A triumph of content over form

For close to 25 years now, the item in the post I have most looked forward to is the Economic and Political Weekly. It comes in a faded wrapper, my subscriber’s address printed in barely distinct ink. The journal’s cover has black type upon a white background, with a red band on the top left hand corner, representing a pathetic attempt at colour. The text inside is in small print, a nine point-size in an unappealing font.

All told, the Economic and Political Weekly, or EPW as it is known, is an emphatic triumph of content over form. No Indian journal is uglier to look at; and yet, no Indian journal is more interesting to read. The EPW is little less than an index to the life of the nation. On subjects as varied (and important) as the economy, caste politics, religious violence and human rights, the EPW has consistently provided the most authoritative, insightful, and widely cited reports and analyses.

Founded in 1949 as the Economic Weekly, the EPW acquired its present name in 1966. In its 55 years, the journal has had only three editors. Of these, one, R.K. Hazari, only served for a couple of years. For the first 20 years of its existence, the journal was run by its founder, an expansive Bengali grandee named Sachin Chaudhuri. For the last 34 years, it has been run by Krishna Raj, a shy Malayali trained at the Delhi School of Economics.

Some weeks ago, the founder of the EPW was the subject of a sensitive tribute in these columns by Ashok Mitra. The occasion was the centenary of Sachin Chaudhuri’s birth. Now, sooner than any of us would have wished, it is my melancholy duty to pay homage to Krishna Raj on his death. He passed away in Mumbai on January 13, aged 67. He died as he lived, with a minimum of fuss, the victim of a heart attack suffered in his sleep.

In some ways, I stand in relation to Krishna Raj as Ashok Mitra once did to Sachin Chaudhuri. In the Fifties, when Ashokbabu first started writing for the EW, Sachinda was the indulgent editor who allowed the young man to attack the then regnant “Nehruvian” consensus from the Left. However, by the time I came to read (and write for) the EPW, Marxism had become the hegemonic ideology of the Indian intellectual. True, it was not a party journal, yet its pages were dominated by Marxists of various kinds, whether CPI(M) types, Maoists, or Trotskyists.

The first essay I ever published in the EPW, back in December 1982, was called “Ecological Crises and Ecological Movements: A Bourgeois Deviation?” As the title makes clear, the article was an attempt at persuading the Left that environmental problems fundamentally affected the lives of poor Indians; they were not, as the party faithful then supposed, a bourgeois deviation from the class struggle. Over the years, however, my interventions in the EPW were not so much a conversation with the Marxist Left as a kind of guerrilla warfare. I teased and provoked them: attacked them for their illiberalism and upbraided them for their hypocrisy. I cannot say if I had any impact, or indeed if the Marxists listened to me at all. But I was deeply grateful to Krishna Raj for giving me a voice. A more partisan editor would not have done so.

Twice I fought with the EPW and twice I made up with them. In this I was merely following the advice of a more esteemed contributor, the historian of education, Poromesh Acharya. Poromesh once told me about a sect of Gaudiya Vaishnavism where the devotee chastized the deity before merging himself in him. The EPW was like that to me: I could quarrel with it and scold it, but in the end I had to sue for peace. Life was impossible without it.

For its contributors, however, the EPW was much more than a vehicle for the articulation of their prejudices. It was equally a vehicle for the prejudices of others. Well before the internet invented the phrase, the EPW was a “virtual community” of thinking Indians. It was where one kept in touch with the work of one’s intellectual friends as well as one’s intellectual enemies. In its pages, and nowhere else, were to be found the best of India’s social scientists: across the disciplines, and across the political spectrum as well.

This community was forged and orchestrated by a conductor named Krishna Raj. Self-effacing to a fault, he did his work from a small office in the heart of Bombay. He communicated with his authors via mail: that is, snail-mail. Getting the journal every week was excitement enough. But more thrilling by far was to get a letter from the editor. These were immaculately typed, and sent in a specially printed inland-letter form, coloured pale green. In recent years, Krishna Raj had so far forgotten himself to take to email; no doubt a gain on the side of efficiency, but a matter of some regret for his writers, for whom that sight of green in their mail box sent their hearts racing as nothing else in their lives.

The inland letter had printed on it the journal’s address: “Hitkari House, 284 Frere Road, Bombay 400038”. In time, the street, city and pin code all changed: to Shahid Bhagatsingh Marg, Mumbai, and 400001 respectively. But inside, the editor stayed the same. Going to see him in his office was a kind of secular pilgrimage. Hitkari House lay between Victoria Terminus and the Reserve Bank of India: in a part of Bombay dense with memory and history, and, above all, humanity. The two grand buildings were joined by a street choc-a-bloc with shops, the road overrun with cars and cycles and pedestrians.

It was with some relief that one turn- ed away from the street into the building that housed the journal. A dingy lift took one up to the sixth floor. It opened out into the EPW office; this a mass of cubicles linked by a narrow passage. Right at the end lay the cubicle of the editor. It was like any other; six feet by four feet, with a humble desk and still more humble chairs. There was, of course, no question of air-conditioning; the only luxury was a window which on a good day allowed in elements of a breeze.

Over the years, I must have made perhaps a dozen trips to that office. On the editor’s desk there was always a pile of papers two or three feet high: submissions to be considered or rejected. On a shelf was a row of books, one or two of which would be offered to the visitor for review. Krishna Raj always looked the same: an oval-faced, handsome, white-haired man, with inquiring eyes peering out from behind his spectacles. He was apparently ageless, but also tireless. From that dusty and crowded room, he ran what was unquestionably the most remarkable journal in the history of independent India.

Young and old met in the pages of Krishna Raj’s EPW: so did left-wing and liberal, academic and activist. The journal was truly a broad church, as a single fact will testify. It was one of only two places where both Ashok Mitra (a deeply loyal communist) and the present writer (a professional communist-baiter) regularly contributed articles. But in the case of the EPW, Ashokbabu and I both wrote for free. Like countless others, now both of us shall miss Krishna Raj; miss his green letters, his gentle presence, his wise and sure hand. But I hope to be reading and writing for the EPW for a good many years yet. The life’s work of Sachin Chaudhuri and Krishna Raj must go on: for our sake, and for India’s.