Sh. SPK Gupta, a journalist, author and former foreign editor of Press Trust of India (PTI) passed away on the night of January 29, 2023, after a brief illness.
In an active journalism career spanning half a century, Sh. Gupta wore several hats – from being a pioneering science and medical reporter in the 1950s to becoming the first foreign correspondent to interview Mikhail Gorbachev after he became the Secretary General of the Soviet Communist Party in 1985. He covered the Bangladesh war on the Western front, and his war memoir – Dispatches of a Smar Samvadi – was released by Army Chief M M Naravane during celebrations to mark the 50th year of the Bangladesh war.
Sh. Gupta will be remembered for his seminal work on Indian scientist Yellapragada Subbarow who discovered several antibiotics while working in the US. In Quest of Panacea, the biography of Subbarow penned by Sh. Gupta was the first work that brought to light the work and life of this unsung hero. Sh. Gupta also wrote the biography of a pioneering tribologist, Kolachala Seeta Ramayya, who worked both in the US and USSR, A Wreath for Ramayya. Just a few weeks ago Sh. Gupta published his book on Homi Jehangir Bhabha with rare interviews of Bhabha’s contemporaries. Another book on the space voyage of Rakesh Sharma, the first Indian to go space, was underway.
Sh. Sikharam Prasanna Kumara Gupta, S. P. K. Gupta to friends and colleagues, was a soft-spoken, gentle person and a thorough professional. Even at 92, he remained agile and intellectually active. Sh. Gupta retired from the Press Trust of India (PTI) in 1992 but continued to be an ardent researcher and author, and till a few years back he was a regular visitor to the Central Hall in the Parliament House. Sh. Gupta had a great sense of history. Over the decades, he accumulated a lot of research material, photographs and letters, which he donated to the National Archives of India, Nehru Memorial Museum and Library, Indira Gandhi National Centre for Arts and most recently to the Ashoka University Archives.
Beginning his journalism journey in 1952 in Madras soon after obtaining a Diploma in Journalism from Madras University, Sh. Gupta served PTI for four decades retiring as Foreign Editor in 1992. In the Madras bureau, he was posted as a staff correspondent in Kurnool. Later he returned to Madras and was sent to Bombay in 1961. His coverage of the election battle between Krishna Menon and J B Kriplani in 1962 caught the attention of bosses in New Delhi and he was shunted in 1964 to the Delhi office where he remained till his retirement barring a six-year stint in Moscow as PTI correspondent. During these four decades, he covered the Congress split of 1969, the 1971 war, Indira Gandhi’s legal battle in Allahabad High Court, the congress split, the emergency, her election from Chikmagalur and her eventual return to power and her fall.
The list of political figures about whom Sh. Gupta reported includes C Rajagopalachari, Jawaharlal Nehru, Lal Bahadur Shashtri, Ram Manohar Lohia, Jaya Prakash Narain, Indira Gandhi, Morarji Desai and Rajiv Gandhi. As a Moscow correspondent, he reported about the training of Indian cosmonauts – Rakesh Sharma and Ravish Malhotra, besides political and economic changes taking place in the Soviet Union. In 2022, he finished writing a two-volume book on the breaking up of the USSR.
Sh. Gupta is survived by his wife, Devi Prasanna, and two sons – Shanti Kiran and Arun Kumar.
Samvada pays tribute to this veteran personality. We had him in our list of personalities to be covered, but unfortunately destiny had other plans and took him from us before we could interview him. Hope our humble tribute reaches him wherever he is.
by Niti Bhardwaj (9811829787, 8800493052)
