Rich tributes paid to Radhika Mohan Bhagawati

BY OUR STAFF REPORTER

Guwahati, Oct 10: Members of the Media Trust, a city based media studies organization, here on Tuesday paid rich tributes to veteran jourlist and prolific writer Radhika Mohan Bhagawati on his adyasradha.

Bhagawati passed away in a private hospital here on September 30 at the age of 86.

To pay tributes to the former editor of Ajir Asom, an Assamese daily published by The Sentinel Group of Newspapers, the Media Trust orgainsed a memorial meet here.

Several senior jourlists and trustees of the trust including Media Trust Chairman Bhadra Krish Goswami, Executive Trustee Abu Hanifa, jourlists Debabrata Mishra, Ramani Barman, Ikbal Ahmed and trustee Tarun Saikia paid rich tributes to Bhagawati.

Fondly recalling their association with the veteran editor, they said that Bhawati is a glaring instance of ethical jourlism.

He strongly followed the core principles of ethical jourlism, they said.

Jourlist Mishra in his speech said that as the editor Bhagwati was guided by ‘jourlist has no friends, no enemies’ principle.

“We never imagined that he will leave for his heavenly abode so early. As an editor he always paid patient hearing to the problems of his junior colleagues and gave solution,” Mishra said.

He said that Bhawgawati was an editor with strong jourlistic integrity and strictly followed the ethics of jourlism. 

“As a jourlist, he had great respect for his profession,” Mishra recalled. 

Saikia, a trustee of Media Trust, said that Bhagwati was very careful in use of language in newspapers.

“He never used any derogatory language against anyone and always avoided persol attack while writing a story,” Saikia said.

Born on January 19, 1933 to Govinda Shastri and Hemaprabha Devi at Jamugurihat in Sonitpur district, Bhagawati started his jourlistic career in 1958 in tun Asomiya, a now-defunct Assamese daily and became editor of Assamese literary magazine Ramdhenu in 1963.

An editor with strong jourlistic integrity, Bhagwati, was the recipient of the Sahitya Akademi Award in 1991 for Assamese translation of ‘The Story of Our Newspapers’ by Chanchal Sarkar.

The renowned jourlist was also conferred the prestigious Harendra th Barua award for his jourlistic work in 1990, Shiva Prashad Baruah tiol award for jourlism in 2010, Birendra Kumar Bhattacharya award for jourlism in 2011 and Shashiprabha Barbarua Sahitya Award in 2015.

He was also honored with ‘Republic Day Jourlism Award’ by the Government of Assam on January 26 this year.