‘Pratap: A Defiant Newspaper': A thrilling account of a persistent voice of dissent in India

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26-04-2025

Chandar Mohan and Jyotsna Mohan's Pratap: A Defiant Newspaper opens with a tense and unfortunate moment in the history of Pratap, when its Jalandhar newspaper office became the target of a parcel bomb on June 24, 1983. Chandar Mohan had dismissed the tightly packed, difficult to open parcel when the peon first brought it into the office: 'Thinking that it must be the usual propaganda stuff that newspapers were being flooded with in those days'. However, 'The package had exploded – three employees were grievously injured, two of whom died in the nearby Civil Hospital'.
Receiving a parcel bomb at a newspaper bureau was unprecedented, and the Pratap office became its unfortunate first victim. However, this terrible incident was immediately coded in the language of sacrifice. The authors record that Indresh Kumar, one of the employees who died, said on the way to the hospital, 'Sir, I have also made a sacrifice for the country.' This poignant snippet sets the stage for the book that presents the Urdu language daily Pratap and its Hindi language counterpart Vir Pratap as two of the most persistent voices of dissent in both pre- and post-partition India.
Revolution and freedom
The book's authors, journalists Chandar Mohan and Jyotsna Mohan, are very much part of the history of the newspaper that they set out to recount – Chandar Mohan ran the newspaper till it closed down in 2017, and his grandfather, Mahashay Krishan, established it in March 1919 in Lahore. Pratap' s story is interwoven with the story of the city's anti-colonial struggle. Mahashay Krishan's son Virendra was a college-going student when he encountered the Hindustan Socialist Republican Association (HSRA). HSRA was a prominent revolutionary organisation boasting strident members like Chandra Shekhar Azad, Bhagat Singh and Raj Guru, revered household names today. The authors recount HSRA events from the point of view of Mahashay Krishan and Virendra.
At several points in the book, the authors paint the figure of the revolutionary as exceptional – 'Indian revolutionaries led a life less ordinary'. However, the book's specific contribution lies in situating Virendra's story: he was one of the relatively minor protagonists in the constellation of glistening HSRA figures whose stories are often better documented and celebrated. Virendra was part of the sea of dissenting figures who grieved Lala Lajpat Rai's death following the brutal lathi charge in Lahore. He was also one of the students who was immediately arrested after prominent HSRA members carried out the murder of John P Saunders to avenge Lala Lajpat Rai's death. He was apparently taking an examination when Saunders was killed, but was immediately locked up as one of the perpetrators who carried out the murder.
Here, the authors signal at another experience, far more common perhaps, of the revolutionary who, like Virendra, was many times young, able-bodied, never lacking in zealous anger or energy, but 'exhibiting the distance between their passion and experience'. Historians like Kama Maclean, Daniel Elam and Aparna Vaidik have in recent years engaged with the potent idea of uncertainty, tentativeness, and failure embedded in the anti-colonial revolutionary impulse: not all went to plan, yet it was significant and mattered. Virendra himself went to jail nine times in the anti-colonial struggle for freedom.
The book brings to life some other vivid details of unknown almost-heroes and almost-foiled plans. The authors recount a plan that Virendra and his friends Durga Das and Ranbir made to bomb the ballroom at Lahore's Lawrence Gardens. They did the recce, found the execution too ambitious, and decided to target instead the Governor of Punjab. Of Virendra and friends, the only one who knew how to shoot was married with a one-year-old child, which disqualified him. The friends then recruited a student of Law at Punjab University called Kamala to do the deed. Kamala volunteered to learn shooting, but they ultimately dropped the plot because of Durga Das' misgivings: 'The three revolutionaries…would be branded cowards for using a woman for such a dangerous mission – more so if she were to name them'. The authorial voice turns sardonic here with respect to women's roles in these revolutionary spaces, writing: 'The time had not yet come, after all, for Bhagat Singh's female counterpart to rise'. Kamala remains entirely anonymous: she went by her pseudonym and promptly got married after this incident: 'the chapter of the mysterious Kamala ended there'.
Witnessing history
Another meaningful recovery the book makes is its lingering focus on language politics, particularly significant given that in contemporary Indian imagination, Hindi and Urdu have been neatly divided along religious lines. This is a book about pre- and post-partition Punjab and makes an evocative point about Punjab's relationship to Urdu, where it was widespread: 'In Punjab, if a report was not published in the Urdu press, it was not credible enough from an Indian nationalistic perspective'. Naturally, therefore, the Urdu Pratap came first, followed by the Hindi Vir Pratap. (It also must be noted that these newspapers are not related to Kanpur's better-known Pratap, under the editorship of Ganesh Shankar Vidyarthi).
The book is pieced together from a variety of sources: scholarly research, first-hand accounts, personal interviews, Virendra's memoir Ve Inqalabi Din (Destination Freedom) and Chandar Mohan's own memory of working in the company. One rich source is the newspaper/s itself, which readers can catch some tantalising glimpses of via accompanying images. For instance, Pratap 's editorials being left open as big blank white gaps during the Emergency serve as a spectacular source that palpably places Pratap 's protest against press censorship. However, given the undeniable access both authors possess to the primary archives, we find barely any information about what Pratap actually published through its century-long run. This gap should perhaps serve as an invitation to scholars and writers interested in an investigation of these newspapers.
The book often reads like a thriller, with fearful twists and turns at every corner. It also reads hurriedly, as if it needed to be pieced together fast, and the narrative needed to run uninterrupted. It sometimes leads to giving us a strong sense of urgency about the time. This particularly holds true for the years a young Virendra was actively participating in revolutionary politics – his incarceration years make for poignant reading. At times, however, this urgent writing style also makes it difficult to follow. Overall, the book provides an accessible way to delve into the history of a notable newspaper house's anti-colonial struggle against the British in India.