India's Hartal

For one day last week, India was practically without news. More than 100 of India's newspapers suspended publication in a one-day hartal (Indian sitdown strike). Only nine major papers appeared.

India's press is a hodgepodge. There are the British-owned English-language papers: the Calcutta Statesman, the Bombay Times of India, etc. There are few Moslem papers (some English-language, some native), like the newly started Delhi Dawn of Obstructionist Mohamed Ali Jinnah. And there are the liberal, Hindu-owned English-language and Hindu-language papers, like the Calcutta Amrita Bazar Patrika and the Bombay Chronicle, that support Mohandas Gandhi. These latter, in the majority, are always whole-hog for Indian independence.

Before the war all Indian papers were fairly free; there were restrictions, but the British seldom applied them. When war came, Indian editors and British leaders agreed: 1) the press would not hamper Britain's war effort; 2) the Government would permit the papers to go on demanding Indian independence; 3) as a control, the Government retained the right to close any obstreperous publication after giving the offending editor full warning, a second chance. Things worked well until last August, when the suppression of Gandhi's civil-disobedience campaign culminated in disorders.

Heavy Hand. India's press at once felt Britain's heavy hand. Papers in Delhi were ordered to limit political trouble stories to three columns, use headlines not higher than a fifth of an inch over them. Elsewhere in India news offices were searched, some papers suppressed, some editors arrested.

India's editors stood it as long as they could, in late December decided to stage last week's hartal. They also decided to refuse to print, thenceforth, any unnewsworthy British handouts or the speeches of any British statesmen. On New Year's Day they failed to publish such routine news as Britain's annual "honors list." Although the British-owned Indian papers did not participate, they sympathized; the Calcutta Statesman offered Indian-owned papers "our good will and . . . mediation. . . ."

Boomerang. Because Britain long encouraged the teaching of English in Indian schools and colleges, Indians learned to like their news in English, which explains why so many Indian papers are printed in English. By watching the British press, Indians long ago learned that an unfettered press is a steppingstone to freedom. Because they had good British newsmen as models (Rudyard Kipling joined the Lahore Civil and Military Gazette in 1882), Indians grew up to be Grade A journalists, dialectically skillful, intensely nationalistic.

The British, faced with a rebellious Indian press, this week had only to look to the past to see who was to blame. From Britain herself, Indian editors had learned to value press freedom and to fight for it.

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