Journalist Trade Union’s history

Journalist trade union’s history

by late J. P. Chaturvedi, third president of IFWJ.

The formation of the Indian Federation of Working Journalists at a convention of 23 journalist organizations in Delhi on 28 October 1950 was a landmark in the history of the Indian Press. The Federation was later responsible for the setting up of the First Press Commission, fixing of proper working conditions for journalists and other press workers, and the setting up of the Press Council. It has also been a pioneer in evolving a code of conduct for journalists. It has continuously struggled for the liberation of the Press from the stranglehold of monopoly houses in the same manner as it has for the amelioration in the working conditions of journalists and other employees, including security of service and better wages. The Federation was formed some years after the newspaper proprietors of India decided to organize themselves in the Indian and Eastern Newspapers Society and the All-India Newspaper Editors Conference in 1939 and 1940 to deal with the problems posed by the declaration of the Second World War.

However, the history of journalists' efforts to meet attacks on the Press or at least mitigate the intensity of governmental attack goes back to the last century. In 1825, Raja Ram Mohun Roy, along with four other editors, presented a charter of the freedom of the Press to the then Governor-General. It was in opposition to the licensing regulations of 1825. Sir Charles Metcalfe promptly repealed those regulations. In 1878, the journalists of Calcutta arranged a public meeting against the Vernacular Press Act of 1878. When action was initiated against the newspaper Bangobasi, a Native Press Association was formed in 1891. Again, when the Indian Press Act of 1910 was promulgated and there was a strict enforcement of the Act in the wake of the failure of the Party and other revolutionary organizations, the Press Association of India was formed for the defence of the interests of the Press and their protection against undue encroachment through legislation and executive action. It waited in deputation on Lord Chelmsford. In 1921, the Press Laws Committee was appointed under the chairmanship of Sir Tej Bhadur Sapru.

The Indian Journalists Association of Calcutta, the oldest surviving journalists' organization of India and a constituent of the IFWJ, was formed in 1922 under the chairmanship of Krishna Kumar Mitra, editor of Sanjivini, with the reputed editor of Amrita Bazar Patrika, Tushar Kanti Bose, its leading organiser, becoming its first secretary. The object of the Association was "advancing and safeguarding the interests of the Press and the profession of journalism by watching any legislation affecting the discharge by journalists of their professional duties and endeavoring to obtain amendments to the law affecting journalists and their duties and interest for the free expression of public opinion; securing the advancement of journalism in all branches and obtaining for journalists formal and definite professional standing; promotion, encouragement or assistance of means for providing against the exigencies of age, sickness, death, unemployment and misfortune and mutual benefit fund; acting as a means of communicating between the Press and others; seeking professional engagements and employers desirous of employing them; arranging training in journalism by opening classes, correspondence and other means; publishing journals, bulletins, etc., for the use and benefit of members of the profession and promotion of concerted action among the journalists."

These are some of the ideals to which the working journalists' movement is dedicated even today. This organization hosted two all-India journalists' conferences in Calcutta, and, in 1934, prepared a code of conduct for journalists and opposed the restitution of Press censorship.

Struggle by language journalists

It was in 1923 that S. A. Brelvi, editor of the Bombay Chronicle, together with his friends promoted the Journalists' Association of India, whose name was changed after 24 years to the Bombay Union of Journalists on 20 February 1947. This association worked for the freedom of the Press and people like Dr. Annie Besant, B. G. Horniman, S. Sadanand, K. Natarajan, N. C. Kalelkar, C. Y. Chintamani and T. Prakasam were associated with it. Gandhiji refused the offer of its presidentship on the ground that he was not a full-time journalist and was mainly devoted to the freedom movement.

World War II brought many changes in the conditions under which the Press had to operate. The Government restricted the supply of newsprint and quotas given to newspapers. It was decided that new declarations for newspapers should not be allowed. These conditions resulted in the formation of the Indian and Eastern Newspaper Society (IENS) in 1939. It was presided over by Sir Arthur Moore of the Statesman and was established to protect the economic interests of newspapers. In 1940, as a result of an effort by some members of the IENS, the All India Newspaper. Editors' Conference (AINEC) was established. The conference was presided over by Kasturi Srinivasan, editor of the Hindu from Madras. But before the conference began, there were negotiations between the Government and the representatives of the Press. the immediate provocation was the starting of individual satyagraha by Mahatma Gandhi and the closure by the police of newspapers like the Sainik which published this news. The Government did not want newspapers to impede what they called the "war effort" and a so-called "Gentlemen's Agreement" was reached between the then Home Member Maxwell, and the leaders of the AINEC that newspapers would not publish material which would impede the prosecution of the war and conduct of government; the Government in its part, would not place vexatious restrictions on the publication of news relating to the war. A Central Press Advisory Committee was set up under the constitution of the AINEC and it advised the Government in taking action against the Press. It may have succeeded in some matters, but it failed to see that the Government lifted its ban on the publication of the National Herald of Lucknow and the Sainik of Agra. The Government obliged the obliging Press by increasing the rate of government advertisements and placing the existing papers in a position of virtual monopoly by denying declarations and newsprint quota to any new publication. Mahadev Desai, editor of the Harijan, boycotted this meeting and some Hindi journalists who thought that they were also discriminated against, decided to form an All-India Hindi Patrakar Sangh in January, 1941, at a meeting held in Delhi under the chairmanship of M. C. Agrawal of the Vishvamitra, Calcutta.

Syed Abdullah Brelvi became president of the All-India Newspaper Editors Conference held at Madras in 1944. Addressing two meetings of journalists, one of the Southern India Journalists' Federation and the other of the Andhra Provincial Journalists Association, which had their offices in that city, he exhorted them to organize on trade union lines. He also appointed a committee led by M. Subramaniam, editor of Lahore's Tribune, to fix the minimum wages for journalists.

Hindi newsmen in lead

In the meantime, there was a demand for better working conditions at the forum of the All-India Hindi Patrakar Sangh (AIHPS). In 1942, at a meeting held under the presidentship of S.K.D. Paliwal, it was decided that journalists should have a minimum wage of Rs. 40. The AIHPS was a body of both proprietors and journalists, in which the former dominated. In 1943, at Calcutta, a resolution was passed to increase the minimum salary to Rs. 50 and appoint an enquiry committee of journalists to go into the salaries and working conditions of Hindi journalists. After the Agra meeting, the Hindi journalists became dissatisfied with the functioning of that organization and a conference of U. P. Hindi journalists, to which proprietors were not invited, was held in Kanpur under the presidentship of Banarasi Das Chaturvedi. It was decided at this conference to appoint a committee to enquire into the conditions of working journalists. I was also associated with that enquiry. It was the Kanpur resolution which prompted the all- India body also to appoint an enquiry committee with composite membership and Rajendra Shankar Bhatt of Jaipur as convener. I too was later associated with the work of this committee.

The problems posed by the war and censorship forced the journalists of U. P. to organize on a very wide basis. They first organized a U. P. Press Conference in 1942 at Allahabad, presided over by S.A. Brelvi, which criticized the restrictive press policy of the Government of India. It met again in 1944 to protest against the action taken by the Government against a large number of newspapers, prominent among them the National Herald of Lucknow, the Sainik of Agra and the Aaj of Benares––newspapers which were not allowed to function because of their support for the 'Quit India' Movement. In 1946, the U. P. Press Conference converted itself into the U. P. Working Journalists' Union. It prevailed upon the U. P. Government to appoint a U. P. Newspaper Industry Enquiry Committee which submitted its report in 1950. At its meeting on 18 October 1948, it appointed a committee consisting of M. Chalapathi Rau, convener, Mahipat Ram Nagar (Leader) and Jiya Ram Paliwal (Sainik) to revise the code of conduct for journalists. Its report, accepted by the Standing Committee of UPWJU on 24 March 1949, provided for the constitution of a professional tribunal and penalties for violation of the code.

Minimum wage demand

The Subramaniam Committee of the AINEC proposed a basic minimum of Rs. 100 for English language journalists and Rs. 75 for those working in Indian language newspapers. The report evoked a wave of protest among the journalists' organizations. The Punjab Working Journalists' Union with Rana Jang Bahadur Singh as chairman and A. C. Bali as secretary, both of whom had been prosecuted by the British Government for various Press offences, demanded a minimum salary of Rs. 125 for all journalists, irrespective of language, plus grades. Similarly, the Marathi Journalists' Conference, meeting in Bombay on 4 November 1944, disapproved of discrimination between English and language journalists and demanded a minimum wage of Rs. 125 for Bombay journalists and Rs. 100 for mofussil journalists. The Bihar Journalists' Association, at a meeting held under the chairmanship of Babu Murli Manohar Prasad, editor of Searchlight, decided to call an all-India convention of working journalists to form an all-India organization on trade union lines to safeguard the interests of the profession and of working journalists; it also urged the AINEC to rescind its Lahore Resolution. Various journalists’ organizations in different cities of U.P. also opposed the AINEC resolution. The All-India Hindi Patrakar Sangh, meeting at Kanpur in 1944 under the chairmanship of Ambika Prasad Vajpayee, accepted the Enquiry Committee's report, proposing a minimum of Rs. 100 as salary annual leave, privilege and casual leaves as well as standard working hours and institution of provident fund.

How IFWJ was finally born

This Standing committee of the U.P. Working Journalists Union, which had since 1946 excluded proprietors from membership, decided to call a conference of journalists' unions to form their national federation. The Delhi Union of Journalists was established in May 1949, although the Delhi unit of the All-India Hindi Journalists' Conference had existed for a long time. Gopi Nath Srivastava invited the journalists' organizations to hold a meeting at Lucknow, but as the bulk of the organizations insisted that Delhi should be the venue, he came over to Delhi and had discussions with the office-bearers of the Delhi Union of Journalists. Gopi Nath Srivastava, however, died on 1 September 1949, and the conference was postponed. A reception committee was formed with the president of the Delhi Union of Journalists, Rana Jang Bahadur Singh, as chairman, and the convention was called in Delhi on October 28 and 29, 1950. Eighty-three representatives of 23 organizations participated in the conference. M. Chalapathi Rau, who had just returned from the U. S. A. after a visit to the U. N. and attending the founding meeting of the International Press Institute on behalf of India, presided over it and became the first president of the Indian Federation of Working Journalists. I was associated with this convention as secretary of the Reception Committee.

The inaugural meeting was no tame affair. There was a demand that the organization be on trade union lines. But there was some opposition from organizations like the SIJF and even Mrinal Kanti Bose himself a great trade union leader and leader of the IJA delegation from Calcutta, was hesitant about accepting trade unionism for journalists. After a heated discussion, a vote was taken with each union as the unit. There were eight votes in favor of trade unionism and eight against and the President did not exercise his casting vote. Several organizations were undecided and abstained from voting. Yet, those who were for trade unionism succeeded in getting approved a resolution, which introduced the word "working" in the title of the organization and authorized the President to nominate a committee to draft a constitution for the Federation. It was moved by Mrinal Kanti Bose, seconded by Rana Jang Bahadur Singh and supported by P. S. Kulkarni of the Kesari, Poona.

The committee decided at its first meeting on October 30, 31 and November 1 that the Federation should be formed on trade union lines. The IFWJ constitution committee was set up with K. Rama Rao as convener. The constitution was adopted unanimously at a special conference in Bombay on March 12 and 13, 1951. The formal First Conference of the IFWJ was held on April 12 and 13, 1952, in Calcutta under the presidentship of Chalapathi Rau. One of the major resolutions passed at this conference urged the Central Government to appoint a Press Commission to enquire into the conditions of the Press, its freedom, its limitations, etc. The President of India in his inaugural address to Parliament announced that the Government had accepted this recommendation. The First Press Commission was appointed in October, 1952, under the chairmanship of Justice G. S. Rajadhyaksha. The IFWJ was represented by its President Chalapathi Rau, the IENS by its President A. D. Mani, and the Indian Language Newspapers' Association by its President A. R. Bhatt.A difficulty, however, arose when K. Srinivasan, editor of the Hindu, and C. R. Srinivasan, editor of the Swadesamiran, suggested to Dr. B.V. Keskar that there should be no representative of either editors or working journalists on the Commission. Instead, wherever the Commission went, it could co-opt one employer and one employee representative to act as assessors. Dr. Keskar forwarded the proposal to Chalapathi Rau who had been insisting that the Press Commission should be a commission of laymen. C. Raghavan and I were, however, able to convince both Chalapathi Rau and the Government that nomination of a representative of the Federation was essential and that if there was a local representative of employers sitting in the Commission, journalist witnesses at that place would be handicapped in tendering evidence. IFWJ nominated its president Chalapathi Rau to the Commission and also appointed a committee to prepare the case to be put up before the Commission, with K. Rama Rao as chairman and C. Raghavan as secretary.