Who writes the news?
Kamal Lodaya
On 14 April 1944, during the second world war, two giant blasts at 4:06 pm and 4:34 pm in the docks of Bombay (now called Mumbai) blew apart the British ship SS {Fort Stikine}. The explosions were heard 80 km away. Earthquake sensors recorded tremors in Shimla, Himachal Pradesh, 2000 km away. More than a dozen surrounding ships sank or were severely damaged. The pictures show the fires in the docks and people running. One picture shows the ship SS {Jalapadma} thrown onto the docks. Around a thousand people died and 80,000 were made homeless. Refugees were housed in the Mumbai suburbs of Khar, Santacruz, Vile Parle and Ghatkopar.

The resulting fires raged for 3 days and destroyed important market areas. 66 firemen died fighting the fires. The picture shows the memorial by the Mumbai Fire Brigade for them in Byculla. National Fire Safety Week is observed in India from 14 to 21 April in their memory.

{Fort Stikine} had 1400 tons of explosives including torpedoes, mines, shells. Around 300 tons were TNT (dynamite). Also wood, scrap iron and gold. Bales of cotton and lubricating oil from Punjab and Sindh were loaded at Karachi (now in Pakistan). At that time trains could not transport cotton for fear of fire. The ship's captain Alexander Naismith protested about such a mixture of cargo. He described it as "just about everything that will burn or blow up". He lost his life in the explosion.

It is unlikely that you have heard about this incident. My father and my mother, both at that time children in Bombay, told me about it. During 1939 to 1945, Britain which ruled India fought the Second World War with Germany and Japan. News was {censored}. Newspapers could not print everything without the government permitting them to.

So this news did not appear in the newspapers next day. Nor on All India Radio. There was no television. A movie made at that time by Indian film-maker Sudhish Ghatak was confiscated by the British. A Japanese-controlled radio in Indochina (now Vietnam) did broadcast this news. It was only late in May 1944 that the British allowed Indian newspapers to report it.


You may think this was bad. But think about the following.
The Bengal famine

In 1943 there was a famine in Bengal (both West Bengal and what is today Bangladesh) because of wartime prices, buying and hoarding of food. During the War, the Japanese had invaded Burma (Myanmar) and captured its rice crop. At least 1.5 lakh Indians had fled from the Japanese in Burma to Bengal. The British wanted to prevent Bengal rice from falling into Japanese hands and exported it.

The poor in Bengal, including many of these refugees, could not afford to buy food. At least 10 lakh people died.

The British prevented newspapers from reporting this news as far as they could. Newspapers were allowed to write against speculative traders and hoarders. It was only in August 1943 that reports of the famine began to appear in the newspapers. By around October 1943 it became clear what a massive tragedy had happened. Nobel prize winner in Economics Amartya Sen has written about the Bengal famine of 1943.


The independence movement 

You may have read about the Quit India movement, launched by Mahatma Gandhi on 6 August 1942 in a meeting at Gowalia Tank (later August Kranti Maidan) in Bombay. Why did Indian politicians not bring out the news of these disasters?

Going back a little, in the year 1937, elections were held in 11 states of India. Around one-sixth of Indian adults (almost all were men) were allowed to vote. The Congress under Jawaharlal Nehru emerged the largest single party and formed governments in 8 states.

When Britain entered the World War in 1939, it forcibly entered India also into battle. This was protested by the Congress, who said their ministries should have been consulted. Their ministers resigned and the provinces came under Governor's rule. Within a few days of the Gowalia Tank meeting of August 1942, all the Congress leaders including Mahatma Gandhi, Jawaharlal Nehru, Vallabhbhai Patel were put into jail for opposing the British during time of war. They got the news of the Bengal famine and the dock explosion later like the rest of the public. About 66,000 protesters were jailed by the British to suppress dissent against their rule.

British historian Sir Christopher Bayly wrote that officers of the Indian Civil Service (which later became the IAS) helped the British run the country, even though many felt sympathetic to Indian demands for self-rule, because they felt Japanese invasion would be worse. In March 1944 the Japanese had reached Kohima in Nagaland with Subhash Chandra Bose's Indian National Army before they were defeated.

After the War, in 1946 the British decided to make India independent. They also decided to partition it into two countries: India and Pakistan, which was made of West Pakistan (today's Pakistan) and East Pakistan (today's Bangadesh). They invited Mahatma Gandhi from the Congress and Muhammad Ali Jinnah from the Muslim League for discussions. The Congress chose Jawaharlal Nehru as their Prime Minister. As we know, on 15 August 1947 the two countries became independent.