K. Punnaiah: A Memoir

“GET ready for another of your adventures. I know you are always game for one.” These were the last words my brother uttered to me on July 25 as I was leaving Bombay for Delhi just after the first days session of the Editors’ Conference. He had in mind the pressing request of his Sindhi Hindu friends to start or take over an English daily paper in Bombay and run it on their behalf.

His mind was, of course, full of the Hindus of Sind. He knew they had not got a fair deal from the Union. He wanted to take up their cause and asked for my co-operation. Previously we had met at Ootacamund for the ECAFE, enjoyed the treat, farce and fun and discussed plans for an English daily for the Andhras. That was dropped for the new project. The old war horse could not rest in retirement. He wanted work as soon as he was restored to health and strength after the recent domestic shocks and calamities. The Editors’ Conference, the annual diversion of the profession, drew him to Bombay from which he was never to return.

His death has been described as a ‘mystery’. Nothing of that kind. He knew the end was coming. I for one daily feared it was. He was sixty-four and had suffered enormously in recent years from the loss of two brilliant sons, a grandson and a son-in-law, who was a D.F.C., not to speak of the deaths of members of our family younger than himself. Pakistan and partition had ruined his life’s work. His own life was in peril in Karachi. It was only his infinite faith in God and prayer that sustained him. He was welcoming work to forget the host of sorrows and travails that had fallen to his lot.

The old heart trouble which had subsided and practically disappeared for twenty years in the salubrious climate of Karachi revived later and was acutely troubling a much-distressed man. He found it difficult even to walk and often panted for breath after covering a little distance. He was not able to sustain a long conversation without stopping in the middle. It was only his happy, though attenuated, family and the visits of friends for talk and enlightenment on public questions that kept him going. If sudden death is a mercy and a blessing, he was happy in death.

His tragic end in Bombay recalls the beginnings of his life and career in that city of romance. First son of a very poor family he was the hope of my father. Yet he could not manage to pass the matriculation examination. In later years I saw in a pile of family documents the mathematics examination paper of 1901 or 1902 he had to answer. It was quite clean but for a marginal note: “I can answer none of these questions. Good God, help me!”

His failure came as a calamity to the family. The paternal disappointment was great and the scolding that followed was too much for him. He decided to run away, then as now, to Bombay the chief attraction of adventurous youth. The little money he had in hand did not carry him beyond Warangal, now bulking so largely in the day’s new about Hyderabad. He has left it on record that he had an acute attack of dysentery there and unable to buy medicine he began to pray–and recovered.

Working up his way to Bombay somehow, he wandered over the pavements till he picked up an odd job or two, not hesitating to do work which an educated Brahmin boy will never do. In a square in Kalbadevi he showed me, one day, a house where he carried water up to the third floor for a South Indian gentleman who engaged his services for free food and shelter. Twenty-four years after, he spotted him by accident in a park in Mysore where we had gone together after the Madras session of the Congress in 1927. Though he had received no generous treatment from the gentleman, he remembered that he had given him food and shelter at a time when he needed it and he prostrated himself before him, revealing his identity.

Introduced to Mr. K. Nageswara Rao, who had just then begun his romantic career as a business man with Amrutanjan–“I will make it as famous as Beecham’s Pills or Little’s Oriental Pain Balm,” was his inspiring motto to himself–he was taken as a clerk and soon made his mark by his honesty and industry. It was the era of individual approach and one of his main tasks was to post advertisement leaflets about Mr. Nageswara Rao’s numerous medical products to village officers. He wrote out the addresses for years. He told me he knew almost the whole of the Postal and Telegraph Guide by heart. Helped by his able assistant, Mr. Nageswara Rao performed another miracle of his famous career–the starting of a Telugu weekly from far-off Bombay. It succeeded remarkably well, my brother sharing the editorial and managerial work. He acquired a good settled style of Telugu, which never left him in later life.

The spirit stirred Mr. Nageswara Rao and he wanted to transform the weekly Andhra Patrika into a daily and change the venue to Madras. Being a trusted servant and colleague, he begged Punnaiah to stay behind in Bombay and look after Amrutanjan which after all was to provide the wherewithal to keep the newspaper venture going. Here was a very nice opportunity to make money, but Punnaiah declined, saying that his interest in life was not money but public work.

Acting as manager of the Telugu daily, he helped in tiding it over in the crisis of the 1914-18 War, but journalism was his main attraction, and so he switched on to the editorial side, doing the English section (War Supplement) with considerable distinction.

Soon he started a side-show of his own. Humanity made its modest appearance as a fortnightly, chiefly to serve the cause of social reform and the Brahmo Samaj. I was a student in Madras then and was his principal co-operator, its ‘editor’ in his absence. I was to report lectures delivered in the City on the neglected subjects of religious and social importance and here began my own journalism. I was to pass proofs to the press, to write reviews, to write in legible script (my handwriting was quite good then) the manuscripts that were not easy to read, to write the address on the wrappers. The paper had a small circulation, but the clientele were among the best in the land–the cream of the intelligentsia of the Brahmo Samaj. Punnaiah began his pioneer work as ‘Digambar,’ a personal column on current events which became highly popular.

Sadhu Vaswani, who was a prolific contributor to Humanity, offered Punnaiah the assistant editorship of the New Times in December, 1918 and he accepted it, little knowing that the change of scene was to be the start of a great career for him in journalism. I take credit for this which–he was hesitating but I told him to jump at it. He would succeed because he had both ability and character to carry him through.

The rest of the story is well known from the obituary notices that have appeared in the papers already. From the New Times, which I joined four months later, he went over to the Sind Observer, just then turned into a daily, and soon became its editor. He made it an authentic organ of Hindu nationalism in Sind and a powerful organ of public opinion in India. If a near comparison is permitted, I would say that he did to the Sind Observer what J. A. Spender did to the Westminster Gazette–he elevated an obscene, little-known provincial paper to one of great importance in respect of opinion. He was helped by the fact that it was attached to no party. The early proprietors had no direct interest in politics and he was free to shape the policy as he pleased. I can say with pardonable pride but with supreme confidence that he was the most successful provincial journalist of his generation. There was much admiration between him and Mr. Kalinath Ray of the Tribune. The giant once paid the younger man a compliment by saying: “Punnaiah, yours is among the first few papers I read every day. Like me you are attached to no party and you are free to speak out.”

Every English-knowing Sindhi will admit, I am sure, that he owes his political education to Punnaiah of the Sind Observer–the pastor and mentor of the province for thirty long years. He dominated, without taking directly part in it, the public life of Sind. He was the best known citizen of Karachi after that saint and sage, Mr. Jamshed N. R. Mehta. He founded a school, a housing society, a bank, a co-operative stores. He was the life and soul of the local Brahmo Samaj.

By his personal reporting of municipal meetings in an individual column by ‘Cream-Cracker,’ he made municipal reporting a fine department of journalism and kept up public interest in municipal affairs. The grateful citizens have called a nook of Karachi Punniapur.

Punnaiah wrote his signature on every political movement of Sind since 1919–Rowlatt Bill, Satyagraha, Khilafat movement, Non-co-operation, Sind Separation, Sukkur Barrage constitutional reforms. It required a prudent and resourceful journalist to keep his feet steady in the shifting and treacherous sands of Sind politics and he was always steady. He was often in the confidence of ministers, Alia Bux particularly. His office and house alike were invaded by politicians eager for advice and eager to give the news to a friendly editor.

Punnaiah had a workmanlike style. His judgment was sound; his opinions were his own. He commanded and respected confidences an emotional nature and a pugnacious temper, which are a family inheritance, he added a resourcefulness and prudence, not exactly in the family. This carried him through. During the first twenty-five years of his editorship the paper rarely came, into trouble. The last ten years were stormy but he rode the storm with remarkable skill and courage. He wrote with conviction, suffered with passion, and carried contagious belief to the writer by the downrightness of his writing. His power of analysis was keen, mastery of his subject sure. He was versatile and could write on any subject with great care. His war articles were among the best in the land. I saw him listen-in to the radio ten times a day to gather his views and news first-hand from both sides of the war game.

His special contribution to Indian journalism was highly valuable in some respects. ‘Shot and Shell’ by Vinode and ‘Peeps into the City Council’ by ‘Cream-Cracker’ eagerly engaged the reader. He was his own special correspondent on big occasions. He wrote interesting personal sketches. He was prolific. His output was prodigious. He had the supremest quality of a successful journalist: he was always lively and always kept the ball in action. To be dull is a great crime in journalism. And Punnaiah was never dull and never could be.

Now to matters purely personal. It is permitted to a brother to reveal the splendid sacrifices he made for the family. From the first day he began to earn till the last he made his monthly contribution. To me the help he gave was immense. He spent half his meager earnings on my college education. To innumerable poor relatives or fellow workers or the Brahmo Samaj a monthly money order from him was a certainty. He was a good father and a good husband. He was helpful to South Indians visiting Karachi and his lovely house in Punniapur was u centre of attraction to visitors to that great airport. Dr. Tarabai, his gracious wife, was an ideal hostess. His genius for friendship and bonhomie were proverbial.

Coming early under the influence of the Brahmo Samaj and Viresalingam Pantulu, he was a practical social reformer and made a marriage that cut across religion, caste, community, and language. He believed in prayer. As I don’t we had perpetual quarrels, theological and otherwise, and never agreed. “My dear fellow, don’t be a fool. I also pray for you every day,” he would tell me admonishingly. He loved to worship quietly and did not like, for instance, the Gandhian mass prayer meetings. He had few hobbies. He loved an occasional game of cards and hardly ever won. He loved gardening. Long walks braced him up. He could cook grandly and taught the hillmen from Almora to cook like the Brahmins of the Kistna district. He had a few peccadillos also. He never failed to buy a Derby and a St. Leger’s ticket. He would jokingly tell me that if he won he would give me a good portion and pension me off from my restless life and create a trust for the poor relations and friends. He had more than a tentative belief in spiritualism. Spirit-rapping became almost regular in a house which lost one too many in recent years.

The tragedies of the late years shook him tremendously. Flesh and blood could not have borne that infinity of suffering that fell to his lot. More than the loss of his children at an age when he would rest on them, the loss of Sind to India, the Sind he had loved and worked for thirty years, saddened and darkened his life. He was eager to get to work and take up the refugees’ cause.

What remains of his work in Sind none can tell. I trust that even the Pakistanis will, out of respect for history which cannot be wiped out so easily, remember him and keep the name of ‘Punniapur.’ It is a fortunate mispronunciation, but that is where this good and true man belongs.