Veteran Journalist & Padma Bhushan Awardee TJS George Passes Away At 97

Chennai: TJS George, an internationally-recognised veteran journalist, author and Padma Bhushan awardee, passed at the age of 97 on Friday. Born in Kerala, Thayil Jacob Sony George, had graduated from the Madras Christian College and begun his long and illustrious journalism career at the Free Press Journal in Bombay in 1950. Shiv Sena founder Bal Thackeray, who at that time would call the FPJ News Desk the ‘Malayali Club’ (as recalled by TJS in a column) was among his colleagues.

He went on to be associated with the Far Eastern Review and became the Founder Editor of the Asiaweek in Hong Kong. “The success of Asiaweek was remarkable. And it was overnight. Clearly, there was a widely felt need for an Asian journal with an Asian viewpoint,” he recalled in an interview three years ago. George, however, regretted the magazine’s downfall. “In the end, it became a half job, half done. I was responsible for its fall,” he had lamented referring to the change in its ownership and how Asiaweek became “Americanised” and “irrelevant” to Asia.

Much before he founded the international magazine, George had hogged the headlines in 1965 when the Bihar Police arrested him on charges of sedition, when he was the Editor of The Searchlight. He was the first Editor in India to be jailed thus. Years later, recalling how he had rubbed the then Bihar Chief Minister Krishna Ballabh Sahay on the wrong side, George said he had refused to follow the tradition there to “consult” the Government before publishing reports on important issues. “This was unthinkable for me and I never bothered about this convention,” he had told the senior journalist A J Philip. His factual account of a students’ bandh in Patna had irked Sahay leading to his arrest.

Later, George settled in Bangalore, and remained the Editorial Adviser for The New Indian Express for many years. His Sunday column in the newspaper A Point of View ran was published uninterrupted for a record 25 years until 2022. He displayed his type writer in the office for the present generation of journalists to realise how it played a crucial role in a media man’s job in the pre-computer days.

A great connoisseur of art and culture, George wrote several biographies including ‘The Life and Times of Nargis’, ‘M S Subbulakshmi: The Definitive Biography’, and ‘Krishna Menon: A Biography’ (Menon, the former Defence Minister and lawyer incidentally, defended him in the Bihar case). He also penned ‘Lee Kuan Yew’s Singapore’. His last book ‘The Dismantling of India’ was published in 2022.

George, was also known for his pleasant nature and would chat up with journalists much younger than him. He loved to have a peg of rum each evening.

George had briefly moved to Coimbatore before returning to Bengaluru. His wife, Ammu, predeceased him in January this year. Poet and novelist Jeet Thayil is his son.