This column is a little bit of a graceless act. I have been put in this position of being invited to a birthday party and then being asked to give a frank comment on the birthday boy. To refuse the invitation would have left the impression that this celebration was not worth participating in. The 15th anniversary of Outlook is a cause for genuine celebration. It is an enjoyable magazine. But, as with most things we enjoy, the joy is premised on not dissecting the object of enjoyment too closely. But since Outlook is a public institution in some sense of the term, it is worth thinking about what it represents.
In many ways, Outlook is the child of post-liberalisation India. It came into its own when all the old serious magazines were either dead or had transformed themselves into one long fashion advertisement. Its dominant style and tone were very much in keeping with the post-1991 ethos: wide-ranging and curious, often fun, capable of the pithiest of titles, not afraid of experimenting with new themes and issues, occasionally insouciant, slightly flippant and blase, a bit impatient with fine-combed distinctions, eager to get on, smart and feisty. Most of its stories were sincerely told. It rarely had credibility problems, and that itself was no mean achievement.
Outlook had some notable stories. It exposed corruption in high places. It threw the spotlight on a range of issues which were being ignored by media, such as the violation of privacy. In some ways, its place is hard to describe. It is not quite a news magazine, and this is a genre that has now become impossible to sustain anyway. It occasionally did investigative journalism, but never quite pursued that genre with any degree of regularity. It often went behind the scenes, covered certain stories in depth, but was severely constrained in that space by one singular feature of the magazine: its aversion to any story that was long. Many of its correspondents are knowledgeable; some write well. But it does not seem that the magazine gave enough space for any to develop as serious writers, quasi-authorities in a particular field, as it were. If a magazine has a raison d’etre, it is to actually give space for the first draft of history; but that requires space for all the textures and moods, not just an eagerness to get to the punch line. Most publications are judged by the writers they produce. Looking back over Outlook, it has come as a little bit of a disappointment that the magazine has not been an institution that has been associated with producing, from its in house staff, non-fiction writing of the first rank. To be fair, this failing is not peculiar to Outlook. But this was the one magazine that prima facie had the precondition for being that nursery. It did, for a while, nurture the long essay genre, and gave Arundhati Roy and Ramachandra Guha the space to display their talents. But why there was not more of it, and very little in-house, remains a mystery.
Like much of post-liberalisation India, the magazine too had genuine identity issues. It has been dubbed, sometimes unfairly, as a pro-Congress magazine; though it is fair to say that its perhaps justifiable anti-BJP line was always clearer than any positive party line. At one level, the magazine rode on the issues and lifestyles that concern a newly emergent middle class: innovation, enterprise, consumption, aspiration and a new social imagination that was largely hip, in an urban sense. But then, it also had an urban guilt complex about it. So it duly compensated by giving inordinate space to what, for want of a better word, we might call the “left”. In itself this would not have been a bad thing. But the magazine has also been identified with what might be described as boutique leftism. This form of leftism has two features. First, it is largely expressive. It expresses great sympathy with the poor and the marginalised, but does not engage in any serious and complex analysis of what might make their condition better. It is more interested in a kind of middle-class self-flagellation than in solving complex problems. Second, there is an old joke, that the surest way to ward off criticism is by making it yourself. Outlook’s expressive leftism has some of that quality: give radical critiques almost as a way of neutralising interrogation of the status quo in ways that really hurt. Arundhati Roy’s taking on nationalist shibboleths on so many issues with rhetorical brilliance was brave, valuable for the just the performance, if nothing else. But she came to define Outlook’s identity more than perhaps the magazine intended.... But in a strange way, Outlook blunted the edge of criticism by confusing radical with serious.
Outlook has been admirably and resolutely ‘secular’ in the sense that term is understood in Indian politics. Keeping a vigilant eye on threats to secularism is immensely valuable, although even here sometimes, the imperatives of taking a position crowded out analytical efforts to understand the phenomenon at hand. But the full measure of Outlook’s potential has to be judged in a larger historical context. Times of rapid and bewildering transition, as India is seeing, are often the most propitious times for great magazines. There is a need for a magazine that can capture dominant moods, but also one that can slowly shape and give direction to the new sensibilities that are coming into being. Outlook has been wonderfully successful at the former, giving us a quick breezy measure of ourselves. It has been somewhat less successful as a catalyst for thinking, in the deepest sense of that much abused word.
All great magazines that have defined their eras had, in addition to reportage, two achievements. They were constantly a source of ideas and reflection, placing current events in larger frames of history and ideas. Second, they were often committed to a broadly liberal culture, open and curious. Outlook has been a resolute defender of our freedoms. But perhaps it has not given due weight to the fact that a liberal society can, in the last analysis, be sustained in part by the creation of a sophisticated liberal culture. In fact, all great magazines globally have shaped that culture through sophisticated practices of criticism, whether in art, film, books or culture. These are not so much peripheral news items as sites at which our sensibilities are formed and shaped, and where the deep currents of change are articulated, and where there is genuine resistance to the easy flattening of value in modern society. This is an area where Outlook, surprisingly, has been singularly weak, almost performatively enacting the very instrumentalism it tries to decry.
Running a magazine is an enormously challenging task. Given the commercial challenges, it is an achievement to survive and be a source of instruction and fun. But these reflections on the birthday boy are genuinely meant as a tribute. For Outlook has unique potential, if it only dares to have the courage to speak, not only to next week, but to a longer horizon. For what we wish for Outlook is: tum jiyo hazaron saal!
