Vijendra Kumar, the first local editor of The Fiji Times, passed away peacefully in Brisbane, at the age of 88, on Thursday, June 27, 2024, after a short illness. Vijendra was the first-born son of Ram Dulare and Ram Dulari of Martintar, Nadi. He was born on June 2, 1936.
When Vijendra was six years old, he was sent to live with his aunt (his father’s sister) and uncle in Sabeto. His uncle, Rameshwar Prasad, was the headmaster of Sabeto Indian School. He was a remarkable scholar and teacher. Vijendra stayed with his uncle and aunt for seven years and completed his primary education there.
He sat for the entrance examination at Natabua Secondary School while he was still in Class 7 and passed, so, he never went into Class 8, the normal last year of primary school. He spent two-and-a-half years at Natabua before transferring to Nadi’s newly opened Shri Vivekananda High School.
When he was at Shri Vivekananda High School in Nadi, the principal, PND Moosad, encouraged him to become a newspaperman. Moosad organised a part-time job for Vijendra at the Pacific Review, a weekly newspaper published by the Sangam organisation from its press in Nadi. When the annual Senior Cambridge results came out, the principal announced in the school assembly with pride that Vijendra had passed the exam with ‘distinction’ in English. Vijendra, however, had other plans than choosing a career in journalism. He wanted to do law and was accepted at a university in Scotland. Financial constraints prevented him from pursuing that avenue. When he finished high school, Vijendra was employed as a general factotum-proof-reader, reporter and sub-editor at the Sangam Press in Nadi. It was here that he learnt the rudimentary principles of journalism. The press published a monthly newspaper – the Pacific Review.
Later, he resigned from the Pacific Review and went into teaching to help one of his former teachers, Dr Shaukat Ali Sahib. Dr Sahib had just established a new high school in Lautoka – Islamia College. Later, this school was taken over by a committee and was renamed as Tilak High School. The principal and his former teacher, Shaukat Ali Sahib, threw Vijendra straight into the deep end. The subjects he gave Vijendra to teach included English, English Literature, Hindi and Health Science. Vijendra taught at Tilak High School for 12 years. His former students all speak very highly of Vijendra’s capability as an English teacher. Vijendra knew Shakespeare backwards.
It was at Tilak that he met his wife. He married Sadan Devi, daughter of the famous Pandit B D Lakshman in 1963. Later they were to have three children; Jirin, Kartika and Vrijesh. They had been married for over 60 years. Vijendra spoke very highly of his wife. She was not just his soul mate but took exceptionally good care of the family and made sure that there was a hot meal on the table every day.
After many years of teaching, one wonderful gentleman, Sam Berwick of The Fiji Times, snatched Vijendra from school teaching back into journalism in September 1969. He got Vijendra a job as a reporter at the Lautoka office of The Fiji Times, which was at the time run virtually by expatriates, mostly from Australia. After Vijendra had been working for a few months in his new job and producing some fine feature articles for the paper, his branch chief, Tony Wilkinson, a clever and knowledgeable man, made a prescient comment: “You will be editor one day”. Vijendra was flattered, but not in his wildest dreams, on that day in October 1969, did he expect that prediction to come true.
When the last expatriate editor, John Moses, left, Vijendra was recommended for the editorship in September 1975. He became the first local editor of The Fiji Times. He worked as the editor of The Fiji Times in Suva for 16 years. As the editor, Vijendra brought a more sensitive perspective on the affairs of Fiji, political and personal and deepened the readers’ understanding of the colonial society moving inexorably towards some sense of self-respect and postcolonial identity. As the first locally born and the only ethnic Indian to hold the editorial reins of the 134-year-old The Fiji Times, the national daily newspaper, he was always conscious of the awesome responsibility that position imposed on him. It was always a hot seat, but after the first military coup in 1987, the heat became almost unbearable. After suffering four years of harassment, intimidation and outright threats, he could no longer honestly and without fear discharge his professional duties as the editor. He applied to migrate to Australia and left for Australia with his family in July 1991. He bought a house in picturesque Samford Valley in Brisbane and took up a job at The Courier-Mail as one of the sub-editors. He spent 10 happy years at The Courier-Mail before retiring.
He took a keen interest in soccer; he liked listening to old songs, especially of Saigal, C H Atma and Pankaj Malik. He was an avid reader and an excellent chess player, but above all, he was a car fanatic. In his younger days, he had owned one or two Zephyr Zodiac. He liked going to old car shows in Brisbane. Vijendra also took a keen interest in Fiji politics and used to have long discussions on the topic with the late and great historian Professor Brij Lal, over long lunches and coffees. Vijendra is survived by his wife and three children.
Praveen Chandra, a retired electrical engineer, originally from Lautoka living in Brisbane since 1987. He was a close and dear friend of Vijendra Kumar. He had known Vijendra for the past 60 years.
