Kasturi Buildings on Anna Salai, Chennai, which houses the offices of The Hindu.
Note the use of “Allied” in the headline. Britain, France and Israel had issued an identical
In 1956,
Deepavali fell on November 1. As usual, it was a closed holiday for The Hindu.
That meant there would be no paper the next day. The previous day the management
circulated the customary holiday notice. Britain and France, which were annoyed
with President Gamal Abdul Nasser who nationalized the Suez Canal, had begun
air raids on Egypt and the Government of India had set November 1 for inauguration
of the linguistic States to be formed in the light of the States Reorganization
Commission’s report.
I
thought it was a pity that the paper was taking a holiday when such
developments were taking place and felt it should at least make arrangements to
bring out a supplement. A lowly sub-editor with just three years’ experience,
in the highly hierarchical Hindu establishment I was too small a fry to broach
the idea to the management. I, therefore, conveyed my view to S. Rangarajan,
the youngest and most dynamic of the three News Editors who preside over the News Room. I
suggested that the management should make arrangements to bring out a
supplement and alert the news agents about it so that they would collect the bundles
and distribute the paper.
S.
Rangarajan
SR (in
the Hindu editorial department everyone was known by initials) liked the
suggestion and told me he would talk to the management about it. A little later he informed me that the
management had accepted the suggestion and arrangements were being made to
produce a thin edition. I was happy that my suggestion had been accepted. But my
happiness was short-lived. SR told me a little later that the management had had
second thoughts and there would be no special edition.
To avoid
having to handle news copy of two days the day after a holiday The Hindu had
devised a system which involved a small group of sub-editors processing the
copy on the holiday. They were not required to come to the office for that. An office
boy would bring the copy to the house and take it back after editing, to be
typeset during the night. The work may take an hour at the most but they would
get a full day off as compensation for having worked on a holiday! I was put on
holiday duty but I told the Head Messenger not to send copy to my house as I
planned to come to the office in the evening.
On
arrival at the office the next evening I went through the agency files. There
was a flood of news. A sunken ship had blocked the Suez Canal. Israeli forces
had crossed into Egypt. For the first time the UN General Assembly had been
called on 24-hour notice to discuss the situation. Egypt’s supporters had moved
the General Assembly as Britain and France could block any Security Council initiative
using their veto power. Jawaharlal Nehru, who inaugurated the Andhra Pradesh
State at Hyderabad, in a hard-hitting speech, condemned the aggression against
Egypt, calling it a throwback to the days of barbarism.
I
telephoned SR and gave him a gist of the developments. I told him the
management had made a mistake in giving up the plan to bring out a supplement.
He said he would talk to the management again and asked me to wait at the office.
SR called back soon to say that the management had accepted the idea of a special
edition. He asked me to stay on and said he would arrange with the Time Keeper
to send a vehicle to fetch a Batch Leader (that was how Chief Sub-Editors were
known in the paper at that time) and two more Sub-Editors.
Rangaswami
Parthasarathy
As I was
talking to SR I saw Rangaswami Parthasarathy (MP), a Batch Leader, walking in. (Since
the initials RP had already been taken, when he moved to The Hindu from The
Mail, he was assigned the initials MP, short for Mail Parthasarathy). SR spoke
to MP who was only glad to stay on to produce the special edition.
In those
days The Hindu used to carry classified advertisements on the front page. Even the
biggest story of the day got only a single column headline, but it could have
three decks of 24 pt, 14 pt and 18 pt, in that order.
Since
there were no classified ads, we could carry news on the front page of the
supplement. Having worked in The Mail, MP was familiar with multi-column
headlines.
“How
about a banner?” MP asked me. “Wouldn’t the Editor get a heart attack?” I asked
him. “We will take that risk,” he said.
MP also
broached the idea of a box item. So I picked an item to be boxed.
Stories
on the formation of new states came in from different capitals. MP asked me to
produce a combined intro for the news agency copy on the subject. I wrote something
like this: The map of India was redrawn today ….
The UN
General Assembly’s special session was opening at 0130 hrs IST. A stenographer who
had been summoned went to the room where there was a large, powerful radio set
and tuned into a station which was relaying the UNGA proceedings, and we prepared a
brief report of our own without waiting for news agency copy.
MP
prepared a layout which provided for a big headline running across all eight
columns of the front page. The Suez war
story ran in columns 1 to 3 and Nehru’s Hyderabad speech in columns 6 to 8. The
states reorganization roundup was the bottom spread.
We
produced a four-page edition. Late at night we realized that we have to mention the
price at the top o the ront page. MP woke up SR to ask what price we should mention. He said he had to
consult the management. Its decision was that the thin special edition should
be sold at the same price as the regular edition.
I was
entitled to take the next day off as I had done a night shift. But I decided to go to the oice in the evening as I was
eager to know how the special edition had fared. When the bus reached the Egmore railway station I saw a hawker
doing brisk business with the special edition.
At the
office, SR told me that city distributors who were alerted by the Time Keeper
during the night had come in the morning and picked up copies of the special edition . It sold like hot cakes all over the city and printing continued throughout the day as distributors kept
coming back, asking for more copies. He had just advised the management to stop printing the special edition and start printing of the Dak editions of tomorrow's paper which had to be sent by night trains.
An
office messenger handed me a letter while I was there. It was from the
Editor, Kasturi Srinivasan, expressing the management's appreciation of the work of the small
team which had responded to an urgent call and helped produce a special edition at
short notice.
On
January 14, 1958 The Hindu started printing news on the front page. In a survey
conducted the previous year, the newspaper had asked its readers whether they
would like it to carry news on the front page.
Those favouring news on the front page had only a small majority. Considering
that a large section of the readers was quite happy with classified ads on that
page, it was decided to change gradually. The layout pattern drawn up provided initially for only three two-column headlines on the front page: one at top of
columns 1 and 2, another at top of columns 7 and 8, and the third somewhere at
the bottom of the middle columns.
For more
on S. Rangarajan please see this report.
More on
Rangaswami Parthasarathy here.
Here are
images of special editions on the Suez War brought out by two Los Angeles newspapers.
Note the use of “Allied” in the headline. Britain, France and Israel had issued an identical
communiqué
simultaneously from their capitals, announcing the launch of the
attack on Egypt. It referred to their forces as Allied forces. This communiqué was the only source of information for the Indian press as the national
news agency depended on Reuters of Britain and AFP of France for foreign
news. World War II, in which British India had figured among the Allies, was
only 11 years behind at that time, and the use of the term Allies in the reports
which the Indian newspapers carried attracted criticism. The US
was not involved in the attack on Egypt.
Yet the LA newspapers too used the term Allies to refer to the
aggressors.