Patriots & Partisans

by Ramachandra Guha

  When I went back the following day, Mr Shanbhag had regained his composure. I bought some books and paid for them, and he made me sign some copies of a book I had written. He had, he said, a week more to run, before he put down his shutters and put himself in the hands of the eye surgeon. By now, word of his closure had spread. Every day the number of visitors grew. The great mound in the middle of the shop became shorter and slimmer. The top layers on the side shelves were peeled off by paying customers, to reveal books published in the 1980s and before, that had lain buried, unseen and unsold.

  On the first Sunday after Mr Shanbhag had made his decision known, a city magazine organized a photo shoot. Several writers were called to feature in the frame, among them the distinguished Kannada novelist U.R. Anantha Murthy. As he sat himself down among us, Anantha Murthy asked, ‘Why is Girish [Karnad] not here?’ I knew the answer: that great patron of Premier’s could not come because his daughter was getting married the next week. I said that Girish’s wife sometimes told him, when he came home with the day’s loot, that their house had begun to resemble Shanbhag’s shop, with books on the steps, books on the window sill, books on the kitchen counter, books everywhere including on one’s head. I added that my wife sometimes told me the same thing. There were laughs all around, the loudest from Mr Shanbhag.

  I went back several times the next week. Once I took my daughter along, so that she could buy her own last books from Premier’s, and also take some photographs of the shop and its owner. It did not look at all like a store that was soon to go out of business. Customers bumped into one another on the narrow walkways. Some faces were known to me—I had seen them, and they, me, in the same place for the last twenty years, and more. But there were strangers too, as well as surprises. A lady peeked in and asked Mr Shanbhag whether he bought old computer books. He quietly answered that he did not.

  In those last days and weeks at Premier’s, the friends and patrons of the shop suppressed their own feelings. For them, as for Achal Prabhala, Girish Karnad, my daughter and myself, the passing of the shop meant a void in their lives. Mr T.S. Shanbhag was not merely the most knowledgeable bookseller in Bangalore, but also the most likeable. But, taking our cue from the man, we would not display our emotions. We would see things as he, silently and by example, encouraged us to see them. A bookseller had carried out his calling with pride and integrity for four decades. Had he not earned himself a dignified retirement?

  Mr Shanbhag’s dealings with publishers, retailers, customers and strangers were always exemplary. Still, nothing became the man so much as the manner of his leaving. The last stages of the careers of our politicians, cricketers and film stars tend to be embarrassingly extended. Contrasting Mr Shanbhag’s behaviour with theirs, we were inspired to subsume our private sorrow in a public celebration for a career conducted with honesty and dignity, and always on its own terms.

  Chapter Fifteen

  The Gentle Colossus: Krishna Raj and the EPW

  ~

  A magazine is a despotism or it is nothing. One man and one man alone must be responsible for all its essential contents.

  —H.L. Mencken

  I

  The British historian E.P. Thompson once remarked that ‘India is not an important country, but perhaps the most important country for the future of the world. Here is a country that merits no one’s condescension. All the convergent influences of the world run through this society: Hindu, Moslem, Christian, secular; Stalinist, liberal, Maoist, democratic socialist, Gandhian. There is not a thought that is being thought in the West or East which is not active in some Indian mind.’

  Thompson must have been reading the Economic and Political Weekly (EPW), the Bombay journal where these thoughts and influences converge and meet. Rich in information and glowing with polemic, its pages are an index to the life of India. On subjects as varied (and important) as the economy, caste politics, religious violence, and human rights, the EPW has consistently provided the most authoritative, insightful, and widely cited reports and analyses. Among the journal’s contributors are scholars and journalists, but also activists and civil servants—and even some politicians.

  Like other such journals around the world, the EPW commands an influence far out of proportion to its circulation. It has shaped intellectual discussion in India, and has had a profound impact on policy debates. Can one see it then as an Indian version of the esteemed New York weekly, the Nation? There are some telling similarities. For one, both are appallingly bad looking. The well-loved columnist Calvin Trillin said of the Nation that it was ‘probably the only magazine in the country if you make a Xerox of it, the Xerox looks a lot better than the original’. More substantively, they have a similar philosophy or credo, this, in the words of the former Nation editor Victor Navasky, being ‘to question the conventional wisdom, to be suspicious of all orthodoxies, to provide a home for dissent and dissenters, and to be corny about it, to hold forth a vision of a better world’.

  Newsmagazines are mostly written by a staff of experienced and full-time reporters. On the other hand, opinion journals draw much more on freelance contributors and university scholars. As the historian Christopher Lasch pointed out, with the onset of television and the dumbing down of the mass media, these journals had become ‘the only surviving media in which scholars can talk to each other. They give the intellectual community what little unity and coherence it retains.’ That is true of the Nation; and even more so, one thinks, of the EPW.

  There is another way in which the profitable glossy is to be distinguished from the poorly circulated journal of opinion. In the words of the critic Dwight Macdonald, ‘a “little magazine” is often more intensively read (and circulated) than the big commercial magazines, being a more individual expression and so appealing with a special force to individuals of like minds’. These journals are to be judged not by the bottom line, but by their (often considerable) impact on shaping public policy and public debate and, beyond that even, by the love and loyalty of their readers.

  The EPW may be superficially compared to the Nation of New York or to the New Statesman of London. Think deeper, and the comparison is all to the EPW’s favour. For one thing, it has never allied itself (however loosely) to a political party. (The Nation is for Americans who vote Democrat; the New Statesman for Britons who vote Labour.) For another, it does not have a sugar daddy. Run on less than a shoestring budget, it has been chiefly sustained by the goodwill of its subscribers. But perhaps the most vital difference lies in its intellectual weightiness. Here were, and are, published the first and sometimes the finest essays of India’s most eminent intellectuals: of Jagdish Bhagwati, Krishna Bharadwaj, André Béteille, Amartya Sen, M.N. Srinivas and the like. Moreover, the quality (and influence) has been sustained now for more than half a century.

  The EPW is a unique three-fold mix of political prejudice, dispassionate reportage, and solid scholarly analysis. The weekly begins with a few pages of unsigned commentary, arch reflections on the events of the past few days. The second part of the journal is taken up with signed reports from around the country. Here we find the ‘news behind the news’, so to say, stories of conflict between landlords and labourers in Bihar or of ethnic and secessionist movements in North-East India. These reports are generally longer than what a newspaper would allow, and (but not for that reason alone) also more informative. The journal’s back pages are filled each week with book reviews and two or three academic papers, soberly presented and massively footnoted.

  The EPW represents an emphatic triumph of content over form. For, no journal I know is more depressing to look at. The cover has black type upon a white background, with a red band on the top left-hand corner representing a pathetic attempt at colour. The text inside is printed in nine-point size, with sixty lines to the page—these made less readable still by being set in columns. A recent ‘redesign’ has left the EPW looking much the same as before. The type remains small, the paper is still faded, the covers still wearyingly simila
r, but the articles as astonishingly diverse and unpredictable as ever.

  II

  The EPW began life in 1949 as the Economic Weekly. Its founder was Sachin Chaudhuri, a Bengali grandee from a talented family. One brother was a successful film-maker; another, a celebrated sculptor. Sachin himself was by turns a nationalist volunteer, an ascetic in the Himalaya, a PhD student in economics, and a market researcher. He was even, for a time, general manager of the pioneering film company, Bombay Talkies.

  This experience came in handy when Chaudhuri decided to start his journal. His timing was exquisite, for India had just become independent. The Economic Weekly quickly emerged as the focal point of intellectual arguments about the shape of the new nation. As befitting the times, much of the debate was about economic planning and development. But from the beginning the journal was about more than the dismal science. Thus in its first few years, it ran a series of essays (later collected in a book) demonstrating the continuing influence of caste on political life in India.

  In August 1966, the journal changed its name to the Economic and Political Weekly. By the end of the year, Chaudhuri was dead. He was succeeded by the economist R.K. Hazari, but within a couple of years, Hazari left for the Reserve Bank of India. The job was now handed over to one of the assistant editors, Krishna Raj. A Malayali from Ottapalam in Kerala, schooled at the Delhi School of Economics, he had worked with Chaudhuri since 1960. His tenure as editor was even longer than the founder’s, extending from 1969 until his death in 2004.

  I was first properly introduced to the EPW by my friend Bernard D’Mello. I had seen the journal as a student in Delhi University, but never opened it. In 1980, however, I joined the Indian Institute of Management (IIM), Calcutta, for a doctorate in Sociology. The same year Bernard joined the IIM. for a doctorate in Economics. But for some years past he had been an attentive reader of the EPW. His copy of the weekly, like so many others, was recycled. It was first read by Bernard’s father in Bombay, then passed on to him and, in turn, to me.

  When I went home to Dehradun for the summer, I missed the EPW terribly. After some days of searching I found a newsagent who stocked it. He was sited deep in Paltan Bazaar, a dense and particularly unattractive part of town, and at the other end from where I lived. To get there I had to walk a mile and a half in the sun, wait for a bus, sit twenty minutes in it when it did come, get off at the terminus and then trudge into the middle of the bazaar. Not that I minded. For, I was just discovering ideas, and discovering India. And where else would I find the most richly contentious ideas about India? On the way to Paltan Bazaar, I was driven by the anticipation of acquiring the new copy of the EPW, and on the way back by the enchantment of reading it.

  When I returned to the IIM after the holidays, I took out my own subscription. Now there were times when Bernard borrowed my copy. For, his own copy, diverted via his father in Bombay, arrived three or four days after mine, and often there was an essay or polemic of particular interest to him. At any rate, for both of us the EPW was the item in the post we most looked forward to. This was an experience that we had in common with a majority of the journal’s subscribers.

  Some two years after I joined the IIM, I was walking down the corridor, when I passed the office of Nirmal Chandra, a professor of economics known for his command of several European languages (Russian among them) and of the complete oeuvre of Lenin. His door was open, and he was sitting reading a book, a half-burnt cigarette in his left hand. He happened to look up as I passed and, to my surprise, called me in. (At that stage we had not exchanged more than half a dozen words.) As I entered his room, Professor Chandra searched for a piece of paper on his table, and handed it over, saying: ‘Here, this must be for you.’ I took it and walked out. The paper was coloured pale green; on closer inspection, it turned out to be an inland letter. The typed contents ran roughly as follows:

  Dear Nirmal,

  Jim Boyce was in the office recently, and told me of his meeting with a young scholar doing research on the history of forestry in India. They wereworking on adjoining desks in the National Library. Jim has forgotten his name, but thinks that he might be a student at your Institute. Can you locate him and see if he has something suitable for the EPW?

  Many thanks, and with regards,

  Krishna Raj

  After reading the letter, I walked back into Professor Chandra’s office. ‘Sir, what do I do about this?’ I inquired nervously. ‘Write back to him yourself, and tell him about your work,’ was the answer. I did as instructed, and received in reply a green letter, which said that the editor of the EPW was coming to Calcutta next month, and would be happy to meet me.

  My first meeting with Krishna Raj took place in an unlikely location—the Great Eastern Hotel. (He was staying there as a guest of the West Bengal government, who were hosting the seminar he had come to attend.) What struck me most forcibly was his reserve. His manner, his tone, his speech, all denoted a man of the utmost shyness. Was this the same person who wrote those sharp and pungent editorials, the same person who ran a journal known for the abrasive directness of so many of its articles?

  These first impressions were to persist, even when I later met Krishna Raj in his own office in Bombay. Here the austerity of the surroundings matched the asceticism of his own personality. Here he spoke somewhat more. But he still spoke softly. So softly, indeed, that one began sometimes to wonder: did he ever lose his temper at his wife, his children or his staff?

  The answers, most likely, were No, No and No. But the gentleness could be misleading. It was manifestly true, so far as his personal manner went. But it did not preclude decisiveness in his professional duties. To run a journal of this significance, of this diversity in contributors and contributions, and to do so week after week, required an authority, and authoritativeness, of a very special kind.

  The green inland letters that, for many years, were Krishna Raj’s chosen mode of correspondence had printed on it the journal’s address: Hitkari House, 284 Frere Road, Bombay 400038. In time the street, city and pin code all changed: to Shahid Bhagatsingh Marg, Mumbai, and 400001 respectively. Inside, the editor stayed the same. Visiting him in his office was a kind of secular pilgrimage. Hitkari House lay between Victoria Terminus (VT) and the head office of the Reserve Bank of India: in a part of Bombay dense with memory and history, and, above all, humanity. VT and the RBI were joined by a street chock-a-block with shops, the road overrun with cars and cycles and pedestrians.

  It was with some relief that one turned away from the street into the building that housed the journal. An unlit lift took one up to the sixth floor. It opened out into the EPW office; this a mass of cubicles linked by a narrow passage. Right at the end lay the cubicle of the editor. It was like any other: six feet by four feet, with a single small desk and two or three chairs. There was, of course, no question of air conditioning; the only luxury was a window which on a good day allowed in the elements of a breeze.

  The austerity went beyond mere appearances. For, Krishna Raj insisted that his own salary must not be more than five times that of the lowest-paid employee. In 2002, after thirty years in the job, the editor was paid Rs 12,000 a month. In that year the trustees of the journal doubled his salary, to match that of a university professor’s. It was still shockingly inadequate, when one considers the importance of the work, or the fact that he put in at least twice as many hours as did the most hard-working academic in India.

  Like most of his other writers, I knew Krishna Raj best through correspondence. As a subscriber, it was exciting enough to get the copy of the journal each week; as a contributor, it was even more thrilling to find one of those green inlands from the editor in the mail box. Unusually for a man of his generation, Krishna Raj took quickly and expertly to electronic communication. This was probably a relief to his foreign writers; but I speak for most of the desi ones when I say I missed those inland letters, distinctively coloured and still more distinctively worded. For, his signed correspondence, like his unsi
gned editorials, displayed a masterly economy of expression, one altogether rare among Indians who write in that still foreign tongue, English.

  In the two decades that I knew Krishna Raj we must have met on perhaps eight or nine occasions. The first time, as I have recalled, was in Calcutta; the last time, in Bangalore a few months before he died (he was in the city to visit his daughter, who lived there). All other times we met in Bombay, in his office. The editor was an oval-faced, handsome, white-haired man, with inquiring eyes peering out from behind his spectacles. On his desk there was a pile of papers two or three feet high: submissions to be considered or rejected. On a shelf was a row of books, one or two of which would be offered to the visitor for review.

  On my last visit, as on my first, I could not get over the sense of wonder as I entered the lift at Hitkari House. Who would have ever thought, when I used to go to Paltan Bazaar to get my cherished copy of the EPW, that I would one day go into the journal’s office, there to parley on more or less equal terms with the journal’s editor?

  As I grew older, the EPW gave me a promotion I esteemed highly. From ‘contributor’ I now became ‘contributor and talent spotter’. Much as I was once introduced to the journal via the economists James K. (Jim) Boyce and Nirmal Chandra, it now became my duty to pass on names of bright young things to the EPW. There were many others who were similarly elevated in the course of their own careers, and doubtless they were all as tickled as I was. But this device of Krishna Raj’s was no mere flattery; it was very good business. Indeed, this is precisely how he maintained the quality of the EPW over the long run. For, one of his very special gifts (which he shared with his mentor, Sachin Chaudhuri) was the ability to bring to the journal the best of the emerging talent in the social sciences.