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Speeches of Alagappa Chettiar |
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Speech of Dr. Chettiar at a Journalist Conference in Thanjavur I am deeply thankful to the organizers of this gathering for inviting me to declare this conference open and to participate in your deliberations. I am not a journalist at all though I hold the position of honorary editor of Tamil weekly, the KUMUDAM - but as an industrialist and as one in the furtherance of education and as one profoundly concerned, as I know all of you country, I am vitally interested in the role which you play in the country in promoting its progress and welfare. On the Sound functioning of the Press depends the sound functioning of democracy in this as in other lands. On the sound functioning of the working journalists including in this category, every type of worker in the field of journalism, from the reporter to the Editor, depends the sound functioning of the Press. You are the men - I hate to use the word 'machinery' in contexts like this, thought it is common - who make the press function in this country. It is well for us, members of the public, to be aware of this, and I feel that it is not merely proper but absolutely essential that you should be constantly and clearly aware of your functions and responsibilities of your indispensable and essential role in the sound operation of democratic institutions at all levels in this country. In you Chairman, my friend Mr.N.Raghunatha Iyer you have not merely the doyen of South Indian journalism, but one who brings a depth of culture, as intellectual integrity and professional of competence, altogether beyond comparison and estimate. It is fortunate that South Indian journalism has one like him functioning - it will be ever more fortunate if men like him could always be attached to the profession. But, if we cannot all of us achieved that detachment, judicial dispassion and insight and mastery of affairs of Mr. Raghunatha lyer we can keep these ideals before ourselves always, and by steady, sincere and earnest striving seek in some measure to be worthy of a profession led by him. It is a special piece of luck that at this second conference of South Indian Journalists I am addressing, Mr. Raghunathan is in the chair. It lightens my burden, which I should also have shuddered to shoulder, and gives me confidence. I have already referred to the need for a clear recognition by the Press and the Public alike of the important role that the Press plays in the effective functioning of democratic institutions. I am aware that many of you feel acutely conscious of a very considerable lack in the public's realisation of the importance of your role. You are naturallyLooking for some tangible proof of this realisation - in the shape of status and emoluments appropriate to your important functions and onerous responsibilities. Even the rather exhaustive - and exhausting too - Press Commission report of Rajadhyaksha has, I fear, failed to give complete satisfaction. I am not surprised. The report seems to me to concern itself in less than due measure with the role of the working journalist, who is the vital base of the pyramid. Its recommendations are not knave - proof. Your working journalists are apprehensive that 1) either the implementation of the recommendations will be delayed indefinitely - by Government hesitating, or 2) they will be defeated or evaded by owners and managements in ways now no longer" unfamiliar to us. But speaking not as a representative of big business but as a member of the public, I venture to tell you that these apprehensions should have no place in your minds at all. You have it in your power to compel the authorities on the one side and the owners on the other to deal justly with you. Organisations like the South Indian Journalists Federation, to which you are affiliated, enjoy an intangible but none the less effective power to influence on policy and administration Naturally enough, except at these annual gatherings, you do not refer to your own domestic problems. The habit of concerning yourselves with the problems affecting the future as a whole - a most healthy habit and one for which the public cannot be too grateful - ,as bred in you a certain relative indifference to your own. I respect this spirit of self-effacement and the very noble devotion, which generations, of working journalists have shown to the public interests in utter disregard of the conditions in which they had to discharge that task. The limitations of pay, leisure, privileges, opportunities and status under which you labor today grievous enough in all conscience - are, I dare say you know as nothing compared with the conditions in which your predecessors of a generation ago had to function. But they were comforted by a sense of vocation, by the inexpressible joy of duty well done, by the spiritual content bread by a conscious- ness of serving the public interest. Pray remember that numerous occult as well as open obstacles were strewn on the path they had to tread. And beyond a]] doubt, without parading themselves as martyrs, they served their day and generation and built up the unique institution that we know today, the Indian Press. True, money-power and sectionalisms of various obnoxious kinds have penetrated the field of Indian Journalism to some extent. This, however, is not a local, or a national problem, but a world problem. But believe me, nothing in the technical advances of today on the side of production and distribution of newspapers displaces the working journalist. The reporter on the spot has to bring his sense of fact, his sense of relevance, his sense of proportion, his sense of duty, his sense of the public interest (in all the senses of that term), his sense of duty no less than the highest degree of professional competence, to bear on his task - and so too, all the various functionaries through whom news is channeled to the public in the form of a crisp half column of news. I do not have to stress to you the need for keeping unpolluted the stream of information, news of which you are the guardians. The great C.R. Scott had for his maxim "comment is free, Facts are sacred" Today however, tendentious reporting to some extent the result of the normal appetite for tabloid presentation of facts and views, which' has unfortunately grown in India - is taken to be inevitable by many. Perhaps, it is. But I venture to think that it is your duty not to accept the inevitable but to fight it. Fight it, with all your resources behind you. Pray, do not mistake the present mood of the public for 'interesting presentation of news' as one favoring the varying degree of distortion that news suffers at the hands of partisan journalism. For be it from me to say that you should not serve a policy or an ideal. But the service of the ideal of your choice need not - unless it is a low ideal and unworthy one and will not involve any dishonest selection of facts or distortion of their context or setting. It is rather unwise if not dangerous to measure the development of one country by the standards of another except in matters fundamental to human nature. The comparison of one country to another is certain walks of life may not be quite correct. Hence I feel a certain hesitation hefore I am tempted to measure the growth of the Press in India with the standards of other countries. India has got her own special problems, particularly that of language. It does no good to compare the extent of circulation of a paper in England or America with that of a paper in India. One has to realise that whether it be in England or America or in Japan, language for the entire country is just one and only one. India is faced with a net work of language though for the time being English occupies a dominant role. I do trust that the owners of the English Dailies and certain major language dailies will take advantage of their present accumulated strength and so run the papers for the common good of the general mass of the country and not merely ofthe sections whose need is language of the paper. Only by such a voluntary realisation of their sacred duty can these newspapers be of good to the general good of the country. As I talk of journalism I an naturally led into the subject of 'the journalist'. It has been unfortunately freely assumed in certain sections of the society that when one is not properly equipped fox any one specific that when one is not properly equipped for any one specific trade or profession the safest way out into useful employment for a person would be to become a journalist. This you will agree with me is a most unhappy assumption of the requirements of the noble profession of a journalist. To my mind a journalist requires a capacity so vast to observe, so deep to realise and so educated as to properly react. News unlike lenier measurements can connote different views in different backgrounds. Technical correctness is not necessarily rectitude . A temptation to pass of seemingly correct statements as true statements should ever be resisted by a true journalist. Society today is fast becoming a very complex organisation. The factors that inconvenience society for good or evil are increasingly becoming more and more. Amongst the facts that influence the society of today the newspaper plays a very vital role. The over-emphasis to a statement, or the complete ignoring of an important statement, the passing reference to something of vital_ interest to the society are indicators of a likely abuse of this potent instrument - the newspaper. It is of utmost importance that the journalist, right from the reporter and right upto the general editor should keep the high conduct of ethics always with a full realisation that the technological advances of the modern day have placed in him the vital weapon which he can easily use as a surgeon's knife to heal or as a murderer's sword to wound. May it never be said of this great profession that when the trial come they were found wanting in their duty to the good of the society. Remember above all that you are members of a profession, not of a trade, it is the characteristic of a profession that its guiding consideration is not professional profit but the service of an ideal. Yours is the task of educating, fashioning and organizing public opinion into an effective instrument of government. Democracy, after all, is Government by public opinion, government by discussion. This can proceed only if you function as you should. May you realise the supremely vital role you do play in ensuring that 'government of the people, by the people, for the people, does not perish from the earth.'
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