Frank Moraes
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Frank Moraes or Francis Robert Moraes, was editor of many prominent newspapers in post-Independence India, including The Indian Express. He is of Goan origin. Frank Moraes is considered as one of the "legends" among editors in India, together with others like Durga Das, Pothan Joseph, Kasturi, Mulgaonkar, Shankar, Chelapauthi Rao, Prem Bhatia, Edatata Narayanan, and Nikhil Chakravorty.
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[edit] Lifesketch
Born in Mumbai, the commercial-capital of India then known as Bombay in 1907, Francis "Frank" Robert Moraes was the son of a Goan civil engineer. There has been consideration migration of Goans to Bombay for many decades. He spent his childhood in Poona, a city in central Indian now called Pune and studied at Catholic schools in both the cities. From 1923, he was at St Xavier's College, Bombay where he studied History and Economics, later moving to Oxford University (1927-1934) to study History. He was active in student politics, and edited the Oxford student newspaper Bharat. He also studed law at Lincoln's Inn in London, and was called to the Bar.
Returning to India in 1934, he practised as a Barrister for a few months, and in 1936 joined The Times of India as a journalist, got promoted to junior assistant editor in 1938, and worked in Burma and China as the Times of India's war correspondent between 1942-1945.
Between 1946-1949, Moraes was based in Ceylon (now Sri Lanka) as editor of The Times Ceylon and The Morning Standard. He worked as the India correspondent of several British newspapers, and in 1950 became The Times of India's first "Indian editor", amidst a changing post-colonial situation.
On returning from Ceylon in 1949, Frank Moraes was named editor of The National Standard, a Goenka-owned Indian newspaper that later morphed into The Indian Express. According to another journalist of Goan origin, Victor Rangel-Ribeiro, "At that time I was on the news copy desk as well as being the music critic, and remember him as an individual who kept himself aloof, quite unlike other editors I have worked with. Six days a week he wrote the main editorial and a column he signed as "Atticus". He left within months to be the editor at the Times of India.
Ribeiro recalls that in January 1953, while at Calcutta on the job of Sunday editor at their soon-to-be-started edition in that city in eastern India, Moraes visited the edition. He recalls, "Well after midnight I was down in the pressroom okaying pages as they were being "made up" on the 'stone'---those were the days of metal type and printers' ink---and in rolled Frank Moraes at the head of his cohort, and he had just a one-line mantra for me: "Let's get the paper out! Let's get the paper out!" Having said that, he kept out of our way. Others in the group, however, were more obtrusive, and soon we had to hustle them back upstairs."
[edit] Gentleman
Ribeiro believes Frank Moraes's great strength lay in doing his own job -- the writing of editorials -- extremely well, and leaving the rest alone. "When I say he seemed aloof, even remote at times, I must also say that he did not interfere in our work. In one sense, he inspired me, because soon after he left the National Standard, I began writing editorials and the Atticus column as well," says Ribeiro.
He added in a recent tribute: "If asked to describe Frank Moraes in one word, I would say: 'Gentleman.' Allow me two more, and I'll change that to 'A thorough gentleman.' Smoke might escape his lips, but a crude word? Never."
In 1957, the Indian Express (formerly the Morning Standard) named him as the editor-in-chief of this Goenka-run newspaper. Becoming one of India's best known journalists his columns appeared regularly on Sundays and Mondays in the Indian Express, while another column signed as Ariel made its mark in the Sunday Standard. He did some radio broadcasts and in 1961 he was appointed Sheriff in Bombay. He retired from the Indian Express in 1972, shifted to London as its representative the next year, and died in 1974.
[edit] Moraes' books
Moraes (1907-May 2, 1974) is the author of India Today, The Revolt in Tibet (1960), Report on Mao's China, Yonder one world : a study of Asia and the West, The importance of being black: an Asian looks at Africa (1965) and Behind the Bamboo Curtain.
Other books listed here include Introduction to India (1945. co-authored with H L Stimson), Report on Mao's China (1953); Jawaharlal Nehru: A Biography (1956); Sir Purshotamdas Thakurdas (1957); Yonder One World: A Study of Asia and the West (1957); India Today (1960); Nehru, Sunlight and Shadow (1964); John Kenneth Galbraith Introduces India (1974, co-edited); and his political autobiography, Witness to an Era: India 1920 to the Present Day (1973).
[edit] Author, celebrated journalist, editor
In obituaries to his son, the poet Dom Moraes, Frank was called an "author ... sometime editor of the Times of India", and "an Oxford-educated lawyer who was to become a celebrated journalist and Editor of The Times of India".
[edit] Archives
Frank Moraes' archives are held in London, UK and comprise of "notebooks and diaries; correspondence; newspaper clippings and typescripts of Moraes' regular columns, articles and tour articles; reviews of Moraes' books; photographs; drawings, illustrations and programmes; recorded broadcasts; papers of (his wife) Beryl Moraes; objects".
His archives include papers covering mainly the 1930s-1974 period, and are useful considering that he worked as a journalist, author and editor during a crucial period in the history of India and a then just-being-decolonised Asia -- particularly between 1950-1974.
It also contains his notebooks and diaries, dating from 1950-1974, from Australia and New Zealand, South East Asia, China, Japan, Pakistan, India, Africa, Western and Eastern Europe and the USA. Listings of his archives say it includes correspondence, professional and personal matters, newspaper clippings, regular columns and archives, reviews of the books he published, photographs from 1930s to 1970s, recorded broadcasts and the diary of his wife Beryl Moraes dating to 1962.
[edit] Frank Moraes Foundation
This news item in The Hindu newspaper mentions a memorial lectures in honour of Frank Moraes. It cites a "Frank Moraes Foundation" being among the institutions taking the initiative in this regard.
EducationWorldOnline.net says the Frank Moraes Foundation was set up by demographer, social worker, academician and philosopher Dr. K. Thyagarajan "in 1985 and instituted the Frank Moraes Memorial Lecture in 2002." It adds that Thyagaraj was an "ardent admirer and disciple of the late Indian Express editor Frank Moraes, the doyen of Indian journalism,"
