Acharya Atre: A Fighter Journalist
Circa 1958.
Vengurla was a taluka (tehsil). One secondary school and three primary schools adorned the town then. Distant villages around had a few primary schools. The educational standard was good. There was a hospital (St Luke’s hospital) run by American missionaries popularly known as Batyache hospital in Vengurla where American surgeons stayed and worked as doctors.
Maharashtra state was not formed yet. Samyukt Maharashtra movement was in full form. Pt. Nehru was not in favour and Morarji Desai was against it.
Acharya Atre fired cannon-balls at both of them through his daily newspaper ‘Maratha’ and weekly ‘Navyug’ with other frontline leaders. He had been to Vengurla, a port city built by Dutch, to augment their marine trade 400 years ago.
Rameshwar Mandir in central Vengurla adjoining a beautiful lake then had the only hall in the town. Apart from invoking God through bhajans, the hall was used for public meetings of great leaders from all fields. Swami Vivekananda, on his visit to Goa, then under Portuguese control, had held a meeting there 60 years ago, in 1898.
Acharya Atre’s meeting was as colossal as he was. State transport service though bad was functional in those days. Village schools teaching up to 4th and 7th standard arranged for state transport buses to carry students from the villages around the township, especially to listen to the great orators. This was the rarest means for teaching practical oratory.
Basically, a teacher, having a diploma in teaching from England, Acharya Atre might have been definitely pleased to see students in such a large number. He didn’t quote so. Such things were to be understood without spoon-feeding then. Spoons weren’t much used then like Britishers.
The newspapers published from Mumbai were available on the very same day by evening, courtesy Belgaum airport and Zerol air surcharges for the newspapers.
Students and their parents had packed the Rameshwar Mandir. Most of the people knew the fire disgorging cannon namely Acharya Atre. They loved his weapons like fiery speeches, and sharper weapon, his humour.
Acharya Atre came on the dais. He looked at the chair reserved for him that was smaller to his size. He took a turn around, looked, and said dramatically, ‘Would I be able to sit in this chair?’
Ekach hansha! (Unanimous laughter!)
‘When I’m trying to sit in this chair, Morarji’s son might have been falling in a Mumbai gutter!’
Prachand hashan!! (Roaring laughter!!)
‘I’ve not seen such a drunkard in last 10000 years!’
Prachand talya!!! (Thundering claps!!!)
This was the way he took listeners in his grip that he never let loose. He professed that humour is the best weapon to finish your enemy. And he followed this forever.
The above phrases were inscribed in the reports of his own newspaper in brackets abundantly and in his two autobiographies later. The style was devised by him and loved by all. Another phrase Acharya Atre devised was ‘in last 10000 years’.
That was the patent unit for appreciation or scorn of this “Extravagant Philanthropist” of words. He never was parsimonious in showering admiration on anyone who he liked.
He loved Marathi and Maharashtra. He insisted for easy and lyrical language. And he followed it in all the forms of literature from dramas to poetry and essays to novels that he handled with ease. He loved Dnyaneshwar and his translation of Bhagwat Geeta in Marathi.
The bankrupt British government is maintaining all memories and monuments of writers at the cost of the depleting exchequer. But is the man, who had a capacity to take any art form including movies into his stride, remembered here? In fact, one of the founders of the state?
Few individuals feeling proud of such an incredible person, one who was among us, do try to preserve his memories on a scant level spending from their own meager resources. But the government, instead of supporting such attempts, is mindlessly brutal in defacing the memories.
‘Acharya Atre, Ek Zunzar Paurush’, a movie-like documentary produced by a teacher from Amravati, Sharadchandra Sinha at his own expenses has been lost. An American professor who saw the film in Plaza talkies insisted on seeing it every day. ‘And we were proud of Citizen Kane so far!’ — He exclaimed.
Barring a few similarities like a newspaper magnate, Kane, a partially fictional character doesn’t stand anywhere near Acharya Atre’s genius. It was the wide publicity — as one of the best movies of all the times, the Citizen Kane got, might have been the cause for the professor to get carried away.
And, now in context with present times…
There is a fighter journalist of a fractional stature of one upon 10000 of Acharya Atre. He fights for social causes. He can be termed a daredevil too. He has been beaten by ShivSena and a few hooligans of politicians many times. He was the first man to lead the protest opposite Sena Bhavan in the prime time of ShivSena with a small his eveninger.
Every evening he had a khumkhumi of fighting for some issue related to injustice or corruption. Good intention.
He, however, brings an issue before you like a buffet that you have to eat on your hands and forget it immediately as he fiercely needs a new issue for another day. Forget what happened yesterday. What drives him to collect kaleidoscopic issues? Is it because he is not a time-surviving writer but just a journalist?
In the process, doesn’t he understand how he never would be able to weed out the evil in society and instead make a junkyard of the issues? Doesn’t he understand that it’s all the times better to root out a few cases of corruption fighting up to their roots than following and digging hundreds and forgetting them the next day? Does he leave them to the concerned culprits and authorities to improve in a Gandhian way? Leaving everything to their nonexistent conscience?
He is Nikhil Wagle, erstwhile editor of Aple Mahanagar, an eveninger from Mumbai.