New Delhi: Chandan Mitra was not only a brilliant journalist but also a fantastic Hindi speaker. This is how former Rajya Sabha MP Swapan Dasgupta remembered late journalist-turned-Rajya Sabha MP Mitra.
“He was passionately fond of Hindi films. So, his exposure to India, his induction into its mainstream, was through Hindi cinema.” Dasgupta said at Mitra’s memorial lecture on 16 December. “And he spoke fantastic Hindi, which for a Bengali of that generation was something unusual.”
Chandan Mitra passed away at the age of 66 on 12 December 2021. On Tuesday evening, friends, journalists, and politicians came together at the India Habitat Centre to pay their respects to Mitra at his first-ever memorial lecture, organised by his son and senior automotive journalist Kushan Mitra. It was Mitra’s close friend and comrade, Swapan Dasgupta, who set the tone for the evening by recalling their childhood, growing years, and their place within India’s English-speaking elite—of which, Dasgupta acknowledged, both he and his friend, whom Bengalis affectionately called “Chondon,” were a part.
“We enjoyed a convivial relation for over six decades and we lectured each other periodically sometimes quite with a great deal of passion, sometimes we agreed, most of the times we disagreed, but it was all great fun, it was all a good laugh,” said Dasgupta.
Dasgupta and Mitra, along with Paranjoy Guha Thakurta, were batchmates at La Martiniere, and all three later went on to study at St Stephen’s College.
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Pioneering journalism
After completing his PhD at Oxford University, Mitra realised that he was not cut out for academics. That was when he turned to journalism, Dasgupta said. He began his career as an Assistant Editor at The Statesman in Kolkata and soon rose through the ranks to become Executive Editor at The Hindustan Times, and later, Editor of The Pioneer.
He was seen as the “saviour” of The Pioneer, said one of his friends at his memorial.
In 1998, Mitra took full ownership of the daily newspaper and transformed it from a publication facing closure into a national newspaper known for its bold editorials.
A committed Marxist during his campus days at St Stephen’s College, Mitra’s ideological trajectory gradually moved from the Left to the right of centre.
A popular public figure, Mitra joined the BJP and was nominated to the Rajya Sabha in 2003. He was re-elected as a Rajya Sabha MP from Madhya Pradesh in 2010. He was seen as the BJP’s intellectual face in Parliament.He later joined the Trinamool Congress in 2018.
During one of his speeches at the Sardar Patel Memorial Lecture in 2014, Mitra said that “Marxism, socialism and integral humanism together form the blueprint for a more harmonious and inclusive society.”
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Reinventing his legacy
Now, his son, Kushan Mitra, who is also a journalist, is bringing the paper back into action. And he made that announcement at his fathers memorial lecture.
“We are now reinventing a bit of his legacy with the newspapers back up and running after several years of legal struggle. I would like to thank some of the people over here, who helped us immensely in the revival of the newspaper,” he said.
In 2021, the Delhi National Company Law Tribunal (NCLT) initiated insolvency proceedings against a firm belonging to The Pioneer. It was done in the wake of a plea by one of its directors, Amit Goel. It was reported that Goel owned 20 percent in Printech Ltd and had given an “unsecured” loan of Rs 1.56 crore to the company’s promoter in 2018.
“The Pioneer, a newspaper which my father edited and published, was dragged into the NCLT by a former partner in 2021 and my father died a heartbroken man because the case had gone into a sort of legal purgatory,” said Kushan.
He was appointed as printer and publisher of the Pioneer in July of this year
“I, along with some partners, brought the paper out of the legal chaos it has been under for three years in late 2024 and since last year I have been trying to rebuild the paper,” Kushan said.
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‘India has moved on’
Dasgupta’s association with Mitra spanned over three decades. From being idealistic Marxists in their university days to being BJP Rajya Sabha members—their life followed almost the same trajectory.
Dasgupta is now of the opinion that India’s priorities have changed over the years and he thinks Mitra would agree.
“What I and Chandan stood for—or what people like me were brought up to believe—were once considered issues of supreme importance,” he said. “Today, they have become eclipsed. It doesn’t matter; we’ve all had good innings.”
And that’s when he made a heartfelt confession about how the shift from a sense of supremacy to irrelevance had quietly taken place.
“But I think it is very important to realise—and I believe Chandan would have appreciated this—that people like us are largely irrelevant today. Acknowledging that is crucial: to understand that we belonged to a particular phase of history,” Dasgupta went on to say.
“Perhaps we contributed to it in some measure, but India has moved on. And I think India is rediscovering its mojo in its own way.”
(Edited by Theres Sudeep)