There was a time when The Hindu was my staple source of news. That was until I moved to New Delhi in December 1973. Soon, that honour passed to The Patriot, a left-leaning daily newspaper with a soul—and a story.
Among the many reasons I began subscribing to The Patriot was the simple thrill of seeing my bylines in print. As a young reporter with India Press Agency (IPA), whose founder and guiding force was the venerable Nikhil Chakravartty, I had every reason to follow the paper closely.
It was in those formative days that I first encountered the name Sumit Chakravartty. His bylines would often dominate The Patriot’s front page, usually with dispatches from the Soviet Union. Appointed as the Moscow Correspondent during the late 1970s and continuing well into the transformative 1980s, Sumit captured the pulse of a changing world order with rare clarity.
He was not just a journalist stationed abroad; he was a well-versed observer of geopolitics, economics, and ideology.
“He brought to his reporting not just facts but insight,” recalled a former colleague. “He had the rare ability to decode the USSR for Indian readers—he understood the system, but more importantly, he understood the people behind it.”
What many readers did not know then was that Sumit was the son of two stalwarts of India’s intellectual and political landscape. His father, Nikhil Chakravartty (1913–1998), was one of India’s most respected journalists and founder-editor of Mainstream weekly. His mother, Renu Chakravartty (1917–1994), was a Rajya Sabha MP and one of the earliest women to enter the Communist Party of India. But Sumit never traded on pedigree. His work stood on its own merit.
In the 1970s and ’80s, India and the USSR shared a deep strategic and ideological alliance. The Indo-Soviet Treaty of Peace, Friendship and Cooperation signed in August 1971 was the bedrock of that relationship. Prime Minister Indira Gandhi and Soviet leader Leonid Brezhnev had developed a strong rapport, which was instrumental in India’s role in the creation of Bangladesh.
The Patriot reflected this closeness, and Sumit’s reports became a crucial window into Soviet politics and society for Indian readers.
As the Soviet Union began to unravel in the late 1980s, Sumit’s reportage took on a new urgency and historical weight. Through his detailed, often front-page dispatches, Indian readers encountered terms like perestroika (restructuring) and glasnost (openness) for the first time.
“We weren’t just reading news,” said Ash Narain Roy, political scientist and mutual friend, “We were reading history as it unfolded, explained by someone who had earned the trust of the very system he was reporting on.”
In an era before Google or instant wire services, Sumit’s voice from Moscow offered context, caution, and clarity. His stories were rich in nuance and refreshingly free from Cold War clichés. In many ways, he performed for Indian journalism what a foreign correspondent is ideally meant to do: bridge worlds.
After returning from Moscow in the early 1990s, Sumit chose a quieter, but no less impactful path. Instead of chasing lucrative positions in corporate media, he stepped into the shoes of his father at Mainstream, a weekly journal that never had wide circulation but commanded enormous intellectual respect. Launched in 1962, Mainstream was never meant to be populist. It was, as Nikhilda often said, “a platform for ideas, not headlines.”
Sumit took over as editor with grace and grit. Running Mainstream on a shoestring budget was never easy. It paid no honorarium to contributors, and yet, writers from across the ideological spectrum queued up to be published. Academics, bureaucrats, politicians, and journalists found in Mainstream a home for serious writing that wouldn’t find space elsewhere.
As a board member of the Institute of Social Sciences (ISS), founded by Dr George Mathew, Sumit continued his parents’ legacy of engaging with governance, federalism, and social movements. He believed in the power of reasoned dialogue. He saw scholarship and activism as two sides of the same coin.
My own interaction with Sumit was limited but memorable. Along with Ash Narain Roy, we once took part in a panel discussion on All India Radio. That was when I realised he was, in more ways than one, a carbon copy of his father. The soft-spoken manner, the measured responses, the innate courtesy—all unmistakably Nikhilda.
He later invited me to contribute to Mainstream. I sheepishly admitted I had done so only once before—when C.N. Chittaranjan was briefly editing it under Nikhil’s supervision. Sumit simply smiled and said, “Well, that was too long ago. Let’s change that.”
Though Mainstream eventually stopped its print edition, Sumit ensured that its online version remained active and relevant. Right up to his last years, he published thought-provoking essays and commentaries, often resisting the urge to follow media trends.
Sumit had not been in the best of health in recent years. He moved to Kolkata to be closer to his family. On July 18, 2025, he passed away quietly, surrounded by those who loved him. He is survived by his wife, an academic and political activist, and their son.
In his passing, Indian journalism has lost one of its gentlest, most principled practitioners. He belonged to a generation of journalists who believed in depth over drama, perspective over polemics. There are many kinds of journalists: the firebrand, the showman, the cynic, the crusader. Sumit Chakravartty was of a rarer breed—the chronicler of conscience. He did not chase headlines; he explained them. He did not shout over others; he amplified the voices that mattered.
As we mourn his death, we also celebrate a life that stood for integrity, quiet courage, and the enduring value of ideas. His bylines may no longer appear, but his example will continue to inspire those who believe journalism should inform, not inflame.
This article is sourced from AJ Philip’s social media posts.
