Narad
THE passing away of G Kasturi, former editor of The Hindu, on 21 September has sadly attracted little attention in the media. One supposes that editors, howsoever distinguished are not in the same category as film stars, the death of any of whom sends our media into hysterics, as Press Council chairman, Markandey Katju recently noted.
Editors don’t thirst for attention. They are seldom in the news. One refers, of course, to editors of a bygone age when an editor was held in the highest regard, unlike today’s editors the existence of whom few seem to be aware of. G Kasturi belonged to the fourth generation of editors, if we presume that Pherozeshah Mehta belonged to the first generation, Bal Gangadhar Tilak to the second and Kasturi Srinivasan to the third. G Kasturi was Srinivasan’s nephew and was trained by him but a great deal of credit goes to Kasturi not only for adapting the latest in newspaper technology – like offset printing, facsimile transmission of whole newspaper pages, photo composition, full page pagination, iMac working on page design etc, but for keeping ahead of the times in all spheres of editorial activities. Todate he remains the longest serving editor of The Hindu, having served in the post from September 1965 to January 1991 – a period of more than a quarter of a century.
As N Ram, who recently retired as editor-in-chief of The Hindu Group of papers has noted, for Kasturi, The Hindu was his life. Conservative in some ways (and thank God for that!) the paper may have been, but in technology and in any other ways, it has been far ahead of the times. He led from up front and transformed the paper from a leader in South India into one with a national reach with editions from a dozen across-the-land cities. In every way he was a visionary. No wonder that The Hindu in 1968 received the World Press Achievement Award of the American Newspaper Publishers’ Association Foundation. A man with a hands-on experience in evry aspect of publication, his staffers even now speak with wonder about Kasturi’s insistence in staying with the printing department to look into such remote areas as colour-scanning equipment and how it works. To put it mildly, he knew every aspect of journalism and that was his forte.
There aren’t any like him in today’s world. The Hindu excels in other areas as well. It is the only newspaper in India that has institutionalised the office of the Readers’ Editor, an independent internal news ombudsman functioning with clearly formulated Terms of Reference modeled on those of the UK paper The Guardian. The job was first held with great grace by K Narayanan, an earlier News Editor of The Hindu. He was succeeded by S Vishwanathan who retired in June. The third appointment is AS Panneerselvan who will serve a 2-year term, totally independent of the Editor.
According to the paper, Panneerselvan has been Reuters Fellow of the University of Oxford (1998) and has lectured at School of Oriental & African Studies (SAOS), University of London and other distinguished academic centres. Earlier, The Hindu (September 2) had expressed an apology for carrying what it called an “inappropriate headline” for a report on the efforts of Dalit entrepreneurs. The so-called offensive headline read: “Suited and Booted, Dalits Aim Big”. The headline apparently drew objections from “a number of readers who, confessed the paper, “have rightly objected to the tone and tenor of the headline that was given by a staff member of the editorial desk in Bangalore”.
Said the paper: “We regret the tone and condescension in the headline which did not reflect the contents of the report of the editorial policy of The Hindu”. Actually, even before any reader complaint had reached the paper, it had obviously decided that the headline was in bad taste and in its own on-line edition changed it to ‘Dalits’ Enterpreneurs Reach For The Sky”. If Dalit readers were touchy, it seems the paper’s editor was even more so. Time was, decades ago, when lawyers, doctors, teachers et al wore, not suits, but dhotis and turbans and being “suited and booted” was the only way to appear modern and ahead of times. But, one supposes, peoples’ sensitivities change and one has to be careful not to sound cheeky or superior. But whose sensitivity should one be careful not to hurt? That of politicians? There was quite a hue and cry when The Washington Post published not-so-friendly a report on Dr Manmohan Singh. Similarly, a report in the British paper The Independent carried a headline that said: “Manmohan Singh – India’s or Sonia’s Poodle?” Should the editor of the paper have been asked to apologise? An American shoe-maker, it was reported, had a picture of Ganesha imprinted on each pair. What should Hindus have done: Attack all US Embassies round the world and kill American officials? Hindus are as much sensitive to attacks on their religion and to their Gods but they have wisely decided to treat the news with the contempt it deserves.
The manner in which Muslim fundamentalists destroy temples seems to be nobody’s business. When, for example, some of them defaced and disfigured the tall and beautifully carved stone figures of the Buddha in Afghanistan, the reaction was mute. Only recently Shri Krishna Bhagwan Mandir in Karachi was vandalised by a mob rallying against the anti-Islam film Innocence of Muslims in which Hindus had no hand. To whom can one complain?
The Times of India (October 2) carried an article on its edit page by Maulana Wahid-ud-din Khan, a distinguished scholar who noted that “abuse of the Prophet is not a subject of punishment, but is rather a subject of peaceful adminishment”. Referring to “more than 200 verses in the Quran” the Maulana made the point that “nowhere does the Quran prescribe the punishment of the lashes or death or any other physical punishment” to those who indulge in ‘blasphemy’. As he put it, “looked at from this angle, the stance of present-day Muslims goes totally against the teachings of the Quran” – a very brave thing to say. But think of what an unruly mob of Muslims did in Bangladesh. They destroyed twelve Buddhist temples and monasteries and more than fifty houses of Buddhists because some one had allegedly posted a photo on Facebook defaming the Holy Quran. Being ‘sensitive’ to other peoples’ pain, suffereing etc exalts life. Only, how one wishes it is used to alleviate that pain, whether physical or emotional, than to inflict more of it on those who differ from us!
