November 21, 1953
Progressive People's Party
against
the union recognised by the employers and the previous government.
K n o w i n g what type of union employers all over the world like to
recognise, when the dispute is between the workers in the sugar plantations and owners of these plantations, one need have no access to
secret police documents to understand what is what. Moreover, the
relation between a ruling party and
trade unions is a matter that people
in any country would rather decide
for themselves. If this is denied,
the Transport House should get
active and truculent w i t h the Government of India for its alleged preferential treatment to the Congress
sponsored I N T U C .
The limited self-government granted to British Guiana under the Constitution that has now
been suspended reserved the portfolios of
police, finance and some other essential matters to British civil servants.
So the situation created by the expulsion of the popular party from the
Government is not very different
from the deadlock in the provincial
legislatures in the. regime of Dyarchy.
The White Paper* on the suspension of the constitution in British
Guiana deserves to be circulated very
widely in this country so that people
can see what stage has been reached by the national movement in
British Guiana. These landmarks
are all too familiar to us. Fomenting of strikes for political ends, attempting to oust established trade
unions by legislative action, removal
of the ban on the entry of West
Indian communists, attempt to repeal the Undesirable
Publications
Ordinance, plan to secularise church
schools, and undermining the loyalty
of the police, good God, have we
not heard all these before?
True, the P P P fomented race
hatredIts propaganda was antiWhtie. Forget for the moment the
use made of this particular section
of the penal code under the British
regime- Must all colonial people
have the philosophic attitude that
springs from the. Indian soil and if
they have to get a government of
their own only when they have a
Gandhi to lead them, they can only
look to Moscow for deliverance, since
Gandhis are not horn every day.
Or Jag an w i l l have the wholehearted support of the people even
* Cmd. 8980 British Guiana: Suspension of the Constitution. London. Her
Majesty's Stationary Office. 9d. Available from British Information Services,
New Delhi.
though the Government of I n d i a
for diplomatic reasons may not
welcome h i m w i t h open arms.
There is not a shred of evidence in
the White Paper to suggest the existence of a Communist plot. Assuming that the P P P has associations w i t h the communist i n ternational trade union organisation, does it automatically disqualify
it, though freely elected by the peo-
Britain has given the answer in the
case of Indo-China. I n d i a has not.
Having started on the inclined
plane what the British have got to
in British Guiana w i l l gladden the
hearts of communists but i t w i l l
seriously perturb Pandit Nehru. On
this question, the people have a
right to demand a forthright answer from him.
Last of the Stalwarts
w
I T H Sadanand doses a
chapter in the history of
journalism in this country. News
papers are new better produced, have
much bigger circulation and arc incomparably better in the presentation of news. But it is big business
today. There is no room for the
non-conformist in them. Finance,
technical equipment, organisation
and business management—these
determine the fortunes of a newspaper, not its politics or its news
angle; it no longer serves a cause.
Sadanand, though not: old in
years, belonged to the old generation of newspapermen in the sense
that he look up newspaper work in
the spirit of a mission and not of
busmess, albeit in
his time he
handled large funds, lost money and
made money and perhaps played
with money " Played " is the term
to use, for he had the temerity at a
time when the British regime was in
trill vigour and Renters, the British
news agency, was working hand in
glove with the Government of the
day to challenge the suptemacy of
its
imnenusis
powerful
international news combine.
Apart
from the economics of it, it was a
challenge against the unholy influence of news which was filtered and
disinfected of all matter that was
no! to the liking of the powers that
were. Those who knew how difficult it was to get the correct news
when the press and people were
fighting the Government of the day
need not be told how foolhardy the
attempt was, and vet how worthwhile.
Though he belonged to the order
of the old stalwarts in making newspaper work his mission of life, Sadanand was in a way ahead Trot only
of that generation, but. even of the
present, for primarily he was a newsman and where news was concerned,
he was extraordinary alert, and as
cager for promptness of transmission
as the most enterprising and forwardlooking of American newsmen. The
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Free Press Beam Services, which he
started, was intended to be ahead of
the times even in the technique of
transmission. It flopped. That was
not surprising. But it failed as
much for the politics as the economics of it, which was rather an unpleasant surprise to those who chose
to remain blind to the realities
behind newspaper enterprise when it
develops into big business.
The pioneer in news agency work
in this country was the late K C
Roy, the founder of the Associated
Press, lie was the First to set up
an Indian news agency in this country, He ran it at great cost and
with the utmost sacrifice; but it was
heart-breaking work, for even the
nationalist newspapers were not responsive. Alter an unequal fight, he
succumbed.
The Associated Press
lived on, but as a subsidiary to
Reuters. Sadanand failed in his
first attempt: tried again with no
better result; but he did not succumb. His last effort after independence also failed, but this time
he was gambling for big stakes and
any other man would have been
broken by this failure. It: could
not break Sadanand 's spirit.; but his
health suffered and the end came
much sooner than was to be normally expected. Even those who
have known him intimately find it
difficult to believe that Sadanand was
only 53 at the time of his death.
The burden of years seemed to bear
heavily on him. But it was not physical ailments alone that: had aged
him. He squeezed into his comparatively short life activities that others
could hardly cover in a much longer
span of years.
Starting to report news as a lad of
17, he was challenging Reuters before
he was 30, and along with news
agency work, which was his first
love, he brought out the Free Press
Journal on his own at an age
when few journalists get i n dependent charge of the news
desk.
T h e Free Press Journal
was a secretarial success from
its first appearance and on the
crest of the Civil Disobedience movement which was then sweeping the
country, it carried aloft the banner
of a free press u n t i l the Government
of the day shut it up by imposing
fine after fine which reached the
staggering total of Rs 70,000.
Again in the ' Q u i t India Movem e n t ' of 1942, the Free Press journal came out as the champion of
freedom of the press; but by then,
the Government had succeeded in
l i n i n g up newspaper editors on its
side and alas, the days of independ
ence had already ended. Naturally,
it was Sadanand again who was the
first to come forward when the
Government of Free India brought a
Press Bill which, this lifelong champion of a free press thought, was
intended to curb this freedom. The
protest had its effect; but the opposition put up by the newspapers
fizzled out. Nevertheless, Sadanand's
jounals still bear the motto on the
top of the editorial columns: " Freedom of expression is our birthright
and we shall not rest until it is
fully guaranteed by the Constitution ". V i t a l , if sometimes mercurial, frank and outspoken to a degree,
a man of so much energy was bound
to have his moods and rages. He
had a rare quality of leadership; but
no man who has inflexible standards
and fines not spare himself can spare
others.