'Parsis are inclined towards people who work for the welfare of others.'
Parsiana held a mirror to the Parsi community, reflecting on issues close to their lives.
Today, Parsiana faces closure; October will be its last issue. The magazine has taken the tough call to shut down since it cannot get editorial staff.
But that's days away. Today, the editorial drill continues in the long alleys of the ground floor of the once Parsi Lying-in Hospital in Fort, south Mumbai.
It is work as usual as two Indies accompany Jehangir R Patel, the editor and publisher of Parsiana, around the office.
Mr. Patel has been a journalist since 1968. Aside from Parsiana, he has edited and published Freedom First, Kaiser-E-Hind, Opinion, Voyage and Signature.
After completing his graduation at Yale university in 1968, Mr. Patel worked at the San Francisco Examiner and The Hartford Times.
He started his journalist career in India in 1971 editing and publishing Freedom First along with Mr. Minoo Masani. He bought Parsiana for a rupee from a relative and published the first issue under his editorship in August 1973.
"Parsis have been an outstanding example of a minority community that has fared well," Mr. Patel tells Senior Rediff Contributor Neeta Kolhatkar in the concluding segment of a fascinating two-part interview.
Are there enough students for journalism? The profession is facing one of its worst times across the world.
What we found in subsequent classes, those who have studied journalism don't take up the profession. They go into allied fields. Even today we see the number of students who end going into print journalism is small.
Yes, it is there, there is not much freedom, the pressure of advertisers. I think it depends on where you are working and for whom you are working.
If you work in a large corporation even abroad now, the government will put pressure on you.
Masani used to always say this the government will always control the large papers. It is the small papers they found it difficult to control, because there were so many of them.
Smaller publications are lot more independent, you break even then well and good.
You know, when I returned from US here, the journalists would be speaking of salaries, the food served in the canteen and issues like that.
We never spoke of such issues there. We spoke of politics that troubled us there, this struck me. They, of course, paid us well there even as a trainee.
Has the profession (journalism) got its dues in India? News organisations have been appropriated by conglomerates and there have been so many attempts to censor news, from the Emergency till now?
America has been an independent country with its constitution guaranteeing freedom of speech, for 200 years.
Here we got our independence in 1947, that culture, that freedom and right to express, you won't be getting it here.
We got it there, now of course Trump is trying to curtail that freedom. We were a colony for over 100 years and we didn't grow up in a democratic society, there were local maharajas, kingdoms, etc.
With it, the large publications were owned by the industrialists, they weren't owned by journalists. In America, papers started with individuals starting their own publications and then developing them.
Speaking of freedom of the press, India is ranked 151 on a scale of 180 for World Press Freedom index, so we don't have the freedom over here.
We have to be very careful what we write. You have to be careful of the government, Modi, Shah, what are they going to think?
It is like censorship.
In this regard in Parsiana we didn't have to worry about that.
Our advertisers were not Parsi trusts that were controlling what is written here.
This made a difference as we could write the stories we wanted to.
Masani, even if he was political, he went to the Bombay high court and Soli Sorabjee represented him, against the censorship in 1975.
Even A D Gorwala, the owner and editor of Opinion magazine, stopped submitting the content to the censors and simply ignored.
I had been with him to Sachivalay where the censor officer would look disdainfully and Gorwala said, "I don't care, I'm going to go ahead and carry them."
He had to go to the magistrate's court, twice. The post office had stopped posting the magazines, so we cyclostyled and posted them individually.
The magistrate was nice, he fined us some Rs 50 and let us go.
It was not just people like us journalists who were fighting the Emergency, down the line we had many people.
I remember when we went to cyclostyle, there were full scape paper sheets which had to be fitted into the envelopes, the person doing this task told us where to go to get the papers cut so they would fit in the envelopes.
There were many who didn't support the government and they didn't mind opposing what the government did.
Are you seeing that happening in India today?
Even Himmat magazine cyclostyled and distributed it among their friends, so there was this resistance against the government.
There was an underground kind of movement, which today I don't think you can have. Today they will find your identity and track you down.
The government has its agencies and are going after people. During the Emergency a climate of fear was there.
Every time you would see a police van near your office or home, it meant there was a problem.
Even outside people were scared to talk. Today you don't have an Emergency, but you have a self imposed censorship, you are careful all the time.
You don't want to say something that will get you in trouble. St Xavier's College cancelled the talk on Father Stan Swamy after the ABVP threat. The kind of pressure these Christian missionary institutions must be under...
One can understand. During the Emergency there was fear; now we don't have an Emergency and yet people are scared.
More so with the minorities. Fortunately, the government likes Parsis (laughs) so we have been spared.
Parsis have been an outstanding example of a minority community that has fared well and the government has supported us in our programmes.
How did you learn about Kobad Gandhy? You single handedly changed perception about him in the Parsi community.
I read about Kobad in the newspapers when he was arrested. Then in one of my editorials I wrote that people have criticised and called him a Maoist, but he cared for people.
It was a good thing he cared for the poor. His cousin sister sent that editorial to him in Tihar and from the prison he wrote to me.
That is how our correspondence started. Once I was going to Delhi so I went to see him at the prison.
I sent him pills to disinfect the water when he was in Tihar because he had told me of the water being a problem.
Then we would write in our magazine. I thought the government may clamp down or maybe they would have a dossier on me.
Basically, we Parsis are inclined towards people who work for the welfare of others.
The government went on to call him a Maoist as if he is a killer.
We should see the other side, he and his wife gave up everything for the welfare of others. For a cause he believed in and people were moved by that. Here was a Parsi who wasn't running after money, who was doing the right thing and they supported it.
After you took over, what was the first issue of Parsiana about?
After I took over, our first issue in August 1973 was on Parsi divorces. If you compared the number of marriages in a year and the divorces in a year, it showed 10-12 percent, which was very high.
We called it 'A Cultural Alternative'. Instead of staying in a bad and unhappy marriage, it was fine to get out and people took advantage of it.
Basically the stand was one needn't have to suffer in a bad marriage, if wanted to they could get out.
This was specially for women. We sent a press release to all newspapers saying a 10 percent divorce rate among Parsi community.
Some of them published and remarked they didn't know Parsis had such a high divorce rate.
I don't think any other community had such a high rate of 10 percent divorce rate in 1973.
Parsiana stayed relevant after all these years, and despite Parsis being a small community. How did you manage?
We have a very good and dedicated staff. They are dedicated, sincere and hardworking. Thanks to them we have managed well.
Geeta Doctor, who wrote for us, Manjula Padmnabhan did illustrations, all have been talented people who had similar values.
They all have been liberal. And it is because they supported wholeheartedly we could pull this through.
We picked up a team that had the same values which made it seamless.
We have intense meetings and have our arguments but that is editorial.
Basically, we have no political differences on fundamentals.
Has there been any particular story or issue that stood out in all these years of Parsiana?
In 1987, we carried an issue on inter-faith marriages. In that article we had given the names of the husband and wife. That is when we got the most adverse reactions.
We were asked why were we encouraging inter-faith marriages. See, marrying out was a taboo so we got a lot of flak for it.
Some people cancelled their subscriptions, some people cancelled advertisements. I was taken aback. Who would have imagined a story one wrote and took a stand on an issue who receive such flak?
Here were couples who had married. There was a lot if resistance but then people accepted it finally.
In 1987, there were 18 percent Parsis who married out of the community.
The last time we got the statistics, it was almost 50 percent.
Now there is a problem in getting access to the registrar's office, but I think it is now over 50 percent, as per my guess.
Feature Presentation: Aslam Hunani/Rediff