New Delhi: Veteran journalist and author Anil Dharker died on Friday morning as condolences poured in on Twitter. He was the founder of Mumbai International Literary Festival and was also responsible for opening the Akashwani Auditorium as an art movie theatre in South Bombay. His columns were published in leading publications both in India and abroad. As an author he wrote the book ‘The Romance of Salt’.
His did his Mathematics and Mechanical engineering from the University of London. On the basis of his degree he got a position on the academic staff of the University of Glasgow. When he returned to India he became a Senior Consultant to Pheroze Kandianavala & Associates, one of India’s leading architectural practices. During his tenure in Pheroze Kandianavala, he pioneered the concept of fire safety in multi-storied buildings.
Later he was appointed to Board of Film Censors because of the articles he published on cinema. As a member of Board of Film Censors he proposed a simplified and liberal censorship code which would be adaptable to changing times and moral values.
After that he became a promoter of New Cinema in India where he first became the in charge of Scripts and Production. He then then led the Film Finance Corporation which became the ‘National Film Development Corporation’after some time. During that period many young film-makers made their first films.
Some of them later became a big name in the industry like Govind Nihalani, Vidhu Vinod Chopra, Saeed Mirza, Ketan Mehta and Aparna Sen. It was also in Dharker’s tenure when Sir Richard Attenborough brought his script of Gandhi to NFDC which made the Corporation a co-producer of the multiple Oscar winning film.
During his journalistic days, Anil Dharker served as the editor of some of India’s best known publications which included The Illustrated Weekly of India (India’s oldest English language magazine), The Independent and India’s largest evening newspaper ‘Mid-Day’.
Through the years Anil Dharker has been a columnist for many of India’s leading newspapers such as The Times of India, The Economic Times, The Hindu and DNA. Foreign publications he has written for include Gulf News, Khaleej Times, The Independent (London), The Scotsman (Edinburgh), The Glasgow Herald and Foreign Policy (Washington).
Anil Dharker was also a Film critic for ‘Debonair’ magazine and a TV critic for ‘The Sunday Observer’. Anil Dharker’s interest in television industry led to him to become the President of Dalal Street Journal’s channel ‘India TV’, then poised to take off. For a brief period, he was also the Creative Director of the Zee Television Network and Chairman of Kaarnik Communications, a TV software company.
Over the years he conducted hundreds of TV interviews with famous personalities from across the world. Those personalities included Prime Ministers, Governors, Nobel Prize winning writers, film directors, actors and cricketers.
In recent times, he was often seen on news programmes on all leading channels as an expert on current affairs.
In the end we would like to give our condolences to a great journalist and an old colleague.
