Twenty-three years ago, Robin Jeffrey, a professor of politics at Melbourne’s La Trobe University, had described Ramnath Goenka’s “Indian Express empire” as the “grandest version of newspapers with some link to the ‘freedom struggle’” in his book. When Goenka died in 1991, Jeffrey wrote in India’s Newspaper Revolution: Capitalism, Politics and the Indian-Language Press (1977-99) that “his newspapers were published in cities and towns in every region of India except Calcutta and the east.”
But the Indian Express was not started by Goenka. It was started in 1932 by Varadarajulu Naidu, an ayurvedic doctor and Congressman. According to Warrior of the Fourth Estate by BG Verghese, the newspaper was priced at one anna and published by Naidu’s Tamil Nadu press. In the first issue on September 5, 1932, the front page was solely devoted to seven display advertisements and the masthead was ornate with a crest resembling a coat of arms inscribed with a Tamil motto.
