Staggering on
Stephen Howe
- The ‘New Statesman’: Portrait of a Political Weekly, 1913-31 by Adrian Smith
Cass, 340 pp, £30.00, February 1996, ISBN 0 7146 4645 8
In 1950 a venerable, once highly successful, long-ailing magazine quietly expired. Richard Usborne, the assistant editor in its dying days, later recalled an aficionado’s touching reaction. ‘When the Strand finally folded in 1950, my old sixth-form master wrote to me regretfully: “I loved the dear old Strand. To tell you the truth, I have not opened a copy of it in this century.” Perhaps he was the typical reader we were up against.’
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Letters
Vol. 18 No. 12 · 20 June 1996
From Dharani Ghosh
When Stephen Howe writes, in his review of The ‘New Statesman’: Portrait of a Political Weekly, 1913-1931 by Adrian Smith (LRB, 23 May), that ‘in recent years, its Indian namesake, under the editorship of an Oxford-educated former Trotskyist has become a cheerleader of the Hindu supremacist, ultra-right BJP,’ he simply parades his ignorance. Swapan Dasgupta – who I presume is Howe’s ‘Oxford educated former Trotskyist’ – was an assistant editor of the Statesman from 1985 to 1990, never the editor. Mr Dasgupta now works for the Times of India. The Statesman has been an outspoken critic of the BJP since the destruction of Babari Masjid in December 1992.
Dharani Ghosh
The Statesman, Calcutta
Vol. 18 No. 13 · 4 July 1996
From Stephen Howe
Reviewing a history of the New Statesman (LRB, 23 May) I made passing reference to its older namesake, the Calcutta Statesman, criticising its editorial attitude towards the Bharatiya Janata Party. Dharani Ghosh (Letters, 20 June) charges that in doing so, I merely paraded my ignorance, and overlooked the fact that the Statesman ‘has been an outspoken critic of the BJP’ since December 1992.
The over-compression of my single sentence allusion to the Calcutta paper did indeed mislead in one minor regard, and Mr Ghosh rightly corrects this. I referred to the Statesman adopting its pro-BJP stance ‘under the editorship’ of someone whom I deliberately did not name, but whom Mr Ghosh identifies as Swapan Dasgupta. Dr Dasgupta was not, as my wording inadvertently implied, the Editor-in-Chief but an assistant editor. I think I am right in believing, however, that he was a – if not the – crucial influence on the Statesman’s political line in the later Eighties.
On the more substantive, and far more serious, issue of the Calcutta Statesman’s politics: it has certainly become more critical of the BJP recently than it was in the late Eighties and early Nineties. What it has not done is display any clear recognition that the BJP, as a party explicitly based on religious sectarianism – what in India is usually called communalism – is different in kind from India’s other major political parties. On the contrary, the paper’s criticism of BJP religious bigotry has often seemed to this reader to be peculiarly muted.
In editorials during India’s recent election period, such phrases as ‘flawed perceptions’ were standard Statesman descriptions of the BJP’s views of Muslims and other minorities. To call this an understatement would be … well, an understatement. Much stronger hostile language was used about other major parties, especially the formerly ruling Congress. The Statesman argued firmly for the BJP’s right to lead a new government; this at a time when the other main parties were taking a principled stance against entering coalition with such a sectarian, illiberal body. A Statesman editorial proclaimed with apparent approval that the BJP’s rise ‘means that more people are seeking to found nationhood on religious identity. It also means that people are turning their backs on the Nehruvian nation-state’ – that is, on the secular democratic ideals of India’s founders. Those who believe, as I do, that such ideals remain India’s only hope, will think the Statesman a very odd and ambiguous kind of ‘outspoken critic’ of the BJP, and of communalism. I only wish Mr Ghosh’s description were more accurate than it is.
Stephen Howe
Oxford
