmed by this. How could a special correspondent under him dare go out, identify himself as a Patriot correspondent, and voice his views on such an affair without first clearing it with him?
The next day, when the journalists arrived at the office, the editorial section peon stopped each one at the entrance and herded them to a corner to read a notice pasted on the wall. The notice directed all staff not to appear on radio or write for any outside publication without explicit permission from the editor.
Word went around that Balraj Mehta could be sacked at any time. In fact, Narayanan wanted to sack him first thing in the morning but was restrained by Aruna Asaf Ali, who, among others (including the later Justice Krishna Iyer), argued that sacking him without an enquiry would violate labour laws.
The notice threw the entire office into turmoil. The news bureau unitedly seemed to challenge Narayanan, who was in Moscow at that time and was sending his editorials from there. His editorials strongly justified the Soviet move, which was not liked by members of the bureau, who favoured Dubcek's efforts to democratise his country.
Such was the impact of the Warsaw Pact intervention in the tiny Eastern European country on Link House that there were rumours bureau members were holding secret meetings at different places and lobbying with some CPI and Left-wing Congress bigwigs for support in their stand against Narayanan. CPI leader Bhupesh Gupta's name was often mentioned among their supporters.
A confrontation was building up. Aruna Asaf Ali called it a conspiracy. Members of the bureau who supported Dubcek were labelled badasses and bad apples. Except for two—one of them Narayanan's nephew—all lined up against Narayanan's hardline. There was also talk that activists from the CPI headquarters, Ajoy Bhavan—a walking distance from Link House—suggested the entire affair was engineered by Aruna Asaf Ali as part of a power struggle within Link House.
Those who opposed Narayanan’s stance on Dubcek were first-generation stalwarts, nearly all veteran members of the CPI, steeled in many a labour and kisan agitation, or participants in intellectual and ideological struggles. They were well known in Communist circles and had access to the highest quarters in the party as well as the Congress’ left circles. They were able to garner some support from Ajoy Bhavan.
However, for Narayanan, supporting the Soviet Union in its aggression against Czechoslovakia was uppermost in his mind. He set aside Ajoy Bhavan's suggestion not to act against the “dissenters.” He might have left the CPI because he wanted to be a freeman instead of a party man bound by its ironclad party line, but his commitment to the Soviet Union remained unflinching. In the end, the parting of ways came about within weeks: Narayanan sacked them all.
The result was that all those who supported Dubcek’s reforms—Balraj Mehta, OP Singhal, Girish Mathur, Ganesh Shukla, and CN Chittaranjan—were “sacked,” though Chittaranjan was “later forgiven” and “allowed to rejoin.”
Of these, OP Singhal, who was the first to dissent on the Soviet intervention in Czechoslovakia, was a powerful figure. He wanted to write a critical editorial or an article for the edit page, but was denied permission by Narayanan, who was then in Moscow.
Singhal was a big man at Link House, a remote, shadowy figure, an expert on Arab affairs, particularly close to the Arab League, the Iraqi Ba'ath Party, and Nasser Leftists in Egypt. A portly figure, he had the build and looks of an overfed ‘lala,’ which was nowhere close to our image of a lean-and-keen Left intellectual. A globetrotter, he was always visiting countries like Egypt, Czechoslovakia, Poland, or Hungary—or returning from such visits.
Aruna Asaf Ali criticised Singhal’s “decadent bourgeois lifestyle,” citing his “many costly crystal glass items displayed in his sitting room and his expensive crockery and cutlery,” which she regretted hadn’t been handed over to the office on whose behalf he had made these visits and received such gifts as marks of “friendship" with Patriot-Link.
One day, it was found that Singhal, who was a former secretary of Uttar Pradesh CPI and was often seen as Narayanan’s successor, had disappeared and his room was locked. This happened after he published what was considered an anti-Soviet, pro-Dubcek article in the Congress-controlled National Herald.
At least on two occasions, the Soviet ambassador in Delhi came down to Link House to intercede. First, following the impact of the Dubcek rebellion, and then after a press workers’ strike. Perhaps the Soviets thought such rebellion wasn’t good for the two Soviet-supported journals.
Quite in line with Patriot-Link's support for the Soviet Union, the twin publications continued the same line during Indira Gandhi's Emergency declared on June 25, 1975, when the Soviets supported Indira’s move.
Narayanan—who had a snarling relationship with Jayaprakash Narayan, leader of the Total Revolution, which led to the extreme step—seemed to follow the Soviet dislike for dissenters. He was of the view that dissent led to disruption, and disruption led to the rise of reactionary forces, as he believed had happened in Link House.
Edatata Narayanan passed away in 1978 at the age of 59, a year before I joined Link House as sub-editor, a junior-most position. At that time, Link's editor was Venugopala Rao, while Patriot had a new editor, RK Mishra, who was brought in from the Jaipur bureau for his wide connections with the powers-that-be in Delhi. VD Chopra, brought from Chandigarh, was made chief of bureau.
Not only did I write freely in Link Newsweekly, mostly interviewing scholars, including foreign ones visiting Delhi, but I also wrote for Patriot, including on the editorial page. In August 1985, I was sent to Havana to cover the World Indebtedness Conference, and on my return, I was offered the position of Moscow correspondent for both papers, which I promptly accepted.
During my stay in the Soviet Union, the Soviet information department organised exclusive trips to various parts of the country, offering me a competent interpreter so that I didn’t “go wrong.” However, on occasion, I found the Soviets were “displeased” with my reports. But as Gorbachev’s reforms had already come to stay, I doubt they made any complaint to my bosses in Delhi.
The first instance was when I wrote an article quoting a Soviet research journal about the ageing Russian countryside. The second was when I went to Daghestan and interviewed poet Rasul Gamzatov, who told me there was no such thing as “Soviet poetry”; it was either Russian or Daghestani poetry. And the third was during a visit to a Buddhist-dominated area of western Siberia, where, while watching an exhibition, a local told me how Buddhists were “tortured and killed” by Soviet forces.
The Patriot-Link “love” for the Soviet Union continued until 1991, when the Soviet Union collapsed. Failing to end the financial crisis of Patriot-Link, apparently a direct result of the emerging Soviet crisis, editor RK Mishra made an aborted attempt to “sell” the publications to the Ambanis. He quit and founded Business and Political Observer with Ambani support. Chopra became editor-in-chief.
On the morning of August 19, 1991, news of a coup woke me up in my three-bedroom Moscow flat, not very far from the Kremlin. Soviet chief Mikhail Gorbachev, under criticism from hardliners for allowing "too much freedom," was put under house arrest in his Crimean dacha.
Factually reporting on what had happened, I went out to attend to an unavoidable personal engagement. On my return two hours later by metro, I found people, dumbstruck earlier that day, now talking freely. I got down at Red Square near the Kremlin and was surprised to see military personnel refusing to cooperate with the authorities—olive leaves stuffed in the barrels of their tanks.
Later in the day, I attended a press conference by coup leader Gennady Yanayev, whose fingers, I noticed, were trembling as he struggled to answer foreign correspondents’ questions. That evening, I got phone calls from well-known Indologist Eric Komarov, a close friend who lived on the way to Sheremetyevo International Airport. He gave me minute-by-minute descriptions of Soviet troops and tanks entering the city.
Komarov’s frequent calls defied logic—people should have been afraid of informing someone by phone during a coup. I quoted him as saying the coup was "destined to collapse"—he wanted me to! For three days, I filed stories, reporting on demonstrations and how Boris Yeltsin became the anti-coup leader, standing atop a tank to address the rebels.
None of my coup stories appeared in Patriot. During a short visit to Delhi about a year later, I came to know that the stories had been sent to CPI general secretary Indrajit Gupta, otherwise quite a reasonable person, who spiked them all.
A few months earlier, the Russian Parliament had been meeting to pass a resolution to make Russia "free" of the Soviet Union, a protest against Soviet leadership. The Soviet militia rushed to surround the Parliament. I, accompanied by a student, penetrated the militia circle, showing my press card—but not before a militiaman tried to intimidate us with a rifle butt.
I filed a story suggesting the first signs of the collapse of the Soviet Union had already become visible, quoting Russian protesters on Gorky Street. The story landed late in Delhi after the editors had left. The next morning, the old telex machine rang, waking me up.
My editor, VD Chopra, was on the line. He was angry I had filed the story. He said my story had been taken as the lead, but that this was not what Patriot readers were interested in—they wanted the Soviet Union to stay together. My story, he said, gave the wrong impression and “differed” from the news agency copies that had appeared in "other papers."
I promptly thanked him for taking my story as the lead, but said, what could I do if the country was collapsing? I was the only Indian reporter on the spot; others had filed based on government-controlled Tass handouts. Obviously, my story had to differ. I also told him how his "pro-Soviet newspaper correspondent" had been manhandled by the militia with a rifle butt, and wondered if he wanted a separate story on it.
“No no, enough is enough,” was the reply!
The next day, when the journalists arrived at the office, the editorial section peon stopped each one at the entrance and herded them to a corner to read a notice pasted on the wall. The notice directed all staff not to appear on radio or write for any outside publication without explicit permission from the editor.
Word went around that Balraj Mehta could be sacked at any time. In fact, Narayanan wanted to sack him first thing in the morning but was restrained by Aruna Asaf Ali, who, among others (including the later Justice Krishna Iyer), argued that sacking him without an enquiry would violate labour laws.
The notice threw the entire office into turmoil. The news bureau unitedly seemed to challenge Narayanan, who was in Moscow at that time and was sending his editorials from there. His editorials strongly justified the Soviet move, which was not liked by members of the bureau, who favoured Dubcek's efforts to democratise his country.
Such was the impact of the Warsaw Pact intervention in the tiny Eastern European country on Link House that there were rumours bureau members were holding secret meetings at different places and lobbying with some CPI and Left-wing Congress bigwigs for support in their stand against Narayanan. CPI leader Bhupesh Gupta's name was often mentioned among their supporters.
A confrontation was building up. Aruna Asaf Ali called it a conspiracy. Members of the bureau who supported Dubcek were labelled badasses and bad apples. Except for two—one of them Narayanan's nephew—all lined up against Narayanan's hardline. There was also talk that activists from the CPI headquarters, Ajoy Bhavan—a walking distance from Link House—suggested the entire affair was engineered by Aruna Asaf Ali as part of a power struggle within Link House.
Those who opposed Narayanan’s stance on Dubcek were first-generation stalwarts, nearly all veteran members of the CPI, steeled in many a labour and kisan agitation, or participants in intellectual and ideological struggles. They were well known in Communist circles and had access to the highest quarters in the party as well as the Congress’ left circles. They were able to garner some support from Ajoy Bhavan.
However, for Narayanan, supporting the Soviet Union in its aggression against Czechoslovakia was uppermost in his mind. He set aside Ajoy Bhavan's suggestion not to act against the “dissenters.” He might have left the CPI because he wanted to be a freeman instead of a party man bound by its ironclad party line, but his commitment to the Soviet Union remained unflinching. In the end, the parting of ways came about within weeks: Narayanan sacked them all.
The result was that all those who supported Dubcek’s reforms—Balraj Mehta, OP Singhal, Girish Mathur, Ganesh Shukla, and CN Chittaranjan—were “sacked,” though Chittaranjan was “later forgiven” and “allowed to rejoin.”
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| Yeltsin atop a tank, August 1991 |
Singhal was a big man at Link House, a remote, shadowy figure, an expert on Arab affairs, particularly close to the Arab League, the Iraqi Ba'ath Party, and Nasser Leftists in Egypt. A portly figure, he had the build and looks of an overfed ‘lala,’ which was nowhere close to our image of a lean-and-keen Left intellectual. A globetrotter, he was always visiting countries like Egypt, Czechoslovakia, Poland, or Hungary—or returning from such visits.
Aruna Asaf Ali criticised Singhal’s “decadent bourgeois lifestyle,” citing his “many costly crystal glass items displayed in his sitting room and his expensive crockery and cutlery,” which she regretted hadn’t been handed over to the office on whose behalf he had made these visits and received such gifts as marks of “friendship" with Patriot-Link.
One day, it was found that Singhal, who was a former secretary of Uttar Pradesh CPI and was often seen as Narayanan’s successor, had disappeared and his room was locked. This happened after he published what was considered an anti-Soviet, pro-Dubcek article in the Congress-controlled National Herald.
At least on two occasions, the Soviet ambassador in Delhi came down to Link House to intercede. First, following the impact of the Dubcek rebellion, and then after a press workers’ strike. Perhaps the Soviets thought such rebellion wasn’t good for the two Soviet-supported journals.
Quite in line with Patriot-Link's support for the Soviet Union, the twin publications continued the same line during Indira Gandhi's Emergency declared on June 25, 1975, when the Soviets supported Indira’s move.
Narayanan—who had a snarling relationship with Jayaprakash Narayan, leader of the Total Revolution, which led to the extreme step—seemed to follow the Soviet dislike for dissenters. He was of the view that dissent led to disruption, and disruption led to the rise of reactionary forces, as he believed had happened in Link House.
Edatata Narayanan passed away in 1978 at the age of 59, a year before I joined Link House as sub-editor, a junior-most position. At that time, Link's editor was Venugopala Rao, while Patriot had a new editor, RK Mishra, who was brought in from the Jaipur bureau for his wide connections with the powers-that-be in Delhi. VD Chopra, brought from Chandigarh, was made chief of bureau.
Not only did I write freely in Link Newsweekly, mostly interviewing scholars, including foreign ones visiting Delhi, but I also wrote for Patriot, including on the editorial page. In August 1985, I was sent to Havana to cover the World Indebtedness Conference, and on my return, I was offered the position of Moscow correspondent for both papers, which I promptly accepted.
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| Indrajit Gupta |
The first instance was when I wrote an article quoting a Soviet research journal about the ageing Russian countryside. The second was when I went to Daghestan and interviewed poet Rasul Gamzatov, who told me there was no such thing as “Soviet poetry”; it was either Russian or Daghestani poetry. And the third was during a visit to a Buddhist-dominated area of western Siberia, where, while watching an exhibition, a local told me how Buddhists were “tortured and killed” by Soviet forces.
The Patriot-Link “love” for the Soviet Union continued until 1991, when the Soviet Union collapsed. Failing to end the financial crisis of Patriot-Link, apparently a direct result of the emerging Soviet crisis, editor RK Mishra made an aborted attempt to “sell” the publications to the Ambanis. He quit and founded Business and Political Observer with Ambani support. Chopra became editor-in-chief.
On the morning of August 19, 1991, news of a coup woke me up in my three-bedroom Moscow flat, not very far from the Kremlin. Soviet chief Mikhail Gorbachev, under criticism from hardliners for allowing "too much freedom," was put under house arrest in his Crimean dacha.
Factually reporting on what had happened, I went out to attend to an unavoidable personal engagement. On my return two hours later by metro, I found people, dumbstruck earlier that day, now talking freely. I got down at Red Square near the Kremlin and was surprised to see military personnel refusing to cooperate with the authorities—olive leaves stuffed in the barrels of their tanks.
Later in the day, I attended a press conference by coup leader Gennady Yanayev, whose fingers, I noticed, were trembling as he struggled to answer foreign correspondents’ questions. That evening, I got phone calls from well-known Indologist Eric Komarov, a close friend who lived on the way to Sheremetyevo International Airport. He gave me minute-by-minute descriptions of Soviet troops and tanks entering the city.
Komarov’s frequent calls defied logic—people should have been afraid of informing someone by phone during a coup. I quoted him as saying the coup was "destined to collapse"—he wanted me to! For three days, I filed stories, reporting on demonstrations and how Boris Yeltsin became the anti-coup leader, standing atop a tank to address the rebels.
None of my coup stories appeared in Patriot. During a short visit to Delhi about a year later, I came to know that the stories had been sent to CPI general secretary Indrajit Gupta, otherwise quite a reasonable person, who spiked them all.
I filed a story suggesting the first signs of the collapse of the Soviet Union had already become visible, quoting Russian protesters on Gorky Street. The story landed late in Delhi after the editors had left. The next morning, the old telex machine rang, waking me up.
My editor, VD Chopra, was on the line. He was angry I had filed the story. He said my story had been taken as the lead, but that this was not what Patriot readers were interested in—they wanted the Soviet Union to stay together. My story, he said, gave the wrong impression and “differed” from the news agency copies that had appeared in "other papers."
I promptly thanked him for taking my story as the lead, but said, what could I do if the country was collapsing? I was the only Indian reporter on the spot; others had filed based on government-controlled Tass handouts. Obviously, my story had to differ. I also told him how his "pro-Soviet newspaper correspondent" had been manhandled by the militia with a rifle butt, and wondered if he wanted a separate story on it.
“No no, enough is enough,” was the reply!
I left Patriot-Link in 1993 to join The Times of India, Ahmedabad. Their publication stopped in 1996. More recently, Patriot was revived in a new avatar as a weekly periodical. Call it my indifference, I haven't seen it in any detail.
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