Syed Khalique Ahmed
NEW DELHI—Paying rich tributes to 19th-century journalist and freedom fighter Maulvi Mohammad Baqar on his 165th martyrdom anniversary, various speakers urged the young journalists to follow the bold journalism practised by Maulvi Baqar. On September 16, 1857, Maulvi Baqar was brutally killed by the then British government by blasting him with a large gun on the charge of supporting the freedom fighters through news reports in his newspaper.
Speakers from various fields were speaking on the occasion of the first Maulvi Mohammad Baqar Lecture organized at the Press Club of India on Friday. Maulvi Baqar was the first journalist in India who was martyred for his role in the freedom movement.
Maulvi Baqar, who published Delhi Urdu Akhbar from Delhi, was highly critical of the British policies and published field stories about the 1857 War of Independence. He used to visit the spot of the incidents and reported the first-hand developments that angered the then-British regime. It was on September 16, 1857, that he was finally tied at the mouth of a large gun at Delhi Gate and blown into smithereens by the British Army on the charge that his writings incited the local people against the British regime.
Press Club of India President Umakant Lakhera said that Maulvi Baqar was killed for using his power of the pen for the country’s freedom. Now, the Press Club of India is fighting for the freedom of journalism in the country. “We fought the cases of Mohammad Zubair and Siddique Kappan in courts,” he stated.
“What was the crime of Kappan for which he has been in jail for the last two years? He was on his way to Hathras to cover a story of a young Dalit girl who died after a gang rape. There was no terror literature recovered from him. Yet, he was booked under terror charges. Although more than ten days have passed since the Supreme Court granted him bail, he has yet not been released,” he said. “But we will have to fight this battle unitedly,” said Mr Lakhera.
Senior journalist AU Asif said that many things regarding the 1857 revolt would not have reached the people and the succeeding generations if Maulvi Baqar did not report them in his newspaper. Maulvi Baqar did his duty despite severe odds against him. “The present government has made news coverage difficult for journalists, but we need to follow in the footsteps of Maulvi Baqar to perform our journalistic duties and cover the developments despite adverse circumstances,” said Mr Asif.
Speaking on occasion, Prof Syed Asghar Wajahat, a retired professor of Hindi from Jamia Millia Islamia, stressed the need to popularize the sacrifice of Maulvi Mohammad Baqar and his immense contribution to the field of journalism, particularly about spot coverage of events, by rendering them in different languages.
Stating that Maulvi Baqar was a committed journalist whose writings created dynamism and vibrancy among people, he exhorted present-day journalists to imbibe the professional journalistic values from Maulvi Baqar’s journalistic works.
Stating that Delhi Urdu Akhbar’s office in Old Delhi had become the nerve-centre of the 1857 struggle for Independence, a retired official from the Indian Council of Historical Research (ICHR) Shabi Ahmad said that Maulvi Baqar had no modern technology like the internet and mobile phones, not even the telegraph that was available with the English media in those times. Yet, he published news about the freedom movement in Assam, Bihar, and Tamil Nadu. It was a significant achievement. As Maulvi Baqar had later on shifted to Lal Qila, where the Last Mughal King Bahadur Shah Zafar lived, his paper was also called Qila-e-Mohalla or Akhbar-e-Zafar because Bahadur Shah Zafar supported it.
Noted Urdu journalist Masoom Murabadi, in his speech, said that during the trial of the case, the British court pointed out that there was a conspiracy between Mughal emperor Bahadur Shah Zafar and the Urdu newspapers against the British government in India, indicating an important role the Urdu press played in the freedom movement. Maulvi Baqar’s Delhi Urdu Akhbar was among the few Urdu newspapers published at that time. Maulvi Baqar’s was the leading newspaper that published stories of revolt against the British from the field.
Mr Murabadi said that nine editors of an Urdu newspaper published from Allahabad were arrested one after the other for criticizing the British government and were given 99 years of prison sentences if taken together. One of them was given 30 years of jail. And all of them were sent to the jail in Andaman & Nicobar, which was called “Kala Pani” at that time.
PCI secretary general Vinay Kumar presented a vote of thanks.
