“In a six-decade-long career in active journalism, Ved Bhasin was not only a publisher and editor of the first English daily of Jammu, he is also credited with starting a daily newspaper in Hindi and the first weekly (later daily) in Dogri language.”
Sqn Leader Anil Sehgal
Ved Bhasin, the doyen of English journalism in Jammu and Kashmir, started his journalistic journey in 1951 with an Urdu weekly titled Naya Samaaj.
The newspaper was banned in 1954 under the Defence of India Rules 1950, when it protested against the deposition of Sheikh Mohammad Abdullah, the then prime minister of Jammu and Kashmir. The twenty-five-year-old journalist and political activist Ved Bhasin was threatened with arrest but was not incarcerated.
Undaunted, the young man bounced back the same year, with an English weekly titled “Kashmir Times”. This weekly was turned into a daily newspaper in 1971.
I met Ved Bhasin sometime in 1967 in his office in an old building rented by him at Shaheedi Chowk in Jammu. I had just passed my matriculation examination with flying colours and had scored nearly as many marks in English as in Mathematics.
I had started writing in Hindi and English languages whilst studying for my matriculation at Allahabad. I wanted to continue writing, I told Ved Bhasin. We decided that I begin with a weekly column titled “College Notes”. It was later rechristened as “Campus Causerie”.
Ved Ji was very appreciative of my efforts and spoke volumes about it before his close friends like Mufti Muhammad Sayeed (later Union Home Minister and Chief Minister of Jammu and Kashmir) and at several other forums. Such encouragement is seldom received by young teenagers. I consider myself lucky.
In later years, after I was commissioned in the Indian Air Force, I was his ambassador at large at all the international film festivals and wrote extensively on art and films for the Kashmir Times.
Those were the days when newspapers barely sold in Jammu (a few did sell in Kashmir, though). Nevertheless, there was a plethora of weeklies, fortnightlies, and monthlies in languages as diverse as Hindi, Urdu, and English. These acted as sources of blackmailing the corrupt government functionaries.
Only a few copies of these periodicals were published to achieve this target. Undoubtedly, Ved Bhasin, and later some others, were glaring exceptions.
Those were also the times when Mufti Mohammad Sayeed, Congress leader Amrit Malhotra, Communist ideologue Krishan Dev Sethi, poet Mohan Yawar, and Hindustan Times correspondent Brij Bhardwaj could be seen flitting in and out of the office of Kashmir Times. Playing cards, especially the game of ‘Puploo’, overloads of coffee, and sumptuous lunch was a norm. I was undoubtedly the youngest to be admitted to these sessions.
In a six-decade-long career in active journalism, Ved Bhasin was not only a publisher and editor of the first English daily of Jammu, he is also credited with starting a daily newspaper in Hindi and the first weekly (later daily) in Dogri language.
For nearly five decades, from 1967 until his demise in 2015, I have enjoyed his unflinching love, affection, and care, which I wear next to my skin, close to my heart. He was a die-hard admirer of the musical talent of my better half, Seema Anil Sehgal, especially her contributions towards communal harmony and peace through poetry and music.
When Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee presented her music album “Sarhad” to his erstwhile Pakistani counterpart Nawaz Sharif, during his historic Lahore Bus Yatra, Ved Ji splashed the story on the front page in six columns. Similar were the coverages of her felicitation at Harvard University, USA, and her singing of Dogri and Gojri languages at international venues.
To me, Ved Bhasin was a nationalist of a different kind. He loved his ancestral roots in Jammu and Kashmir without any hatred for Pakistan or any other nation. He took pride in being a Punjabi, the Dogra heritage of which he considered himself a part, but had equal love and tolerance for all communities, ethnicities, and religions.
He was a young lad of 18 years when he was forced to witness the communal carnage of epochal dimensions, during the partition of British India, in 1947. He had seen humanity in her lowest form, irrespective of caste, creed, or religion. Then all hell broke out in 2003 when he spoke about his visual memories of the partition days at a gathering at the University of Jammu.
He was criticised by the very people, his own compatriots, whom he had diligently served all these years through his pen and newspapers. He was also called pro-Kashmir, which, unfortunately, meant anti-Jammu.
As I remember Ved Ji on his death anniversary, 5th November, I recall all his love for me, his encouragement, his unflinching love for his motherland, and his values of universal brotherhood.
When I published “Tale of a Virgin River”, a book of English translations of the poems of his college mate, eminent Dogri poet Yash Sharma, he personally arranged the book release at the hands of the vice chancellor Varun Sahni, in the University of Jammu. He was so enthralled.
When Seema Anil Sehgal released her Dogri music album “Salaam Dogri,” Ved Ji requested 2000 compact discs (CDs) of the album. This CD was distributed free with the Dogri Times newspaper, which he published and sold for the princely sum of one Rupee.
For months, these compact discs were available to lovers of music at the office of Kashmir Times, free of charge! Just go and take your pick! Would you need more evidence of his love for Jammu, Dogri, the haunting Dogri and Urdu renditions of Seema, and the poetry of his dear friend Yash Sharma?
—–
The post Doyen of English Journalism in Jammu & Kashmir first appeared on Kashmir Times (Since 1954): Multi-media web news platform..
The post Doyen of English Journalism in Jammu & Kashmir appeared first on Kashmir Times (Since 1954): Multi-media web news platform..