This was partly because there weren’t so many newspapers and magazines those days, nor TV news channels. But a far bigger reason for the popularity of Blitz (which was published in English, Hindi and Urdu, each edition selling in lakhs) was Karanjia’s unique brand of tabloid journalism — irreverent and investigative in news (readers used to wonder how Karanjia routinely attacked the Congress party and its governments, and yet managed to be on extremely friendly terms with Jawaharlal Nehru, Indira Gandhi and Rajiv Gandhi), radical and idealistic in views (with an unmistakable leftist and pro-Soviet orientation, which was the intellectual flavour of the time) and never lacking in a little bit of titillation.

It is because of the last ingredient that Karanjia was often accused, wrongly and unfairly, of indulging in “yellow journalism” by those in the profession who were jealous of his success. Blitz courageously and creatively espoused many worthy causes. Apart from Karanjia himself, this contribution to socially committed journalism came, first, from Khwaja Ahmed Abbas, the celebrated writer and film-maker (his Saat Hindustani marked Amitabh Bachchan’s entry into Hindi cinema) who wrote the immensely popular ‘Last Page’ column, and later from P. Sainath, who worked as deputy editor for over a decade. Sainath later became one of India’s best-known writers on rural poverty, doing Karanjia proud by recently winning the Magsaysay award.

In the last phase of his journalistic career, he became increasingly disillusioned with communism and the Communist’s anti-Hindu secularism. Simultaneously, he became a strong sympathiser of the BJP and the Ayodhya movement. It was then that he insisted I replace Sainath as deputy editor and give a new, pro-Hindu orientation to Blitz. I did this with commitment and conviction as expected from my editor. This, of course, shocked his Communist friends who accused him of saffronising Blitz. But Karanjia stood his ground. He was never dogmatic in his support of the Left and as early as 1976, he became an ardent devotee of Sathya Sai Baba. He later wrote a book on yoga.

... contd.