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This is in fact nothing new, since other editors -- including Arun Shourie, B.G. Verghese, Dileep Padgaonkar, V.K. Narasimhan, and Vinod Mehta -- have been sacrificed at the altar when management or publishers' business interests took precedence over independence in journalism.
Akbar himself is practically an institution. Until March 1, he was editor-in-chief of The Asian Age, which he launched in 1992 after a brief foray into politics, and the Deccan Chronicle, whose circulation he helped raise to more than 1 million in a short span of time. Among the numerous feathers in his cap he has a stint as a member of Parliament, elected as a Congress Party representative in 1989 when former Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi was in office. His is also the author of several books.
Akbar did not expect the sudden removal of his name from the masthead on Saturday, March 1. That was just a day before his weekly "Sunday" column was to appear in the two editions, as well as in the Khaleej Times and Arab News.
In a farewell email to his staff -- sent by text to other journalists who worked with Akbar during his more than 30 years as an editor, who posted it on the Internet -- he wrote:
"For reasons that need not detain us, I must say farewell. I was under the impression that I might have been able to do so with more grace. But judging from this morning edition of our paper, it seems I might have overstayed my welcome…
We may not have been the biggest, but we held our head high because there was one nonnegotiable asset in our family: we could not be bought. We were independent. We were free. We held our head high. Never let your head stoop, not as long as you are a journalist."
The message speaks volumes about someone who as a young editor in 1976 gave us "Sunday," India's first weekly to focus on investigative reporting. "The Telegraph" followed in 1982, setting new standards in Indian journalism with its layout, catchy headlines and punchy opinion pieces, which sent competitors scurrying for cover and make-shift makeovers.
"The Telegraph," in his words, soon became "unputdownable." By comparison, other newspapers looked starched, with editorial pages that smacked of pedagogy and articles that read like dissertations. Sometimes readers were left wondering whether they were mistaken for doctoral students or the columnist was preparing a thesis for readers to anoint him with a PhD.
Akbar brought much-needed "horse sense" to his columns. Scathing, terse and succinct analogies unraveled knotty events for the lay reader. He was India's first editor to dive into all the gory events as they unfolded -- be they sectarian riots, acts of arson or social upheavals -- instead of remaining ensconced in his comfortable office, relying on input from beat reporters.
At the same time he pursued an illustrious career as an author, dissecting the Kashmir problem, sectarian riots in India, the West's misconception of Islam and the meaning of jihad. He wrote a biography of Jawaharlal Nehru, travel diaries and his own family saga spanning three generations, "Blood Brothers."
Other engagements took him to the United States as a visiting fellow at the Brookings Institution in Washington, D.C. , and to Saudi Arabia at the behest of a Saudi prince, invited as an Islamic scholar. He has also given generous support to an orphanage for Muslim girls in Kolkata, which is developing into a secondary school.
Mahesh Prabhu, a Hindu rightwing sympathizer supposedly at odds with Akbar's views, wrote about reports of pro-establishment pressure for Akbar's sudden ignominious removal from the Deccan Chronicle. But when Prabhu urged other editors to take up the case, they sidled off, saying Akbar's removal was not newsworthy.
Is the media's definition of "news" so elusive -- or tied up with professional rivalry -- that it can ignore the sacking of a media pioneer like M. J. Akbar? It seems the competition in the Indian media is no better than the literally bare-knuckled jousts sometimes witnessed among Indian parliamentarians, who are hauled over the coals by the same media in opinion pages and on prime-time television.
If the lofty ideals of the Fourth Estate are held hostage by publishers -- who perhaps in turn are at the mercy of the establishment -- then the casualty will be the veracity of news and opinions, and the victims will be the readers.
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(Susenjit Guha is a freelance writer living in Kolkata, India. He can be contacted at sguha60@yahoo.com. ©Copyright Susenjit Guha.)
