Delhi Reborn by Rotem Geva;

Author:Rotem Geva;
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Stanford University Press
Published: 2022-06-15T00:00:00+00:00

On the whole, the numerous Punjabi proprietors and editors, reporters, columnists, writers, poets, and intellectuals who arrived in Delhi formed a diverse crowd, reflecting the broad ideological spectrum of late-colonial Punjab—from communists and progressives to Hindu Mahasabha proponents and Akali Sikhs. We cannot do justice to this heterogeneity, and we concentrate instead on the most important Hindu dailies in Lahore, all of which later shifted to Delhi, and all of which engaged in ferocious exchanges with Muslim publications, simultaneously expressing and intensifying communal polarization.78 By the late 1920s, the three most important Hindu dailies in Lahore were the Arya Samaji Milap and Pratap, and the Sanatan Dharmi Vir Bharat. A contemporary joke that played on the names of Lahore’s dailies was that the paper that caused the most discord and rift was Milap (Union or Agreement), the most cowardly one was Pratap (Vigor, Courage), and the most conservative one was Inqalab (Revolution, a Muslim paper).79 Daechsel’s study of these publications in the 1930s–1940s finds that they focused on communal tensions and such sensational matter as crime, natural calamities, and accidents, and that conflict and fear were their defining themes.80

Mahashay Krishna launched Pratap in March 1919, in the context of the Gandhian satyagraha against the Rowlatt Act. He named the paper after the sixteenth-century Rajput Hindu ruler, Maharana Pratap Singh, who fought the Mughal Akbar. Along with the semantic range of the word pratap—glowing heat, vigor, glory, ardor, and zeal—the name evokes Hindu masculine heroism. Krishna was a prolific writer who commented on the burning issues of his time, “a kind of firebrand who simply would not bow to anybody.”81 He and Lala Kushal Chand, who established the daily Milap four years later in 1923, may have been professional competitors who criticized each other in pungent editorials, but also close associates who went on long walks every evening.82 Both Krishna’s and Kushal Chand’s families took an active part in the nationalist struggle—family members were imprisoned—and their newspapers published nationalist materials deemed objectionable by the government.83 Their nationalist politics exemplified the politics of Hindus in late-colonial Punjab, where there was an overlap between the Congress and the Hindu Mahasabha in terms of membership and political sentiments.84

When the partition riots broke out in Lahore, Milap’s office was burned down, and its workers barely escaped under army protection, mirroring the fate of Dawn in Delhi. It reopened soon after in Delhi.85 Likewise, Krishna and his family left Lahore and relocated in Delhi, reestablishing Pratap in Panchkuian Road in Paharganj, now a hub of Punjabi presence in the city. Together they became important mouthpieces voicing the concerns and grievances of the city’s refugee community. The first piece of information on Milap’s relocation is a mention that Kushal Chand was arrested following an “objectionable” speech he delivered in a Hindu Sahayata Samiti public meeting.86 In subsequent years, both newspapers’ relations with the Delhi administration remained tense, as their vocal and confrontational writing was critical of the Congress and closely aligned with the Hindu right.

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