The Times’ take on India’s first Independence Day
Journalism practice had a fixed aim - promoting the empire’s image in the West.
POUSHALI MITRA delves into the archives to show how the The Times of London reported the dawn of Independence for India.
Sixty-four years back when our nation had just stepped into freedom at that famous historical ‘midnight’ hour, several foreign and Indian newspapers reported India’s first day of independence. Among them was the British daily, The Times, which chronicled the event in a lengthy two column article – ‘India’s First Day of Independence: Jubilant Scenes in Delhi, Public Ovation for Lord Mountbatten’.
But how did it report the event?
Divided into five sub-heads, the article starts with jubilant scenes on the streets of Delhi, the stately rides of the Mountbattens and a bunch of elated Indians bowing to the British for letting them have their independence. The positive image is matched with perfect symbols such as the arrival of the long awaited ‘showers’ which renders a ‘green’ look to Delhi and the skies abuzz with ‘Hindu-Muslim ek ho’ echoes followed by Nehru’s historical ‘midnight speech’. The title of the third sub-head is particularly interesting as the newspaper promotes the empire into a wise -‘sagacious’- ruler.
And to prove this, the it adds an appropriate quote from the Indian statesman and philosopher, S Radhakrishnan – “When we see what the Dutch and French are doing to Indonesia and Indo-China we cannot but admire the courage and political sagacity of the British people.” Following this is the King’s goodwill message to the newly independent nation. Finally the news report ends with careful blending of the complex rhetoric of ‘us-them’ - colonizers and colonies - as Mountbatten, is proudly regarded as ‘one of themselves’ – the Indians.
Interestingly thisconstructed image of peaceful co-existence, mutual acceptance of geographical boundaries by India and Pakistan, an elated crowd celebrating around Mountbatten and the pageantry on the streets of Delhi and Calcutta, omits the harsh realities accompanying the first day of India’s independence.
August 15, 1947 was a day of violence, bloodshed, loss of life and livelihood, rape as thousands of refugees crossed borders seeking safe shelters.Historian Sumit Sarkar states at least 180,000 Muslims had been killed of which 60,000 were located just in East Pakistan (now Bangladesh) and 120,000 from the West Pakistan. Our very own partition literature experts Sadat Hassan Manto, Bhism Sahni, Urvashi Butalia, Ritwik Ghatak and several others have narrated the holocaust memories.
Then why was this crucial information missing from The Times coverage?
It was not that they had limited knowledge of India’s contemporary situation. By August 15, 1947 The Times had an experience of covering Indian affairs for 162 years. The article in question is the 22,84,751st news item on India, reveals The Times digital archive. The first news report was published on January 1, 1785, when the newspaper was known as The Daily Universal Registrar. Since then, India became an important beat in the newspaper. From Tipu Sultan to the 1905 Bengal partition, The Times covered all important events in the Indian history. But the journalism practice had a fixed aim - promoting the empire’s image in the West. And may be this gruesome tale of the Partition resulting from the ‘sagacious’ British rule, would blow away the carefully constructed good image of the empire.
Not only in this news item, The Times treated the Partition as a low key agenda throughout the final phase of Independence.
For my dissertation I studied news items published in The Times in the last days of the Independence - August 6 1947 to August 14 1947. The newspaper had published eight full-length news articles and 21 briefs on India’s Independence. On an average ¾ of entire column was provided in discussing the colony’s current affairs on pages 3 and 4 – the two pages usually reserved for reporting international issues. Among these full length news reports and briefs, only three dealt with the Partition violence, each about 100-150 words in length. For example: ‘More Calcutta Riots’ – a hundred word news brief published on August 8 and ‘Rioting in Punjab’ – a thirty-five word news brief by published on August 9 were the only two items on Partition violence. The first news brief does not mention any details about violence; instead it reflects the comments of local British officials and Chief Minister of Bengal. The second news item says a single sentence about the Partition: ‘Fourteen Muslims were killed in Ghazipur village, and seven people were stabbed to death in Amritsar.’
To be in the good books of the authority, the newspaper not only biased its journalism practice but also resorted to unethical recruitment policies. Incidents of firing India sympathetic correspondents were not uncommon. The History of The Times 1841-1884 (1939: pp 309-319), a volume on the news organisation’s company history,saysMeredith Townsend, The Times Calcutta correspondent, was disowned for being sympathetic to the Indians in the 1857 uprising and Cecil Beadon – the Home Secretary of the Government of India – was recruited in secret as the newspaper’s correspondent.
Sixty-four years later, when The Times management is being nailed for deleting important data in the phone hacking scandal, I only wish we could go back and charge them for omitting crucial details and suppressing facts that were part of our history of independence.