25 April 2013, 03:21 PM IST
The Times of India has been a chronicler of the India story, documenting every twist and turn of this great country's journey from bondage to freedom for the past 175 years, mainstreaming, even in its early days, distant areas of the country, bringing alive the story of the common man.
What started as the biweekly Bombay Times & Journal of Commerce is now a global institution. The Times of India is the world's largest-circulated, English-language broadsheet with more than 7 million readers.
Always a voice of readers and mirroring their concerns, one of the earliest campaigns the paper undertook was for the setting up of the Bombay Stock Exchange. The paper won this battle on 16 October 1874. It noted the culmination of its dogged struggle thus: "We are glad to learn that the suggestions made in these columns… have taken definite shape…There can be no doubt that an open stock exchange, organized on the model of those in Europe, will be of great benefit." Today, the BSE is the world's tenth largest exchange in terms of market capitalization.
Once the Father of the Nation Mahatma Gandhi burst upon the national scene and transformed the complexion of our drive to freedom, the paper followed his every step. It welcomed the formation of the Indian National Congress in 1885 with the following words: "Surely, never had so important and comprehensive an assemblage occurred in recent times on the soil of India."
Watershed events in the struggle for independence were reported evenhandedly. The Dandi Salt Satyagraha, for instance: Extensively covered, reports in the paper described the day Mahatma Gandhi reached Dandi and lifted in his hands a lump of clay laced with naturally-occurring salt – a symbol of his resistance to the patently unfair tax on salt.
Bhagat Singh Rajguru and Sukhdev's valiant struggle of 1931 consumed many columns of this newspaper, the heroic trio's trial being reported virtually on a daily basis. In documenting the court hearings, it famously reported how Bhagat Singh never appealed for mercy. The only petition the freedom fighter moved before the judge was a plea that he be shot and not hanged, the paper mentioned in its columns. The judge was taken aback. You call that a petition for mercy, he exclaimed.
A trawl through the pages of this great newspaper, that celebrates 175 years of its existence on November 3, is rich and rewarding. Probably none other has been as close and faithful to the story of India as Times of India has been, justifying its motto: "Let truth prevail".
On August 15, 1947, on the birth of a free India, the Times of India celebrated with the nation, a banner headline exulting: "Birth of India's freedom, nation wakes to new life." The British had been sent packing. "Union Jack hauled down," the paper's first page said. It shed tears with the common man the day the Mahatma fell to an assassin's bullets on 30 January 1948.
From then on, India went from strength to strength with the framing and adopting of the Constitution, the reorganization of states, Five Year Plans, the Green Revolution and our achievements in food self sufficiency. Our democracy bloomed and matured. The Times of India was witness to these seminal experiences in our national history. It was also witness to some reverses we suffered, the China war for instance. Never one to shy away from controversies, this paper talked of the blows our soldiers took and candidly delved into the policy blunders that led to our defeat.
When Bangladesh was born in 1971, The Times of India was there on the frontlines documenting the triumphant Indian Army's march into Dhaka. Through its columns, proud Indians got to read of the day a shaken Lt Gen AAK Niazi unloaded his revolver and handed over the bullets to Gen Jagjit Singh Aurora in a humiliating surrender ceremony, how the people of Bangladesh embraced the liberating Indian forces and the infectious joy and glory of a nation's birth.
The Times of India also lived through the difficult days of the emergency, press censorship and was witness to the turbulent times that followed the collapse of the Congress government and the Janata experiment. Other devastating moments in history have figured prominently – the demolition of the Babri Masjid, the 9/11 attacks and the nightmare 26/11 strikes on Mumbai for example.
Along this long journey, there have been times when this paper has experienced and mirrored pure joy – that of our Cricket World Cup victories in 1983 and 2011, that of our achievements in the field of science, Amartya Sen and Mother Teresa's Nobel wins.
Today, we are a modern multi-media organization that celebrates economic liberalization, free market and a robust integration with the world order.
Other than becoming a global institution and the world's largest-circulated English-language broadsheet newspaper with 7.64 million readers, it has also embraced the newest in technology and has a bold footprint in virtually every corner of the country.
The Times of India's Internet edition is India's most popular news website today, and is available on Mobile phones as well. In December 2012, these resulted in a combined 470 million page views of which Mobile was 38% of the total. The unique visitors for digital TOI added up to 25.5million readers, of which 26% had accessed TOI via Mobile.
The Times of India truly showcases Brand India to a huge domestic and global audience -over 33 million readers- through its Print, Online and Mobile editions. Not surprisingly, the newspaper, which is the flagship of India's largest media company, Bennett, Coleman & Co Ltd, has made an immense contribution to the life and times of the Indian subcontinent over these 175 years.
It has helped shape our vast history even as it has chronicled every major event in the Indian sub-continent --even before the idea of India as a separate country was born. Throughout this time, it has kept one major interest above all else –to best serve its millions of readers with news and information that empower them. Amalgamating the newspaper with cutting-edge digital technology, this newspaper has celebrated India's journey to a global superpower.
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