The Delhi Durbar of 1911 with photos of the king and queen arriving at Bombay on 2 December 1911 was printed with care. The Silver Jubilee Number on completion of 25 years was published from Simla on, featuring on its silvery cover the King-Emperor George V and the Queen-Empress, with royal news and visuals on the inside pages. Bell’s column, there also used to be a regular serial, “Advice to Young Soldiers”, in which the troops were given tips to improve their career. The quality of reproduction on simple newsprint was remarkably good. along with news of the troops, probably for the nostalgic British soldiers, serving in the then British Indian Army. A pictorial section, the antetype of “News in Pictures” on second (inside) cover these days, was introduced in 1928, featuring wonders like Forth Bridge in Scotland, horse-show in English country agricultural exhibition, British Airship, R-100 under construction, death and funeral of Field Marshal Earl Haig, who was given a reception at Buckingham Palace in 1922 etc. Cartoons, showing typical British military characters, had become common in the forties. Bell used to send a “Cable from London”, for almost every issue in the thirties’ and the forties’. The meetings of Soldiers’ Boards, the antetype of the present day Sainik Boards, used to be extensively reported. Pictorial supplements running to eight pages with emphasis on the Royalty and printed on art paper were carried, three to four times in a year. As the shadows of the Second World War gathered, European and American politics with an obvious bias towards the British policy began to predominate. There also used to be regular news about the food grains production and their prices, particularly in the prosperous Punjab State. This was probably done to enable touring officers meet ex-soldiers at places where they went. The tours and movements of British Army Officers were regular in almost every issue of the thirties. Awards to, and recognition of, Indians in the Army also found a place in its pages, probably to boost their morale. Roman Urdu used to accompany the Urdu version so that the British officers and soldiers could learn and speak in Urdu while talking to the troops and to civilians. Petty and often derogatory news about Indians used to be highlighted from the very first issue. Indian news used to feature the Viceroy and senior British officers’ activities and movements with little or no news about Indians. Not unexpectedly, the pages of Fauji Akhbar used to be filled with news from Great Britain and other countries of the Empire like grant of annual rank by the King- Emperor and summary of court cases in London. The countries and places ranged from well-known France, Belgium, Egypt and Africa and to such obscure names as Assaye, Tel-El-Kebir and Tira. The cover of the first issue, dated 2 January 1909, showed some Indian troops with spikes in hand, but soon the front cover began to flaunt many countries and place under the British Empire, where then the sun literally did not set, and where Indian troops serving the British Indian Army were posted.
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