Prabhash Joshi: Genius with contradictions

Veteran journalist Prabhash Joshi’s sudden death on November 5 has freshened myriad memories- of his polemical writings, deft coinage of new words and phraseologies in journalism, love for Hindi, rise and fall of ‘Jansatta’ the paper he founded, his association with the JP movement, loyalty to late Ramnath Goenka, nostalgia for Malwa, prolonged assaults on Bharat Bhavan under Ashok Vajpeyi, flip-flop on anti-Congressism, and, most memorably, his not-so-subtle attempt at simultaneous straddling medievalism and progressivism.

Admittedly, I’m not qualified to profile Prabhashji, for I didn’t know him that well. However, through his write-ups and my friends who knew him closely, I have constructed the journalist-thinker’s persona in my mind, which, at best, is a bundle of contradictions.

Like his mentor Jai Prakash Narayan, Prabhash Joshi too groped in the cavernous alleys of ideologies, perhaps beguilingly believing that the ideologies are malleable to a journalist’s stream-of-consciousness kind of writing for effect. He was sorely mistaken.

JP too, rather facetiously, sought to bring leftists and rightist together to wage his war against Indira Gandhi in 1975. He seemed to succeed for a while. The war cry of Total Revolution had drowned the irreconcilable ideological contradictions inherent in the Janata Party that JP had midwifed to dethrone the Congress dictator. What happened to the Janata Party is too well known though.

Prabhash Joshi too allowed his high intellectualism (his genius was unquestionable) to go ideologically adrift, especially in the twilight of his life. He sought to advocate obscurantist Brahminical order and Marxist economy in the same breath.

He seemed to see nothing unusual in breaking bread with Marxist doyen of Hindi literature Dr Namvar Singh and finding fault with the Indian cricket team selectors for not selecting more Brahmins! At times, his memoirs in the Kagad Kare (Black and White) would be too personal for any reader’s interest, forget concern.

I heard Prabash Joshi’s name first time long after he had become quite a name in journalism. It was in 1982. The paper – Gyanyug Prabhat- I was working in Jabalpur had folded up. Most of us had blithely looked forward to the demise of the paper. Future plan was last thing in my mind.

However, as months passed, others grew concerned. Incorrigible Marxist- romantic that I was then, I sniggered the colleagues’ careerism. Three of them—Rajesh Nayak, his cousin Manohar Nayak and my friend from Uttarakhand Arvind Upreti- moved to Delhi and joined Jansatta.

The paper was launched the following year. The paper brought a new idiom and a whiff of fresh air to an otherwise stale Hindi journalism. Yet, I would evaluate the paper critically on content while most of journalist friends seemed besotted by its stylistic writing. This much, however, I was pretty convinced that this paper is different and holds great promise for Hindi journalism.

Rajesh Nayak, when returned Jabalpur after joining the paper, had a host of stories to share. His enthusiasm was infectious. He would vividly describe the individual qualities of Prabhash Joshi, Manglesh Dabral, Ram Bahadur Rai, Alok Tomar and several others.

Jobless, I would derive vicarious pleasure of a journalist-warrior in the Rajesh’s anecdotage that he narrated with inimitable flourish – some times while sharing Charas-stuffed cigarettes at Kakka’s “ Chandukhana.”
(Will try to provide details of our smoking and drinking binges later)

A few months later, I went to Delhi and met Rajesh and Manohar. I also went to Jansatta office. The atmosphere was truly amazing. I saw Prabhash ji working till late night. He would churn out lead article for edit page in a jiffy, so to say.

The popular myth in a young journalist’ mind that big editors sit in a cabin with red light aglow at the entrance to scare others off exploded in Jansatta. Freedom to reporters was charmingly anarchical. I sensed an unmistakable envy in Indian Express staff for ‘poor Hindi (wallah) cousins’ and that was unprecedented. I returned hugely impressed. Since then Jansatta became a staple diet for morning.

The paper went several notches higher in my esteem for reporting the anti-Sikh riots in Delhi and elsewhere in India in the aftermath of Indira Gandhi’s assassination. No other Hindi paper showed such great courage in highlighting the miseries of the hapless Sikhs being butchered.

Four-five years down the line, however, the Jansatta began to lose its sheen. The crusading zeal had, mostly, degenerated into witch-hunting. Prabhash Joshi’s own fads manifested themselves rather poorly in write-ups. Experimentalism would often breach the acceptable.

The star reporters failed to digest the newfound power and began mollycoddling politicians. Freedom, the USP of the paper, would be increasingly abused by reporters. Prabhashji couldn’t have been so naïve not to know what was going on under his nose. Paper’s rightist slant became uncomfortably evident during the height of the so-called Ramjanambhoomi movement.

Of course, this slant had Ramnath Goenka’s blessings and Prabhaji couldn’t have defied his master. The fact that Joshiji himself developed ambition to enter Rajya Sabha did not help the matter. BJP was his first choice for realising the dream. But the party ditched him.

That infuriated Prabhashji so much that he idiomatically called the then BJP president Kusha Bhau Thakre ‘a cat’s excreta’. For some one who so critically wrote a piece on Sonia Gandhi’s foreign origin, Prabhashji’s ideological shift to Congress amazed his friends and foes alike. Now he was one of the bitterest critics of the BJP and, by extension, supporter of the Congress.

In one of my blogs, I wrote how Naya Theatre is orphaned by Habib Tanvir’s death. More of less, the same happened with Jansatta. Prabhashji’s energy and dynamism was matchless. Although the paper’s slide had begun during his time, his formal exit dealt a body blow. Prabhashji, like Habib Tanvir, had no second man of equal caliber to don the mantle.

If he had not indulged too much in politics and condoned cronyism in the paper, Prabhashji would have been remembered in more glowing terms. He was an original thinker and irrepressible writer. I offer heart felt tribute to the great journalist.