Harivansh Narayan Singh is new RS deputy chairman: Ex-journo known among friends for simplicity and integrity

Patna: In his childhood, he was an adept horse rider, during his college days he happened to be a good debater as well as a serious event organiser, and as a journalist, he was viewed as a workaholic with innovative ideas that were known for their human touch. Now as a politician, he is as dynamic as his leader Nitish Kumar. These are a number of enviable traits in the immeasurable profile of the man nicknamed Ajay — who officially became Harivansh Narayan Singh after being enrolled in school. But among his friends in Banaras Hindu University, where he spent his precious and memorable six years, he used to be called Harivansh Bhai. Perhaps that is why the soft-spoken and no-nonsense person who contributed 35 years of his life to active journalism chose to be known as only Harivansh for his rest life. “Narayan and Singh were like appendages to me. So I deleted them besides throwing away the sacred thread (janeu) around my body three-and-a-half decades ago,” he had said. His journey in active journalism came to an end on 31 January, 2014 after he was nominated for Rajya Sabha by the Janata Dal (U). Soon after, he told this reporter, “I will try my best to deliver my remaining time, energy and ability for the betterment of Bihar and humankind just as I had been doing as a journalist. But I will never stop writing.” Harivansh happened to be one of the extraordinary personalities who knows the art of transforming a weak literary organisation into a strong one. When he took on the responsibility of editor of Prabhat Khabar in August 1989, its circulation was a mere 400 copies. The newspaper published from Ranchi was on the verge of closure. Within 10 years, the dying Hindi newspaper turned into Jharkand’s most widely-circulated newspaper. Under his editorship, the newspaper got published from 10 centres in Jharkhand, Bihar and West Bengal and reached eight lakh in circulation. [caption id=“attachment_4927601” align=“alignleft” width=“380”] File image of Harivansh Narayan Singh. Wikimedia Commons[/caption] “Hard work, team spirit, good content and above all, the trust of the readers in the paper helped us to achieve this miracle,” said Harivansh. Some of his close friends had ridiculed him when he predicted that he would not be able to run the paper for even 20 months. “But with the assistance of my colleagues, I succeeded in publishing the paper with gusto for 25 years,” he added. As editor of the newspaper, he used to suggest to his journalists to apply a human touch to their writing. He focussed on taking a firm stand on issues related to tribal welfare, the creation of Jharkhand, the fodder scam, local problems and for the special status to the states of Bihar and Jharkhand. Born in 1956 to a farming family of Sitabdiyara village that has now been sandwiched between Uttar Pradesh (Balia district) and Bihar (Saran district), Harivansh left the village at the age of 14 to pursue his further education in Udai Pratap Singh College in Varanasi, after which he went to BHU, where he did his Master’s in Economics and Journalism. Thereafter, he worked as a trainee with the Times Research Foundation. While working as a reporter with Dharmyug_,_ a Mumbai-based Hindi magazine, he took out some time to work as an officer in the Bank of India in Hyderabad to please his father who had wanted his youngest son to get into the banking services (Harivansh’s eldest brother is a retired engineer). Despite being selected for a role as an officer at the Reserve Bank of India in Kochi, the journalist in his soul forced him to turn down the lucrative offer from RBI and to quit his Bank of India job. On the request of a retired journalist, the late Surendra Pratap Singh, Harivansh joined Hindi Ravibar as a reporter in Patna and then shifted to Kolkata. Fed up with the metropolitan culture and lifestyle and in search of an opportunity to focus on rural reporting, he soon landed in Ranchi and joined five-year-old newspaper Prabhat Khabar, which was owned by veteran Congress leader, the late Gyan Ranjan. “Being his junior in BHU, I have encountered Harivansh Bhai’s enthusiasm and concern for welfare of the downtrodden and his radical approach to the ills of society,” recalled Birendra Singh, MP of Mirjapur in UP. According to him, six month before Jayaprakash Narayan launched his movement against the Congress in 1974 in Patna, the Lok Nayak had visited BHU on the invitation of Harivansh to address a meeting of 36 students. “I do not hesitate to say that the spark of the JP movement came from BHU. JP had then said the darkness of the nation would disappear soon with a new dawn,” added Singh. The Bhojpuri-speaking students used to gather in Harivansh’s room in the Birla Hostel to listen to him speak on various social, political and spiritual subjects. “Also to eat Bhojpuri treats like tilwa, chura, bhunja and other homemade eatables that were sent to him from his family in the village,” recalled Singh. Further, his love for his village and the villagers will never disappear. “Whenever he goes to the village, he puts on a turban like a farmer and does not shy from carrying a lota with him on the way to answering nature’s call a fair distance away in the fields,” said journalist Swayam Prakash, who worked under him for long time, adding, “Even today, Harivansh’s favourite food is litti and chokha, and dal, bhat and chokha. He is a teetotaler and a strict vegetarian.” Those who worked under him said that he is not an artificial person unlike many in the profession of journalism — right from taking his luggage himself from his home to the railway station or airport and back to doing his own laundry. His simplicity could be judged from the fact that he slept near a peon and junior members of staff when the time came to launch a new edition of the newspaper. The good qualities that he has accumulated have been with him since childhood. “I am very inspired by my maths teacher in school. He was very simple, pro-people and used to teach poor students free of cost. Once he asked me to bring drinking water. I followed him. He asked if I had filtered the water through a thin cloth. I lied that I had. When he started pouring the water into his mouth, a live little frog jumped out of the small vessel. I was scared of being beaten up. But he lovingly told me not to worry. That very incident made me learn about the importance of tolerance,” Harivansh said.

He does however get worried while talking about the present style of journalism. “Blackmailing has started dominating our profession. Profitability appears to become sole motive behind starting a newspaper and getting into the profession as a reporter,” said he adding, “If it is not checked at the earliest, then the coming generation will never pardon us,” he said. He also is of the view that paid news should be banned at any cost.

When it comes to spirituality, he said, “I have a firm belief that only spiritualism can eradicate evil thinking from the minds of the people. Our freedom fighters were laced with spiritual wealth that kept giving them fodder to fight against the British successfully. I am fond of reading spiritual books since my childhood and I am inspired by Swami Vivekananda’s philosophy and the works of JP.” He also felt that Nitish Kumar must have a spiritual heart in order to have turned around the fortunes of a near-collapsed state. “Harivansh is an all-rounder. Even while delivering a knowledgeable speech, this man — short in stature — stays on top among the equals,” said a senior journalist.