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| Good Morning DayAfter |
| THE DAYAFTER STORY | |
| Who Gave Us Our Name? | |
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Sunil Dang Tells the Story of an Amazing Indian Journal |
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This journal was
informally brought out in May 1985 and formally released on July 17,
1985, by the then Prime Minister, Rajiv Gandhi, at his residence, No.
7, Race Course Road. The most valuable thing Piloo Mody taught us was that the country was above the individual and freedom was the most valuable asset of a society |
|
 The
DayAfter formally born on July 17, 1985
enters its 18th year. The survival of an Indian journal, with no
financial backing from commercial interests, political public
relations groups or hereditary newspaper barons, is certainly a story
worth telling. As I look back, I see many famous media ventures which
launched magazines and journals like Sunday, Illustrated
Weekly of India, Sunday Mail, New Delhi, Probe,
and many others, all fallen along the way. They were good publications
started by sound media houses, with editors and journalists who were
considered glamour figures of the Indian media. But they could not
survive and every one of them died its own kind of death for its own
kind of reasons.
It is not my purpose here to tell why and how great editors and proprietors spend great sums of money to kill the publications they launch as great dreams. I have been persuaded to tell The DayAfter story by my colleagues like Yogendra Bali, who has stood by me from day one when I entered journalism, goaded by a remark from the late Indira Gandhi, who after a long conversation suqqested that journalism would give me an opportunity to acquaint myself with the ground realities of politics. My ideals at that time, when I was a Yuva Morcha student leader in Delhi’s Shivaji College, were the champion of the Young Turks, Chandrashekhar, the champion of liberal and free politics and the founder of the Swatantra Party, Piloo Mody and finally the youngest prime minister ever to wear the political crown in Indian history, Rajiv Gandhi. I have to mention these names because they are all relevant to the name and the spirit behind The DayAfter. I have often been asked who named this journal, The DayAfter, and why? This journal was informally brought out in May 1985 and formally released on July 17, 1985, by the then Prime Minister, Rajiv Gandhi, at his residence, No. 7, Race Course Road. No, it was not a Congress-funded or Congress-inspired publication. It was, as Yogendra Bali put it rightly on day one itself, "a foolhardy venture by a foolhardy young man who thought that he could launch his own magazine with just Rs. 500, his guts and wits and the encouragement of his determined band of friends and supporters, none of whom were very prosperous or experienced in the complicated profession of journalism." The name had been haunting me for more than two years before the journal was actually conceived and translated into reality. The young and sensitive generation of our time, specially the student and youth activists, were extremely affected by the nuclear bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki and the untold pain and suffering it brought to the innocent civilians of Japan. It brought home the horror of nuclear war which could destroy humanity totally in a matter of hours if the nuclear button came into the hands of a mad military dictator or fundamentalist lunatic. Some very sensitive documentary films and printed literature about the horrors of the day after such a monstrous human event were brought out in the Fifties, Sixties and Seventies. I was myself born in 1959, and as I grew from school to college, the horror of Hiroshima continued to haunt me. It stayed with me when I edited the Shivaji College journal and, later, brought out the Hindi student newspaper, Chhatra Jwala, a the youth activist of the non-Congress and independent youth group, the Chhatra Jantu . I remember some of my student activist colleagues of those days like Amit Mitra, who later became the dynamic and celebrated secretary of the FICCI, the Federation of Chambers of Commerce and Industries, who was known for spouting new ideas and projects to bring society and industry closer. There were others whom I shall mention during the course of this story. I discussed with my friends and mentors again and again about a suitable name for a journal if I brought it out one day. It was agreed that it should be a journal different from the run-of-the mill commercial ventures. It should be a young journal with a young outlook and should go beyond the superficial and immediate issues of today. At that time a journal called Today had already made its debut and folded up. I think there was a Tomorrow, too, which ceased to exist after some time. Of course India Today was still surviving even though journals like Probe and New Delhi had shut down. We also thought that we should look beyond tomorrow. We should bring out a publication which should always remain concerned with the future. It was at that time that I saw the documentary about Hiroshima and Nagasaki’s day after. My mind was made up. I discussed it with colleagues, they agreed. I discussed it with Piloo Mody, he approved with a smile. He knew I did not have tons of money and even though I had asked his opinion about the naming of my journal, I had not asked him for any kind of support. When a non-communist, non-Congress political grouping was formed under the name of the Janata Party, which caused the ouster of Indira Gandhi, and Morarji Desai became the Prime Minister and Chandrashekhar the President of the Janata Party, I was a Yuva Janata activist and often met the famous star journalists of the time at the Janata Party press conferences. Some of them liked me very much, perhaps because I used to smile too much those days. They were later to give me some useful tips, guidance and actual professional help when I did launch The DayAfter. Of the politicians of that time, I have great respect for Piloo Mody and he was very fond of me. I learnt many useful lessons of politics and life from him. For example, he taught us that though honesty does not actually pay in modern times, we should never give it up. He also showed us that to be an active politician one did not have to be corrupt. And the most valuable thing he taught us was that the country was above the individual and freedom was the most valuable asset of a society which we must guard with all the power at our command. He was a unique person who was equally respected and trusted by his followers and rivals and had the courage to walk about with a badge on his lapel announcing "I am a CIA Agent" to scoff at the stupid witch-hunt which some vendors of intolerance tried unsuccessfully to initiate. It was Piloo Mody who sent me to Rajiv Gandhi to see if I could work in some of his projects. Of course, Indian politics did fascinate me at that time. It still fascinates me. It was then that I was told to see Indira Gandhi. In 1984, Indira Gandhi was killed, throwing the entire nation into a state of turmoil and tension because she had been killed by assassins who happened to belong to a minority community. Nobody cared to take note of the fact that she, too, by marriage, belonged to a minority community. It showed clearly how people never saw into the day after when they were caught in the madness and frenzy of today. I became closer and closer to Rajiv Gandhi, because like all of us, he was young, straightforward and not used to the crooked and complicated ways of traditional politics, popularly called experience. I shared many of my fascinations and weaknesses with him. I had a weakness for photography. He, too, had a weakness for photography. I had a weakness for computers and information technology. Rajiv Gandhi also had a weakness for computers and information technology. I had considerable intolerance for crooked and complicated communal and caste politics. He too had distaste for such politics and the petty-minded things that went with it. I had firm faith and hope in the young people of India. Rajiv Gandhi, too, had great faith in young India and young Indians. He was a tolerant Congress leader, something unknown in the Congress after Nehru and Gandhi. I, too, had considerable faith in the principle of tolerance as an essential factor for a healthy democracy. I believe that all conflicts and wars which brought disastrous day afters, began with intolerance, impatience and prejudice, highly illogical and irrational traits among individuals and societies. I broached my very private ambition of bringing out The DayAfter to Rajiv Gandhi. He smiled, approved the name and asked: "Who gave you that name? I told him what I have written above. (Next Episode: The Dayafter launched with Rs. 500) |
