In this column we will be featuring the writings by award winning women journalists in India found in the collection of the book ‘Making News Breaking News Her Way. It is a publication by Tranquebar Press in association with Media Foundation, New Delhi which instituted the annual Chameli Devi Jain Award for an Outstanding Women Mediaperson in 1980.
Patricia Mukhim
To stand on top of the mountain
[dropcap]H[/dropcap]ow did Bachendri Pal feel when she became the first Indian woman to climb the world’s tallest peak, Mount Everest? Or Sushmita Sen, when she was crowned the world’s most beautiful woman? In 1995, an unexpected phone call from the chairman of the Media Foundation, telling me that I had been awarded the Chameli DeviJain Award, stunned me for a few minutes. I felt as much on top of the world as a Pal or a Sen.
The foundation had chosen me, a teacher-cum-activist- cum-journalist for the award for outstanding work in journalism. I was privileged to share the spot with a band of courageous women from Banda, Uttar Pradesh, who were engaged in producing a hand-written broadsheet in Hindi for village neo-literates, Mahila Dakiya.
‘Thank you. Thank you very much,’ was all that I could mumble.Seventeen years later, I still choke up when I remember the moment of the phone call. Nothing has changed -neither the goose bumps on hearing of the award, nor the thrill that I, an activist-journalist, feel on getting a by-line (earlier through stories and now through columns), or achieving a silent victory on a development project.
During a long car drive recently, I let my mind re-live the fascinating journey of the last seventeen years. The telex machine first gave way to the typewriter and then to a feather-touch electronic keyboard. The power of the written word now is largely dominated by the deafening sound of the broadcast media, and market pressures have begun to influence editorial judgement.
Today, people like me have begun to be referred to as the Old School of veteran journalists who still remember and know what it is like to walk the straight line of professional ethics. As we look around, we realise we have once again reached a stage in journalism when lines need to be redrawn and value systems restored. Every time one thinks of hanging up one’s gloves, one realises that the need to stand fast and fight is greater. For how long? I don’t know. However, we now have no option but to keep going.
When I received the Chameli Devi Jain Award, I was a high-school teacher who dabbled in journalism because I found that writing was a wonderful platform to let off steam. Indeed it was the best way to handle stress -to tell your story the way you want it to be told. Here I owe a debt of gratitude to the former editor of The Shillong Times, Manas Chaudhuri, Who gave me my first break as a columnist. He never used his editorial clout to strike down any idea even if it meant getting him or his paper into trouble. And trouble we had aplenty as I took on the powerful and corrupt in government. We had to fight court cases galore, but the editor never once ticked me off for going overboard, as I suspect some others without the stomach for hard-hitting journalism would have done. The only times Manas Chaudhuri used his influence was to give my article a sharper edge. Sometimes I felt he was a co- conspirator against a system that is increasingly becoming anti-people.
The Chameli Devi Jain Award gave me the courage to write about issues many found daunting, especially at a time when Meghalaya was wracked by a virulent form of militancy. I wrote and I wrote and I wrote some more, questioning the perpetrators of violence. Sometimes, I would get calls in the dead of night asking me to shut up or else. ‘We know how many children you have and we know what they do and which school they attend,’ came the threats on my landline. At the time, we did not have cellphones, so I was not the only one disturbed by these late-night calls. The whole family would wake up, and my children would be jittery. But not once did they ask me to back off. However, I could sense the fear in their eyes and my heart wept. But I could not turn back from my mission.
Writing alone, we discovered, was not enough to fight the fear psychosis that had gripped a once peaceful and beautiful state considered the Scotland of the East, so a group of us started a people’s movement called, ‘Shillong We Care’. We wanted to provide a platform for the people who had been extorted, threatened or intimidated, to articulate their anxieties and fears. We worked closely with the police to find how best to tackle this growing menace. We braved bandh calls by militants on 26 January and 15 August and literally put our lives on the line. But at the end of the day, we felt we owed it
to our children to ensure better days ahead. If you are cowed down by militants, you will also be hunted down. But if you stand up and fight back to reclaim little by little the space overrun by the actors of violence, there is a sense of deep satisfaction at having conquered the unconquerable.
I continued to write about militancy more like a bard urging people to stand up and be counted. I am not even sure whether I was doing the right thing, but I was just listening to my heart.
In 2000, I was informed that I had been awarded the Padma Shri for social work through journalism. This gave my detractors the opportunity to label me an ‘agent of the Government of India,’ planted in Shillong to destroy the nationalist movement of an ethnic minority. That provided impetus to the enemies of peace to trash me at every given opportunity. I dare say that many at the time subscribed to what the militants said and chose to disbelieve me. Well, such are the vagaries of life!
It’s funny how you can sometimes feel alienated from your own people for doing what you believe is right. There was a sense of distrust that because I was not on the same page as the militants, I was actually against my own people. The movement had taken an ugly communal turn by then. Non- tribal businessmen were served extortion notices. Those who did not pay were shot down in broad daylight. The scenario was probably not very different from the Mumbai underworld, except that, in Mumbai, the underworld dons do not claim to be the messiahs of the people.
By 2002-03, the incoming government showed that it meant business. Earlier, people who received extortion notices were told by the state’s home minister to negotiate with the militants as they were open to partially reducing the amount. It seemed to me that the politicians were also getting a share of the booty. The new home minister of the state, however, was a young, dynamic management graduate from XLRI Jamshedpur, who began to file FIRs against the traders he suspected were paying the militants. Out of fear, they tried to get anticipatory bail. That was a clever ploy. Most traders had the excuse that if they paid, they would be booked by the law.
That was when militancy in Meghalaya started to decrease. Now, in the Khasi Jaintia Hills, it is on the downswing with only a few cadres holed up in Bangladesh, but who want to come forward and surrender. The government has worked out an attractive surrender package.
Years after writing a regular column, feature stories and investigative reports for The Shillong Times, I also started writing for The Telegraph and The Statesman. The Shillong Times, the fascinating newspaper I edit and represent, has been banned many times by radical groups and even publicly burnt.
Often I have asked myself, especially when questioned by others, whether it is right to be an activist-journalist. I believe it is and that is why I am one. Is it easy? No sir, it is not.
It takes a toll to be both editor and activist. Sometimes the two identities clash and I ask myself which path I should tread. I close my eyes, take a deep breath and tell myself that whatever I choose to do, I will always walk the line.
Since 2000, other honours and awards have come my way. I am humbled by the recognition and take another deep reath, resting briefly on the milestone before moving ahead push the pen beyond familiar frontiers. Many lessons have been learnt, but they must wait another telling. I only know that the Chameleon Devi Jain Award gave me what I needed lost -a silent confirmation that what I was doing was not wrong. On the contrary, there was a jury out there that appreciated my work. What more does a journalist need?
The Chameli Devi Jain Award recognises women journalists who have excelled in their field. In a world that is still so gender-unequal and where it still feels so natural to give the place of pride to a man at every function, every celebration and every occasion, here was a foundation that found a place for women to win plaudits for their unwavering faith in the power of the pen. Thank you Media Foundation for continuing steadfastly with what you believe in.
Patricia Mukhim is currently editor of The Shillong Times, Meghalaya’s oldest and highest circulating daily. She also writes a weekly column for the The Telegraph and the The Statesman. A member of the National Security Advisory Board, she has won the Padma Shri as well as several other journalistic awards. She is, above all, a committed activist. Patricia Mukhim won the Chameli OeviJain Award in 1995.
She shared the award with Mahila Dakiya.
