By Dinesh C Sharma
Hyderabad: The passing away of veteran news editor Raghavendra Rao Harnoor (1938- 2025) in Hyderabad this week has left a void in the world of journalism and news editing. Harnoor Saab – as he was popularly known in the fraternity – mentored several generations of journalists in Vijayawada and Hyderabad where he spent most of his journalism career spanning almost half a century. His personality can be described in two phrases – a quintessential Hyderabadi and a grammar Nazi.
I came in touch with him in the early 1980s when I started freelancing as a journalism student at Osmania University. He loved mentoring young journalists, chatting with them when they came to submit stories or just dropped by to discuss feature ideas. Just sitting with him in his rickety cubicle in the Indian Express office at the Lower Tank Bund Road was a masterclass in writing and editing. He would share stories, and witty incidents in great detail – much to the chagrin of the chief sub-editors waiting outside to get his nod for a dak edition or a special page. In my first job with Press Trust of India, I happened to work under his elder brother, Sham Rao Harnoor.
After over three decades, I got in touch with him during the pandemic while researching for my book on Hyderabad. That’s when I discovered many new facets of his personality. He gave me an extended interview, recalling his early days in Hyderabad, the Harnoor family and the nuances of editing books. We could have gone on for hours and even days because Harnoor Saab was full of stories, anecdotes and interesting nuggets about journalism and life, in general. I asked him ‘Why don’t you write your memoirs?’ He quipped ‘I am not a writer, but only a rewriter.’ Then he told me that he had edited a book on Hyderabad, written by Raza Ali Khan of VST, over 30 years ago.
At the time of the interview in August 2020, he was editing a book written by an author who was more proficient in Telugu. “The language gets complex when you think in Telugu, mentally translate it and then express it in English,” he said. “People trained in Telugu language and writing in English are very wordy. They ignore the nuances. They insert prepositions where not required and omit prepositions where required.”
Then, he referred to problems that occur later. “Once I edited a book on Subhas Chandra Bose. This writer got it published in Delhi and included my name in the acknowledgements. It seems the book was ‘edited’ once again by the publisher. When I saw the printed book, I was shocked. Some blunders crept in. One sentence was ‘He was made to sit’ and it was changed to ‘He was made to sat’. I told him to remove my name from the acknowledgements. What will people think? Very often people also say ‘I didn’t had it.’ These are typical mistakes,” Harnoor said.
He said he had picked up the nuances of Indian English spoken in different regions while working with Motherland in Delhi. “There I got to meet people from different backgrounds and learnt about peculiar ways in which English is spoken in different regions. For instance, Telugus while referring to an event that happened two years ago would say ‘last before year’ and not ‘the year before last.’Many people don’t distinguish between ‘test’ and ‘text’. Some of my colleagues used to say that I was inspired by Professor Henry Higgins in ‘My Fair Lady’ who was able to place a person by listening to his or her conversations. You can do the same in India. In Punjab, they call a student ‘satudent’ but in UP they would say ‘istudent.’”
“I hate to see mistakes in print. One mistake means it gets multiplied many times over because so many people read a newspaper and a book,” Harnoor said.
Harnoor Saab shared many stories about the Hyderabad in which he grew up. When I asked him about his Kannadiga origins, he said, “We never talked about religion or caste or language. We had so many families with mixed marriages between Maharashtrians and Kannadigas, Telugus and Kannadigas, and so on. The distinction between Telugus, Maharashtrians and Kannadigas arose only after 1948. Burugula Ramakrishna Rao used to describe Hyderabad as a panchavenisangam because here so many cultures co-existed. In Nizam College, my friends (who happened to be Hindus or Brahmins) would say, ‘Why will Raghu come with us? He will be with Nusrat, Jubaid Ansari or Irfana’. What it meant to suggest was that we did not care to know other people’s caste or religion. For that matter, many people used to mistake me for a Muslim going by the surname Harnoor. The surname also sounds Punjabi.”
His father was an accountant in the office of the Registrar of Joint Stock Companies located in Hyderguda. The office building later became the Telugu Desam Party office in the 1980s. Harnoor senior used to walk to his office every day. He was the sole breadwinner and supported a large family. “My father used to wear dhoti and was an orthodox Brahmin. He would not even drink water in the office. He and one more colleague were the only two Hindus in the office, but his colleagues were very accommodating. He never imposed his orthodoxy on us children. We had all the freedom and were allowed to eat out,” Harnoor recalled.
The Harnoor family lived in a large rented house in Joshi Building near Hari Masjid in Sultan Bazar. Joshi Building once belonged to the Raja of Wanaparthy and was subsequently acquired by Panduranga Joshi, a lawyer. “He became famous because he won a case against the Nizam. This speaks highly of the independence of the judiciary at that time,” Harnoor said. Joshi’s son, Nandu Joshi, used to play cricket for a team called Hyderabad Chums. “This team consisted of players from the Gujarati area opposite Dilshad Talkies.”
Harnoor went to Vivek Vardhini School in Jambagh and then to Nizam College for the degree course. “When you are asking about my school, I don’t know why my eyes have become moist. I can’t forget the kind of attention our teachers gave to us. They knew which student was average, below average, and above average, and accordingly, they adjusted their teaching. More than that, they took their jobs seriously,” Harnoor became emotional while replying to my questions about his childhood days.
Before joining Vivek Vardhini, he was admitted to a neighbourhood school in Sultan Bazar where he studied Urdu. “My landlord’s son Nandu Joshi got me admitted to this school because my father was unwell at that time. Nandu took me to the school and I was simply enrolled. There was no hassle at all. The few weeks I was there helped me a lot. I became familiar with the Urdu script.”
Urdu was not considered a language associated with any community or religion. “Once we had a puja at home and the priest had not come by the muhurat time. I was sent to call him. When I went to his house and knocked on the door, a lady opened the door. I thought I had come to the wrong place because she had an Urdu book in her hand. She told me it was the priest’s house. Such things are unthinkable today,” he said. “There were many Urdu scholars among Hindus. Today people say that Urdu was imposed, but back then nobody felt it that way.”
“In those days, everyone got along very well – Hindus, Muslims, Parsees, Kayasthas, Marwaris. There was never a strife, people lived in complete harmony,” Harnoor said and narrated another incident while summing up: “Once my father fell ill. One of his colleagues, Safaraz Husain, came home and told us ‘Tum kuch fikar mat karo, budde ko kuch nahihota. Ham logan hain na.’ It showed the kind of liberty people took and camaraderie they had.” That was Harnoor saab – a true Hyderabadi and a beautiful link to the past. Alvida, Harnoor Saab and apologies for grammatical errors, if any.
Dinesh C Sharma is a columnist and author based in New Delhi. His latest book is Beyond Biryani – The Making of a Globalised Hyderabad.
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