Pothan Joseph was a journalist in 20th century India whose career spanned the twenty years before and twenty years after India's independence. He worked with notable people of the time such as Annie Besant

Annie Besant

Annie Besant was a prominent British Theosophist, women's rights activist, writer and orator and supporter of Irish and Indian self rule.She was married at 19 to Frank Besant but separated from him over religious differences. She then became a prominent speaker for the National Secular Society ...

, Mahatma Gandhi

Mahatma Gandhi

Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi , pronounced . 2 October 1869 – 30 January 1948) was the pre-eminent political and ideological leader of India during the Indian independence movement...

, Sarojini Naidu

Sarojini Naidu

Sarojini Naidu , also known by the sobriquet The Nightingale of India, was a child prodigy, Indian independence activist and poet...

, and Motilal Nehru

Motilal Nehru

Motilal Nehru was an early Indian independence activist and leader of the Indian National Congress, who remained Congress President twice, and...

. He was the first to write a daily political column for five decades, called “Over A Cup of Tea”, sprinkled with Biblical and Dickensian quotes. He also discovered and nurtured the Indian cartoonist Shankar

K. Shankar Pillai

Kesava Shankara Pillai , better known as Shankar, was an Indian cartoonist. He is considered as the father of political cartooning in India...

, helping to make political cartoons a staple of newspaper diet.

“PJ” started or developed 26 newspapers. These included The Hindustan Times, the Indian Express, and the Deccan Herald

Deccan Herald

The Deccan Herald is a leading English-language daily newspaper distributed in the Indian state of Karnataka. It is published by the Printers Private Limited and has a number of editions in Bangalore, Hubli, Mysore, Mangalore and Gulbarga....

. He also edited Dawn

Dawn (newspaper)

Dawn is Pakistan's oldest and most widely read English-language newspaper. One of the country's two largest English-language dailies, it is the flagship of the Dawn Group of Newspapers, published by Pakistan Herald Publications, which also owns the Herald, a magazine, the evening paper The Star and...

while it was based in New Delhi, but resigned as soon as he realized that Jinnah was pressing for the partition of India and Pakistan.

Pothan Joseph guarded editorial freedom and demanded that editors support those who worked in the editorial wing and never encroach on their freedom. Even before unionization, Pothan also pleaded for proper payment to deserving journalists. His motto during his working life was “courage, vigilance and fidelity”.

Early life and Education

Pothan Joseph was born on March 13, 1892, to C.I. Joseph of Oorayil House, Chengannur, Kerala, India. He graduated with a degree in Physics from Presidency College in Madras, (Chennai), and then took his LL.B. degree in law, from the University of Bombay. He quickly abandoned ideas of a legal career, became a writer for the Hyderabad Bulletin and finally found his calling when he joined The Bombay Chronicle, then edited by B.G.Horniman.

Honors

Pothan Joseph served as the President of the International Federation of Working Journalists for numerous years. As a rule he shunned formal accolades, saying that a “what is the use of moss to a rolling stone?”. He was posthumously awarded the Padma Bhushan, one of India’s highest civilian honors, in 1973.