Since my childhood, my father, who had studied in the esteemed Kolkata Islamia College and resided at the venerable Baker Hostel, would always speak of the popular Indian newspaper ‘Blitz’. Through him, I learnt that Blitz was an acclaimed investigative weekly tabloid paper, edited and published by the renowned journalist Russi Karanjia in Mumbai, which began publication on February 1, 1941 – six years prior to India’s independence. Blitz was India’s pioneering weekly tabloid and concentrated on investigative journalism and political news. It had editions in English, Hindi, Urdu, and Marathi.
Sudheendra Kulkarni, an Indian politician and journalist who worked with Blitz, stated that the decision to launch Blitz was taken over a cup of tea.
Three patriotic journalists – B. V. Nadkarni, Benjamin Horniman, and Karanjia himself – held a meeting at Wayside Inn, a restaurant situated close to the historic Kala Ghoda area in Mumbai to devise the paper.
The paper was established from an antique Apollo Street building in the Fort locality of Mumbai, then known as Bombay.
Its inaugural issue introduced the tabloid as Our Blitz, India’s Blitz against Hitler. It boasted a circulation of 20,000 within four months of launch, and later claimed to have had a readership of one million some 25 years later.
Renowned cartoonist R.K. Laxman, along with Abu Abraham, were among the earliest contributors to Blitz, the popular magazine launched by Karanjia. Acclaimed cartoonist-cum-architect Cecil Lancelot Dawes and his daughter Shirley Dawes provided invaluable services to the magazine for many years before Shirley eventually decided to leave for the West. Notable author K.A. Abbas gained widespread recognition for his long-running column “Last Page” in Blitz, while journalist P. Sainath worked as deputy editor for over a decade before embarking on his path to fame for covering rural poverty and eventually winning the esteemed Magsaysay Award.
Karanjia, who began his career as a journalist at The Times of India, had previously edited The Sunday Standard and the fleeting Morning Standard. His four-man team included Dinkar V. Nadkarni, the celebrated crime reporter from Bombay Sentinel; Zahir Babar Kureishi, who wrote under the pseudonym ZABAK; and Nadir Boman-Behram, who managed advertising and business. Leftist columnists such as Ramesh Sanghvi, A. Raghavan, and K.A. Abbas further bolstered the magazine’s reputation.
Blitz was known for its sensational accounts of global and national affairs and its “spunky tabloid’s loud and screaming captions and telling photographs”. It’s tabloid format and “self-representation as a radical, people’s paper” allowed it to bring to light truths hidden by the powerful. It was identified as Asia’s foremost news magazine and had a “brash tone… set to orchestrate a relentlessly nationalist line strongly inflected by leftist themes”.
In 1975, Cine Blitz, a film magazine edited by Karanjia’s daughter Rita Mehta, was launched. This was followed by the tragic murder of A V Narayan, sub-editor of Blitz, in 1983 at the hands of criminal-politicians Gopal Rajwani and Pappu Kalani.
Unfortunately, Blitz ceased publication several years prior to Karanjia’s death in the mid-90s, although some attempts were made to revive it. Karanjia passed away on February 1, 2008, precisely the same day he had founded the magazine 67 years earlier.
According to Wikipedia, the Bangladesh-based tabloid with the same name is entirely unrelated to this publication – which is true.
In an evening of March 2, 2003, while chatting with 2-3 friends at a roadside café in Dhaka, suddenly I told them of my willingness of publishing a newspaper under the name of Blitz. Prior to that, I have already worked more than a decade in a number of local newspapers as well as Russian news agency Itar-TASS. One of my friends asked – why Blitz? Why not some other name? I told them, since my childhood I have been hearing this name from my father. My father played a source of inspiration in publishing Blitz. One of the main concerns of my friends was – it requires lot of money to run a newspaper, which I didn’t have. Moreover, they were also skeptical of feasibility of financial prospect of publishing an English-language tabloid-sized newspaper from Bangladesh, where size of English readership was far smaller than any Bengali newspaper. In fact, my friends were correct. For an individual like me without solid bank balance or any other source of earning to run a newspaper – this project was sort of mission impossible. Moreover, they knew, I would never seek financial help from anyone. But my determination was rock-solid. I decided to move ahead and accordingly, application was filed with the competent authorities seeking official permission for this publication.
Amidst a tumultuous backdrop, Blitz has ventured forth to release its vibrant publication, challenging the status quo. Since the inception of this newspaper, our mission has been to fear none but God alone – an ethos we have stuck to regardless of the financial constraints and risks. After a period of time, we were able to secure a single-color ‘Solna’ offset machine, which enabled us to print Blitz every week.
Over the two decades, Blitz has faced multiple dangers including threats, harassment, and terrorist attacks, yet with the help of our Contributing Editor Muzaffar Ahmad Noori Bajwa, who also is the Editor-in-Chief of The Eastern Herald, we have been able to push through these tumultuous times. His assistance, advice, and constructive criticism have enabled us to expand our readership base and increase our content output, with more than 100 items published daily, and at least three exclusive reports. More than 30 thousand readers around the world are receiving instant email notification whenever a new content is published in Blitz.
As we move into our 21st year, we are humbly asking for the assistance of various individuals and organizations, in order to ensure our survival and growth.
In recent years, the media landscape has drastically changed. With the rise of online news platforms, newspapers have become a thing of the past. However, there is still a need for newspapers, especially those that focus on international politics, policy, and other related topics. Blitz is an international newspaper that focuses on these areas, providing the public with timely, accurate information. Therefore, governments should support Blitz financially in order to benefit from its unique coverage of global news.
Blitz was founded in 2003, with the mission of providing comprehensive, accurate information about international politics and policy. It quickly became one of the most trusted sources for news and information, thanks to its dedicated team of professional journalists and editorial assistants. Since then, this newspaper has expanded to include coverage of militancy, terrorism, and international relations, in addition to its original focus on politics and policy. This expansion has allowed it to become even more comprehensive, providing readers with a one-stop shop for all their international news needs.
Benefits of supporting Blitz
The most obvious benefit of governments supporting Blitz financially is that it provides an unbiased source of information on international politics, policy, and other related topics. With the rise of online news outlets and online edition of newspapers, it can be difficult to find reliable information that is not influenced by partisan politics. Blitz is committed to providing unbiased, accurate coverage of the news, without any political agenda. This makes it an invaluable resource for governments, as it allows them to make informed decisions based on reliable information.
In addition, governments can benefit from Blitz’s coverage of militancy and terrorism. The newspaper provides up-to-date information on these topics, which can be used in policymaking decisions, as well as counterterrorism bodies of the respective governments This can be especially useful for governments that are dealing with terrorism and militancy in their own countries. Contents of Blitz plays vital role in motivating people against terrorism and militancy.
Finally, Blitz’s coverage of international relations can be extremely beneficial to various governments in the world, particularly those who are being targeted by biased media outlets. Blitz has been consistently countering orchestrated propaganda of a section of newspapers in the world which are vigorously pushing forward their agenda of portraying Islam as a “religion of destruction” – every Muslim as a “terrorist”. In our opinion, it is sacred responsibility of every conscious individual to counter such cruel propaganda against Islam and Muslim. Hopefully leaders of the Muslim world, particularly in the Middle East shall come forward with their generous support to our newspaper in continuing our efforts in this direction.
By providing detailed information on the relationships between countries, governments can better understand their own place in the world and how they can best interact with other nations. This is especially important in today’s globalized world, where countries need to work in unison to resolve global issues.
