india

Updated: Sep 25, 2019 21:55 IST

Few in this, its centenary year, would recognise Young India. Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi started this English journal in 1919 and guided it with passion until its closure 12 years later. Fewer still, in our times of buzzing websites with over 100 million users, would care to be educated about a print journal that has been extinct for 88 years.

And yet, they would find the story of that journal of interest if only it were told to them.

The year it was founded in was, for India, a year of rage. The draconian Rowlatt Act restricting civil liberties in the name of the First World War, followed by the Jallianwala Bagh massacre and what came to be called “The Punjab Wrong”, were the chief concerns of this weekly of eight very thin pages. Its editorials made it, literally, a page-turner in India’s public life of the time.Young India (YI) was to become, for the duration of its lifetime (1919-1932), English-educated India’s premier thought partner.

Noting that his Gujarati weekly, Navajivan, which had been inaugurated in August 1919 and sold 12,000 copies, he observed in the YI editorial of October 8, 1919, that non-English knowing “farmers and workers” make up 80% of India’s population and that “English journals touch but the fringe of the ocean of India’s population”.

So why this English journal venture? Because, he said, he wanted to reach out not just to farmers and workers but to “educated India” as well and that “especially in the Madras Presidency”, he could do so only in English. Thus arrived the Gandhi-founded and Gandhi-edited English journal.

Starting out from Bombay in 1919 and moving soon to Ahmedabad, the weekly sold at one anna per copy it attained, in its formative weeks, the circulation figure of 1200 — not a bad score for a new venture facing dire challenges.

Even if a journal devoted to challenging the Raj was to survive politically, could a journal with such a small circulation survive financially? Writing in the same editorial “…I will not be party to editing a newspaper that does not pay its way,” Gandhi appealed to his “Tamil friends” to find at least 2500 paying subscribers. This requirement was urgent for another reason: Young India was not to seek any revenue from “advertisements soiling its pages”.

Such, however, was the magnetic appeal of its founder-editor, the voltage of its message and its congruence with the national mood that the journal’s circulation crossed Gandhi’s ideal of 2500 and, by 1922, had reached a weekly sales figure of 40,000. It became more than a thought-partner, a thought-maker and thought-changer. “Educated India” became an eager student of Young India, edited not just by Gandhi but also, later, for different periods, by Shoaib Qureshi, a son in law of Mohammed Ali, the Khilafat leader, C. Rajagopalachari , (and) George Joseph , JC Kumarappa and Jairamdas Doulatram.

Three articles he wrote in Young India titled “Tampering with Loyalty” (September 29, 1921), “The Puzzle and its Solution (December 15,1921), and “Shaking the Manes” (February 23, 1922) became the cause for what came to be known as The Great Trial and drew from him his memorable statement: “I do not plead any extenuating act. I am here, therefore, to invite and cheerfully submit to the highest penalty that can be inflicted upon me for what in law is a deliberate crime, and what appears to me to be the highest duty of a citizen.” The judge had awarded him, on the charge of sedition, six years in prison citing the 1908 trial for sedition and sentencing for six years of Lokmanya Tilak as a precedent — a comparison Gandhi said he felt humbled by.

Young India is also where some of Gandhi’s most vital observations were first recorded, such as:

“To a people famishing and idle, the only acceptable form in which God can dare appear is work and the promise of food as wages…” (October 13,1921).

“From violence done to the foreign ruler, violence to our own people whom we may consider obstructing the country’s progress is an easy natural step…” (January 2,1930).

“I have the highest regard for Dr Ambedkar” (November 12,1931).

And also some very personal experiences like his seeing a crucifix at the Sistine Chapel in Rome: “It was not without a wrench that I could tear myself away.” (October 31,1931).

We are, therefore, in the centenary year of an English journal, the story of which gives us three compelling verities:

First: A small vehicle of expression, like a small parcel, may contain a huge gift in terms of content and impact. One single editorial or a column can do more than many pages.

Two: Gigantic readerships or viewerships are a mirage; they neither slake nor wash. And choked by competition, they become products of commerce rather than vehicles of thought. They neutralise each other’s impact.

Three: A journal or newspaper must try to set and reflect the national mood. If it does only the first it becomes a trumpet with only one listener viz. itself. If it does only the second it becomes just one more of those mica mirror-discs sewn into shisheh embroidery.

(Gopalkrishna Gandhi, a former governor of West Bengal, is the grandson of MK Gandhi. He is the author of several books, including ‘Of a Certain Age: Twenty Life Sketches’ )