‘Pratap: A Defiant Newspaper’: A thrilling account of a persistent voice of dissent in India

Chandar Mohan and Jyotsna Mohan’s Pratap: A Defiant Newspaper opens with a tense and unfortunate moment in the history of Pratap, when its Jalandhar newspaper office became the target of a parcel bomb on June 24, 1983. Chandar Mohan had dismissed the tightly packed, difficult to open parcel when the peon first brought it into the office: “Thinking that it must be the usual propaganda stuff that newspapers were being flooded with in those days”. However, “The package had exploded – three employees were grievously injured, two of whom died in the nearby Civil Hospital”.

Receiving a parcel bomb at a newspaper bureau was unprecedented, and the Pratap office became its unfortunate first victim. However, this terrible incident was immediately coded in the language of sacrifice. The authors record that Indresh Kumar, one of the employees who died, said on the way to the hospital, “Sir, I have also made a sacrifice for the country.” This poignant snippet sets the stage for the book that presents the Urdu language daily Pratap and its Hindi language counterpart Vir Pratap as two of the most persistent voices of dissent in both pre- and post-partition India.

Revolution and freedom

The book’s authors, journalists Chandar Mohan and Jyotsna Mohan, are very much part of the history of...

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