C. L. R. SASTRI

Journalist as a Man of Letters

Dr. D. ANJANEYULU

What has journalism to do with literature? Or, to put it a little differently, how does the one compare with the other? It was Oscar Wilde who answered the question in his own, characteristically witty manner, when he said: “Journalism is unreadable, while literature remains unread.” Sounds a trifle too cynical – doesn’t it?

Time was when journalism was described as literature in a hurry, or literature in the making. In the 18th and 19th centuries, in England quite a few able and reputed authors started as journalists and made a mark in the profession. Joseph Addison and Richard Steele, Samuel Johnson and Oliver Goldsmith in the 18th century; William Hazlitt, Charles Dickens, Leigh Hunt, Dequincy and Thackery (Cornhill Magazine) in the 19th century, distinguished themselves as reporters, editors or columnists first and then only as full-fledged authors. Among the other celebrities who came on the scene later were: Rudyard Kipling (Civil and Military Gazette and Pioneer), I. M. Barrie, C. E. Montague (Manchester Guardian), Middleton Murry (Athaeneum), Eric Linklater (The Times of India) in England and India, and Edmund Wilson (New Republic and Vanity Fair) in America. The position was not very different in France.

In our own country, several generations of educated young men were deeply influenced by the classics of English literature; some of them were also inspired by the achievements of English journalism. This writer is able immediately to think of at least four or five scholar-journalists, who had imbibed these influences to good effect and gave creative expression to their talent. They are – S. Rangaswami and N. Raghunathan (Both of the Hindu), K. Iswara Dutt (Twentieth Century), M. Chalapathi Rau (National Herald) and C. L. R. Sastri, who died in Bombay earlier this year.

Unlike the other four, Sastri was a freelance, almost throughout in his career, as also a kind of loner almost all his life. But like Iswara Dutt, he was always full of Fleet Street the street of ink and opportunity, of adventure and romance; of aspiration and achievement, not unmixed with obstacles and heartbreaks. Like Iswara Dutt again, he was a brilliant stylist, a conscious craftsman, a conscientious artist in the field of journalism.

There are two significant facts in the life of Sastri which can be interpreted by others to have had a bearing on the choice of his career and the formation of his character. The first is that he was the eldest son of (Sir) C. Y. Chintamani, the great Liberal and Editor of Leader, Allahabad. He was born towards the fag-end of the last century (the last day of the last month, if this writer’s information is correct) and the dawn of this.

One can only speculate on the effect of genes on one’s mental make-up. One may be permitted here to say that “journalism” ran in Sastri’s blood. Even if the statement is known to be “unscientific” in a biological sense, it would pass muster as a handy and useful metaphor. The father who must have experienced the insecurity and other hardships inseparable from a journalistic career, wanted his son to be a lawyer, not a journalist. With his independence of judgement and obstinacy of temperament, the son wouldn’t listen to him and followed his own line of thinking and action. He had no second thoughts, though he was soon to find that there were more kicks than half-pence then in an occupation, which had not yet become a respectable profession.

After Matriculation from Visakhapatnam, his home-town, Sastri took his B. Sc., degree from the Allahabad University. Both at school and college, he topped his class in English. He soaked himself in English literature, not unlike the father, whose acquaintance with the classics of English literature, history and biography was admirable, though he could not get through the F. A. Examination, because of his allergy to Mathematics and Physics. Sastri made full use of his father’s vast collection of books, along with the newspapers and periodicals available in the library of The Leader, equipping himself for a writing career.

Birth in the last century and growth in the early years of this, had the contributory effect of imparting to Sastri’s intellectual matrix something of the opulence and leisureliness of the former, along with a lot of Edwardian elegance and attachment to form. His models were the best of English eassayists and belle-lettreists from Charles Lamb and William Hazlitt (for whom his admiration was this side idolatry), to R. L. Stevenson and G. K. Chesterton, Augustine Birrell and E. V. Jucas, A. G. Gardiner and Robert Lynd, J. B. Priestley and Aldous Huxley.

On the importance Sastri attached to form in writing, one can do no better than invoke the memory of two noted stylists he admired on either side of the English channel, whose observations on the subject he took as his motto. One of them is Anatole France, who said:

“Form is the golden vase, wherein Thought, that fleeting essence, is preserved to Posterity ...... Woe betide him who despises form, for a work endures by that alone”.

The other is James Agata, who quipped:

“ .....I have always been willing to embezzle £10,000 provided my victim was wealthy. On the other hand, my artistic conscience will never let me leave a sentence less good than I know I can make it by taking trouble”.

Nor did it ever, in the case of Sastri himself. He took a lot of trouble over his words and sentences, playing the sedulous ape to the great masters.

Making his debut in journalism in the late ’Twenties, Sastri attracted immediate attention by his vigorous punch and allusive style, by his urbanity and scholarship, as well as by his courage and candour. Unable to adjust himself to institutional requirements and exigencies of circumstances favouring expediency against principle, he preferred to remain unattached and functioned as a freelance. His articles on the political situation (the Round Table Conference and allied topics) were much appreciated by editors like Sir Stanley Reid and Sir Francis Low. Sir A. Ramaswami Mudaliar, who had a high regard for his father, hailed him as “a chip of the old block, if not the old block itself.”

Sastri’s models in the journalistic profession, apart from his father himself (with whom he had an ambivalent relationship) were drawn from a brilliant galaxy of British editors and leader-writers of different political hues. Prominent among them were: C. P. Scott, C. E. Montague (Manchester Guardian); Geoffery Dawson (The Times); H. W. Massingham (Nation), J. A Spender (The Westminster Gazette); H. M. Temlillson; A. G. Gardiner (Daily News); J. L. Garvin (Observer); W. T. Stead (Pall Mall Gazette and Review of Reviews); Clifford Sharp (New Statesman); and Gerald Barry (News Chronicle). Among the Indian editors, he had a particularly high opinion of Dr. Sachchidananda Sinha (Hindustan Review); Ramananda Chatterji (Modern Review) and K. Ramakotiswara Rau (Triveni).

Not only did he contribute regularly to some of these Indian journals (and later to Crossroads, Hiltz, Mainstream) but wrote brilliant pen-portraits of their great editors in Triveni and other periodicals. He also wrote a series of extremely informative articles on Indian journalism (perceptively personalised) in the Bombay magazine, The Journalist (started by Ayaz S. Peerbhoy) in the middle ’Forties and early ’Fifties, which this writer found very useful in his prentice years as a journalist.

Apart from numerous articles on the subject. Sastri published a book Journalism (280 pages), brought out by Thacker & Co., Bombay, in 1944. Scholarly and stylish, it is eminently readable and remains so even today, provided you are interested in the subject, which can, strictly speaking be called “Glimpses of Fleet Street, then and now.”

Introducing the book, the author says, by way of a confessional and an apology in one:

“My only excuse for jumping at the idea of writing this book is that journalism has always had a strange fascination for me, and that “the stream of tendency”, not ourselves, that chooses our careers for us made me forsake many other callings in order, as I fondly hoped to shed a lustre on this one. In the process, more often than not. I have had no career whatever to speak of, and have had to content myself with being a mere flotsam and jestsam on the ocean of life”.

There are here well·formed chapters devoted to journalism and literature, new journalism and old, and important figures of journalism in England and in India a review of reviews as also on “Middles” and leading articles, which the big guns of the commercialized fourth estate of today feel are no longer read by any men and women who matter.

But, the still small voice cannot be quite stifled by the booming guns, whose noise is more menacing than that of the establishment – political and administrative. That voice is represented by professional writers, sensitive and conscientious like Ivor Brown, who said:

“I suggest that we want a little journalism movement as well as a little theatre movement, the little journalism to be the voice of the few speaking to those who are not magnetized and mesmerised by a glamour about the net sales of two million ... The big journalism is a legitimate industry in the commercial scramble; the little journalism is a social necessity in a civilized community. It is our duty and our advantage to remember its past, to consider its present, and to foster its future.”

The “little journalism” so convincingly commended here, the practice of which was aspired to by Sastri, has been represented after a fashion by Triveni during the last 60 years and more. Not surprising, therefore, that Sastri was drawn to it, as a contributor, very soon after its inception, and has been a regular contributor since, till almost his end (his “Salutation” to the Founder-Editor appearing in the Diamond Jubilee Number). He had probably written for it about 30 articles over the years on subjects relating to journalism and literature.

Some of them were pen-portaits of great editors – British and Indian. One was that of C. Y. Chintamani (his father), who was not pleased with the performance, though the editor stood firmly by the contributor who said, among other things:

“Curiously enough, he was not a ‘Moderate’ in any sense of the term: in the name of ‘Moderation’ – that creed on which he throve like a cedar of Libanon he wrote the fiercest articles possible. No Congressman ever broke a lance in the cause of his cherished political principles as he did in the cause of his. Just as he was the Leader he was the Liberal Party as well; his name was co-terminous with both......”

Of British editors he wrote on H. W. Massingham, H. M. Tomilinson, J. A. Spender, A. G. Gardiner. G. L. Garvin, Kingsley Martin and Gerald Barry, along with a few of their Indian counterparts. These could be collected in book form; and the book Journalism could be re-printed. Together, they could form a valuable contribution to the history and tradition of serious journalism, useful to the university students of journalism.

Sastri’s articles on his favourite English writers, ranging from Shakespeare and Hazlitt through Meredith and Bronte to Shaw and Chesterton, Kipling, Maugham and Wodehouse mayor may not be erudite essays in literary criticism. They are certainly delightful appreciations for the intelligent general reader, earnest exercises in literary journalism. The author may not have grown through the years in subtlety or sophistication. Like Peter Pan in another context, he remains lovable for his style is refreshing and his gusto, is infectious.

Back