June 28, 2008

Nikhil Chakravartty was a great journalist, a clear thinker, an authentic socialist, a public figure beyond party purchase, and, above all, a noble human being whom ambition could not buy. I had known Nikhil for several decades at an intimate personal level. The finest virtue of a journalist is integrity, impartiality, freedom of thought and commitment to facts and principles. He possessed all these values in silent plenty. The professional glory of a media marvel is veracious functionalism (…)

Nikhil Chakravartty in a letter after his receiving a journalists’ award wrote a few lines I would like to share with all those who mourn him.
A feel a sense of fulfilment on having been able to communicate whatever my thoughts maybe, to those who would be reading me.
I strayed into journalism from teaching at the university. The searing experience of the Bengal famine tore me away from the classroom to the field to report that heartrending struggle between life and death. For me as a (…)

Many things have happened in the world in general, and in the field of journalism in particular, during the last ten years after Nikhilda bowed out of this turbulent existence. His life was a continuous intellectual struggle as is the work of any independent thinker and a fearless crusader for the triumph of his non-conventional views. He fought his battles with unusual sobriety, ingrained decency and a balanced approach. He was a keen observer of men and matters, eager to learn, full of (…)

COMMUNICATION This letter was sent more then two years after N.C.’s demise by a close comrade of his since his days in England, one who became a member of the CPI Polit-Bureau and later a distinguished Professor of Economics, Kirorimal College, University of Delhi. He is no more with us but his incisive letter is being published on this occasion to bring out facets of N.C.’s life that need recollection.
When the arch-iconoclast Nikhil Chakravartty passed away not so long ago and (…)

It is said that nature abhors vacuum. Perhaps it is so in case of natural phenomena. But in human society a void created by the passing away of a colossal figure remains unfilled for a long, long time. Nikhil Chakravartty, as he was known to all, was a titanic person, a celebrity in analytical journalism, whose replacement has not appeared even after a decade of his passing away.
It would be a very sketchy description to call him a “journalist” preceded by whatever adjective one would (…)

An old ditty of World War I went: “Old soldiers never die, they only fade away.” Nikhil Chakravartty who was an old soldier, and comrade who left us ten years ago never died but, more importantly, has never faded away.
Nikhilda was a soldier but not of the military kind—he was a soldier, a dedicated soldier, in the unrelenting struggle for the emancipation of the poor, the depressed and the deprived of his country and, indeed, the world. He was a comrade who brooked no discriminatory (…)

Tempus fugit. Time flies. And how! I was completely taken aback on being reminded by Sumit that the tenth death anniversary of Nikhilda will fall on June 27. “No, it cannot be,” I protested. “Not ten years already.” “Yes, yes,”said Sumit, “it is, it is.”
It is unbelievable that ten years have passed since we lost Nikhilda. Yet, in its rapid sweep, Time has devoured those years and completely overshadowed an event which when it occurred deeply saddened a number of people whose lives had (…)

From the end of the 1950s, Delhi became India’s densest journalistic jungle. The transplantation there of a wholly Bombay phenomenon like Frank Moraes was a pointer to the inexorability of the process. No one will understand the economics of newspaper proliferation in Delhi. What is clear to all is that by the end of the Nehru era, the Capital of India had more journalists per square inch than any other city in the country.
Among them were stars. Inevitably, some twinkled by pretension. (…)

The following is the text of the letter that the Editor of Mainstream sent to the President of India on January 27, 1990 detailing the reasons for his inability to accept the Padma Bhushan award conferred on him on the Republic Day that year.
NIKHIL CHAKRAVARTTY Editor MAINSTREAM 35 Kaka Nagar New Delhi -11000
January 27, 1990
To
The President of India
Sir, On my way back home today after an extensive tour abroad, I find that you have conferred on me Padma Bhushan on the occasion (…)

Nikhil Chakravartty launched the weekly Mainstream when the country did not have serious political journals apart from publications of political parties, like the AICC Economic Review, the New Age, the Janata and the Mankind. When the weekly started, it was accompanied by the Link, the Patriot, and the India Press Agency. These publications appeared to promote a political line of asking the Communists to lead the ‘radical Congress masses’, for which they sought to persuade them to join the (…)