#
So here's something that happens in a small village in a big country in an uncertain time.
#
You might think of it as a scene from a surreal dystopian novel.
#
The story in this particular play starts when a widower in this village is picked up by
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the police because they want to amend a part of his body.
#
He doesn't consent, so you can call this amendment a mutilation.
#
When the man is put through this procedure, his wound turns septic and he dies.
#
The villagers aren't happy, obviously.
#
But the government returns.
#
The Block Development Officer in charge of that village wants more.
#
There's a man repairing shoes by the roadside.
#
The villagers know what will happen to him, so they rise up in protest.
#
They drive the Block Development Officer and his henchmen, who wear uniforms of the state,
#
People from neighboring villages now assemble here to show solidarity.
#
But the state is mighty, and the state is brutal.
#
Hundreds of policemen descend upon this village, along with the Block Development Officer's
#
boss, the Subdivisional Magistrate.
#
If you mess with the BDO, the SDM will come.
#
Police surround the village.
#
After a night of siege, at six in the morning, they empty their guns.
#
Two women making cowdung cakes outside their house die in the halo bullets.
#
The cops now broadcast a warning that if all the men do not step out of their houses, an
#
aircraft will be called to bomb the whole area.
#
First BDO, then SDM, now bomber aircraft?
#
The terrified men step out and are rounded up.
#
Between 400 to 500 men are then taken away for this physical procedure, this amendment,
#
this mutilation, this attack on freedom and autonomy.
#
By now, I'm sure you've guessed the procedure.
#
Is Nasbandi or sterilization?
#
The village is peoply in Haryana.
#
The time is the emergency of the mid-1970s, when Indira Gandhi ruled as a dictator of
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India and a monstrous son, Sanjay Gandhi, spearheaded mass sterilizations in the ignorant
#
belief that our problem was our population and such coercion was the only way to solve
#
Much horror took place during the emergency.
#
The entire opposition was locked up in jail.
#
Many journalists were locked up in jail.
#
Academics and dissenters went to jail.
#
The entire Sanskrit department of Delhi University was in jail.
#
In fact, my guest today reveals in a brilliant book on that period that Indira Gandhi put
#
more Indians in jail during that time than the British did during the Quit India movement.
#
I recommend that all of you read that brilliant book, The Emergency, A Personal History by
#
Her own husband, a respected journalist, was locked up.
#
And the reason I'm telling you this story is that it's important to remember the past
#
The central problem then is the central problem now, a state that has too much power and the
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pervasive mindset that we are subjects, not citizens.
#
And to understand the past, we need people who will record that past so that we do not
#
We must listen to them and we must honor their work.
#
Welcome to The Scene and The Unseen, our weekly podcast on economics, politics and behavioral
#
Please welcome your host, Amit Verma.
#
Welcome to The Scene and The Unseen.
#
My guest today is Kumi Kapoor, a legendary journalist well known for covering politics
#
and for writing Inside Track, a column for the Indian Express that has now lasted decades.
#
It is said that both Narendra Modi and Sonia Gandhi read her column to understand what's
#
She was a journalist at the time of the emergency and a book on that period, The Emergency,
#
A Personal History, is so good.
#
You must read it to understand our country better.
#
She has recently released a book on the history of the Parsis, which I will link from the
#
My conversation with Kumi is about her life, her early days as a journalist, Indian politics,
#
which she understands so well, and the evolution of our media, which she saw from the vantage
#
points of both a reporter in the 70s and an editor in the 80s and a columnist since.
#
We recorded this conversation at the end of August, so our discussion of the Congress
#
and Rahul Gandhi may feel a bit dated and at least I have been personally impressed
#
by developments on that front.
#
So take that into account.
#
And now, before we begin our conversation, let's take a quick commercial break.
#
Have you always wanted to be a writer, but never quite gotten down to it?
#
Well, I'd love to help you.
#
Since April 2020, I've taught 20 cohorts of my online course, The Art of Clear Writing.
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An online community has now sprung up of all my past students.
#
We have workshops, a newsletter to showcase a work of students and vibrant community interaction.
#
In the course itself, through four webinars spread over four weekends, I share all I know
#
about the craft and practice of clear writing.
#
There are many exercises, much interaction, a lovely and lively community at the end of
#
The course costs rupees 10,000 plus GST or about $150 and is a monthly thing.
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So if you're interested, head on over to register at indiancut.com slash clear writing.
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That's indiancut.com slash clear writing.
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Being a good writer doesn't require God given talent, just the willingness to work hard
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and a clear idea of what you need to do to refine your skills.
#
Kumiji welcome to the scene and the unseen.
#
I've really been looking forward to this episode because one, of course, I've read your writing
#
in your column in the Indian Express for many, many, many, many, many years.
#
And you've written two books and they're both great, but the first of those books on the
#
emergency is a book I have gifted to people and I recommend it to people all the time
#
to sort of understand what really went down over there.
#
And often, you know, it's a lot of the things that it reveals about the state and our society
#
I think those lessons hold true today.
#
But you know, before we get to talking about your books or those times, I'd love to know
#
about your childhood, like, you know, tell me a little bit about where you were born,
#
what your family was like, where you grew up.
#
Well, I'm the daughter of an ICS officer.
#
And that means, you know, you moved about around a bit.
#
I was born in Delhi, but my father was associated with the then Bombay Carder.
#
So he was in Bombay and then we were also in Ahmedabad and he resigned from the service
#
at the time Bombay was split into Maharashtra and Gujarat.
#
And after that, I stayed in Bombay mainly, we were a middle class Parsi family.
#
And you mentioned that, you know, you lived in South Bombay and you know that while your
#
family went back a long way in terms of the history and how far back you could trace it,
#
you know, that you were more, you know, they wanted to, I wouldn't say impose an indoctrinate,
#
but they wanted you to adapt some of the, you know, the typical Parsi things they did.
#
But you guys were rebellious girls and I don't think you were so rebellious, but no, we were
#
not the typical Parsi family at all.
#
And later on, my grandfather used to grumble that we didn't because that we all married
#
I mean, he wasn't alive when I got married, when my sister got married.
#
He said you didn't, you know, it wasn't so much indoctrination as you didn't mix in an
#
all Parsi, you know, friends and neighbors sort of thing.
#
So I mean, and we didn't take the Parsi things so seriously at all.
#
And my parents were pretty pragmatic, so I don't think they tried to, you know, impose
#
My elder sisters, in fact, were very embarrassed about it.
#
I don't think as a little one, I just followed what was the lead.
#
But later on, especially when I was writing this book on the Parsis, I become very proud
#
Something which I wasn't in my youth, I mean, I was more than a little embarrassed about
#
Why were you embarrassed?
#
Well, I don't know if you've lived in Bombay, you'll see that in those days, at least we
#
looked a little different, we broke, spoke broken Hindi and Parsis when they speak among
#
themselves, you know, have a tendency to act superior about other people and things like
#
Yeah, I have very dear Parsi friends and they are a bit snobbish and they do speak with
#
a bit of an accent, but they're such wonderful people that, you know, I deeply love that.
#
In your book, in the Parsis, one of the things that struck me while reading the book is that
#
even before you come to all the famous Parsi names that you know about, in your introductory
#
chapter, you talk about your own family lineage.
#
And it is so rich, like, for example, you go, you know, you talk about your paternal
#
ancestors, your maternal ancestor, you mentioned one gentleman named Dastur Jamasp Asa, who
#
was born in Nafsari in 1693 and, you know, we know so much of his history, you spoke
#
about how he, quote, annoyed the leading priests of his time by offering translations of religious
#
texts to behedens, stop quote, and behedens were kind of people.
#
They were the non-priestly class.
#
They were the non-priestly class.
#
And so, you know, radical at the time.
#
And later on, of course, you point out that your father was a behedin and that was also
#
in that sense within the Parsi community.
#
In those days, nothing now.
#
So tell me a little bit about, you know, what it means to a community to have such a deep
#
sense of history that you can trace yourself that far back.
#
Like, for me, it's really difficult.
#
And I think for most people who are listening to this, it's difficult to go too far back
#
beyond our grandfathers, right, grandfather, great grandfather, but that's pretty much
#
You really don't know anything.
#
But it seems that within this Parsi community, you have sort of a history which also becomes
#
a mythology where your ancestors, directly traceable, are, you know, people who are,
#
you know, that's part of your heritage.
#
So what is that like, like, you know, just this small community, so distinct, living
#
in this big land where you're completely doffed by everyone and you have this deep sense of
#
Tell me a little bit about what that was like.
#
What was it like for you to sort of discover all of those things about your past?
#
And how did the Parsi community view itself?
#
Because it might well have changed.
#
Well, as I said, I was brought up in Bombay and Pune, which was very distinctly had the
#
Then I went away to study in America.
#
When I came back, my jobs were all in Delhi, I married in Delhi.
#
So I wasn't really that much in touch.
#
But you know, about six years ago, the late Mr. Amit Patel, he had told me that, look,
#
Have you been on the Parsi pilgrimage site?
#
I said, I've been years ago and I do want to go sometime again to Udwada, but I went
#
So he kept insisting and I said, huh, later, later.
#
But he finally insisted that I go.
#
And I'm so grateful to him for going there because, you know, when I saw Udwada, Surat,
#
Navsari, there were a lot of questions which I'd never really thought about, including
#
Because when the man asked me the question that, you know, your brother-in-law was here
#
and he claimed he was from Navsari.
#
And I said, my brother-in-law talks a lot.
#
How does he know that we are from Navsari?
#
Because I genuinely didn't really think about it at all.
#
And when I went back, I asked my sister and she said, yeah, and then I realized that my
#
mother's side is from Navsari.
#
My father's side is from Surat.
#
And then I started reading some, somebody on the Facebook, when I put up the photos
#
of what I'd seen, sent me some extracts from a Encyclopedia Iranica.
#
And when I was looking up that, I said, my God, you know, they're talking about my ancestors
#
and Pune because they were the ones who had the first Parsi fire temple in Pune.
#
And it goes back, as you said, much further to the Jamasa line.
#
So then I started researching.
#
And as I was researching all this, I mean, it's just a fortuitous coincidence that Penguin
#
suggested to me that would you like to write a book on the Parsi?
#
And I believe several Bombay journalists had been asked and they'd all refused.
#
I said, yeah, I would like to write a book on the Parsi.
#
But I didn't know what I was going to write.
#
I mean, I just kept thinking and I discovered more about my ancestry.
#
And I found that there were several, you know, I knew vaguely my mother had said things.
#
Now you're talking about the long ancestral tracks of the Parsi, well, some of it is myth,
#
Like my mother used to say, we never took her very seriously, she said that I can trace
#
my ancestry back to Nairyosankh Gawal, who was the original priest who's supposed to
#
have come back in the eighth, ninth century, whatever, which, I mean, I don't think she
#
can prove, we can prove that.
#
But when I talked to Justice Rohinton Nariman, who is an expert, I'm no historian or very
#
knowledgeable, he says, no, but your mother is right that she will be referring to a Nairyosankh
#
Gawal who was there in, I think, the ninth or the 11th century, 11th century, I think.
#
So I was wondering, how do you trace your ancestry?
#
But if you're from Nausari, it's all recorded.
#
If you have done your Navar, you know, that is when you have started to be a priest, it's
#
So that is how they trace the ancestry.
#
One of the things I've been thinking about is how our conceptions of time change with
#
Like, you know, I had a guest on the show recently who was Jayarjun Singh, who writes
#
about film, and he teaches cinema.
#
And he was saying that many of my students don't know of cinema before Christopher Nolan,
#
Everything what had happened happened after 2015.
#
And that's sort of a certain time horizon that people have.
#
When I think of myself, like I'm 48, and I remember when I was like 20, I used to think
#
that 40 is so old, who wants to live that long, you know?
#
And for me, you know, time would have that quality where everything, a little bit in
#
the future is in the distant future, and I'm so much just in the present, and what happened
#
yesterday matters so much.
#
And with time, that has expanded.
#
So now, you know, when I think of time, when I look back on my own life, it's a larger
#
And it seems that as we grow older, obviously, the way we look at time changes, because if
#
I'm 48, it makes me realize that something that happened, say, 48 years before I was
#
born doesn't seem that distant anymore.
#
And in your case, and in the case of many historians who've been on the show, it goes
#
even further back, because you study history, and one, you realize that these years haven't
#
taken so long to pass, even from 1600 to now, if you think about it, over the span of this
#
time, it doesn't feel so long as it would have, say, when I was 15 years old.
#
So how do you, in that sense, think about time, and, you know, does that change perspectives?
#
Like, for example, a young person today, born today, will have like a fixed notion of India,
#
and then as she lives, and as the years go by, it'll expand.
#
The more you look at history, the more it expands.
#
Perhaps beyond a particular point, it dissolves, like if you read Tony Joseph's book on ancient
#
Indians, you realize that, you know, 5000 years back, everything is so diffuse, so different.
#
So over time, how have your notions of time changed, and do you look back on past events
#
Like, do you look back at, do you look back on your parents now, for example, and see
#
them with a different eye than what you, you know, how you saw them there, where they might
#
have just been, you know, you might have seen them within the context of that relationship,
#
but today they are just part of a society, part of a point in time, all of that.
#
No, I wouldn't say it's quite like that, but I think the first 20 years of the, of
#
your life, they're momentous because you're growing into adulthood and all that.
#
So that stays with you a very long time.
#
But as you get older, you know, the concept of time is not so heavy.
#
What you know, when you're a kid, somebody who's one year older than you, or two years
#
older feels like a big difference, they were another thing.
#
And now, you know, age doesn't become such a big factor.
#
And I think, I know a lot of people say that you get traumatized when you pass 50, or you
#
get traumatized when you pass 60, but I'm quite matter of fact about these things.
#
So I just carry it about, carry it, maybe because I also have a lot of young friends
#
that have never felt my age that much.
#
I mean, my bridge group is a bit older than me.
#
So it doesn't really affect me that way.
#
And that I don't think of myself as although I know I'm very, very old, is the fact that
#
sometimes unconsciously, for example, in a plane or a bus, I get up to give somebody
#
else the place and then I say, Hey, why am I doing that?
#
I'm actually much older than them.
#
So let's go back to your childhood.
#
Tell me about what growing up in those days, 40s, 50s, Bombay was like, India was like,
#
give me a sense of the texture of your days.
#
How would you spend your time?
#
Well, see, I went, it was a very different time.
#
I was just after I'm around a midnight child, you know, 46 December, we went most of my
#
I've been traveling around also, as I said, my father in the government, but most of my
#
time was spent in Bombay.
#
And I, my father insisted we go to the school Fort Convent of Jesus and Mary, which was
#
his grandmother, his mother, my grandmother was among the first students as one.
#
I think it's about the oldest school in Bombay.
#
And it was such a different atmosphere that I have to what you see in Delhi today that
#
I mean, coming to Delhi was a total eye opener for me, because there must have been less
#
than 20 people in a class.
#
And if you look at the communities, I would say the majority community may have been Catholic
#
than Jews, because a lot of Jews had come from, because of the World War, they had migrated
#
and some had come from Baghdad.
#
And we had a lot of parties.
#
And I joke with, tell my friends in Delhi, I said, we always looked upon the Muslims
#
and Hindus as, you know, the also in the school.
#
And frankly, we never had any, any concept of caste.
#
I told you when I came to Delhi that I saw a completely different world.
#
My sister jokes that in her generation, for example, that only the few Parsis went to
#
Most of them became either secretaries or went into the airlines or got married.
#
It wasn't so in my time.
#
All the girls in my class, though we were not, the school did not fit us out.
#
Actually all did very well for this, for ourselves.
#
But it was a totally different world.
#
One thing was very common in my school that if you were good looking, in those days, there
#
is no such thing as professional modeling.
#
But they used to join the airlines, usually Air India in those days.
#
And you had part-time modeling jobs with Air India.
#
And we used to joke because all the pretty girls, they did very well for themselves.
#
They married very rich men because I think in those days the planes were small or whatever
#
Parmeshwar Godrej was in my class, for example.
#
And there were others who also, so a lot of, it wasn't taken automatically as it is today
#
that you'll go to college.
#
A lot of, after passing our senior Cambridge, even before joining college, I mean, of course
#
I did join college, but we all did this shorthand and typing which stands you in good stead
#
But I have noticed none of later generations have those skills.
#
We were just thought of as automatic in our times.
#
And I also found that a school which is a convent school, I tell my children because
#
I didn't send them to one, but I can tell straight away which of your friends in college
#
you are from a convent because there's so much politer, graceful.
#
It's not a me-first atmosphere in those days, you know.
#
It was a pehle aap, pehle aap sort of thing.
#
It was quite a revelation.
#
Maybe my school was different actually.
#
I think the school was also different because when I went to college, I found girls from
#
other and were saying, how much did you get in your marks and oh, I should have got more.
#
And the way we were ladylike way we were brought up, we were always told, no, no, no, I should
#
So that was a different world.
#
So when you were a school girl, what was your view of yourself?
#
Like today, I think many people who are in school, like you correctly say, would assume
#
that they're going to go to college, would already start thinking.
#
No, I would have gone to college.
#
I know that because of the family I came from, but I really had no idea what I wanted to
#
I'm an artist, odd as it sounds, I don't even think I had the skill.
#
I am a journalist partially by accident really, because I went to college, my father was traditional
#
thought that best thing is to have a doctor in the family and you should go in for science.
#
And my airy fairy school, I mean, they changed after, I didn't even have physics and chemistry
#
in my 12th year, but he insisted that I take up science, whereas everyone else who had
#
So I did it for two years and I wanted to switch.
#
I mean, then you go in for medical, most of my friends went in for medical.
#
I couldn't bear this dissection.
#
And I wasn't, my family's are all mathematical, but I am not.
#
So I, it was a total misfit, but I finished my BSc because my father said you have to
#
do it and he was a strict Victorian type of a person so that we didn't really question.
#
And you were also into sports, I believe.
#
Yeah, how did you know that?
#
No, I mean, in our little circles, yes, I was very fond of sports.
#
Not that we had so many sports, but I was a sprinter and I played badminton, table tennis
#
And what are the kind of like books you would read or music you would listen to?
#
Well, I like to read, you know, the usual English 19th, 20th century novels, not, I'm
#
afraid modern literature in those days, we weren't exposed to whatever was in the house
#
we read, Jane Austen, Oscar Wilde, Dickens, that sort of stuff.
#
You mentioned you wanted to be an artist, so like what kind of artist and were you also
#
drawn to writing at this point or is that something that happened later?
#
I wasn't even very particularly attracted to English or any such thing.
#
Maybe when I was, after I had done my degree, you know, those who weren't gravitating to
#
the airlines, a lot of those in those days in Bombay among our circles, it was very common
#
to go into the airlines, not at the airlines, I'm sorry, into advertising.
#
And I thought I might be quite good with words, I mean, copy.
#
I didn't know whether I was or not.
#
So but of course, I wasn't a good looking girl and all the people who were in advertising
#
were all very smart and well turned out and I was a nerdy type of a person.
#
Any case, my mom said, okay, if you are interested in advertising, I have a friend who runs an
#
agency, you go and see her.
#
That was the artist, the sculptor, Pilu Pochkhannawala.
#
So she said, why are you going for advertising?
#
Everyone goes for advertising.
#
You should go in for journalism.
#
And I was so impressionable, I said, okay, so instead of taking the course, which I was
#
just about to do in advertising, I took the course in journalism.
#
Just very, I mean, accidental, that shows I wasn't very committed or anything.
#
And then just one thing led to another.
#
My father was certain that all his children should go abroad to study.
#
So then after finishing my diploma, I applied for a course in journalism and went there.
#
Once you've got those degrees, you think that you obviously should follow the line you've
#
Though I, if I, if it was in today's world where you have career guidance and things
#
like that, everyone would have said, no way should you have taken up journalists.
#
I didn't have, I don't have any of the characteristics we should normally.
#
My English wasn't that great.
#
I'm a rather shy and a retiring person.
#
So it's just, and I see these young girls and then I'm so impressed.
#
I'm embarrassed if I have to ask twice somebody, you know, if I have to contact somebody and
#
they rebuff you, I don't like to ask for the second time.
#
So I'm not the best person at all, but it was early days in the profession and I got
#
the breaks and I've always been hardworking and conscientious.
#
And a lot of luck, everything in life is lots of luck also to be at the right place at the
#
right time for the right story, the right job.
#
So you know, you went to Boston university, which is where you studied journalism.
#
So what, what, what was that like, you know, going to a foreign country in that?
#
It's a total eye opener because I think even to some extent today, but in those days totally
#
what you studied was all wrote, you know, there was no thinking.
#
And now you're exposed to a totally different world where everything was, which I, I do,
#
I realized I had an aptitude for, and I was very, very underconfident, but I realized
#
I was getting excellent A grades in everything because it was a totally different style of
#
study, which I could relate to, which meant researching in a library, you know, looking
#
So it also gave me a lot of confidence.
#
And tell me something about even up till the nineties and I was a journalist in the eighties
#
and one, there weren't so many journalism courses locally.
#
And two people who did learn journalism, maybe on the job or otherwise, they learned the
#
functional aspects of it.
#
How you write, how you report a story, all of those things, but they sometimes don't
#
have that big picture view that, you know, what are the values of journalism?
#
What are the ethics that you need to internalize while being a journalist?
#
You know, why do you pick one story over another?
#
Why do you handle one story in a particular way than some other kind of way?
#
So was there some of that, you know, so when you actually did that journalism course in
#
Boston, you know, what was that education like?
#
What were you learning, which you perhaps did not know earlier or in what way did it
#
It expanded my view generally of research and finding and all the usual, you know, things
#
about the storyline and appealing to the reader.
#
You pick up all that along the way.
#
But I think you even in the profession, you know, I was in the Indian Express at that
#
It was a very old fashioned paper.
#
So people just went along as they went along.
#
And I must give all credit that when I went to India today, and Arun Puri, who is an outsider,
#
not from the journalist background at all, but he was the owner.
#
He taught me more than I learned in all these years as far as the craft of journalism is
#
concerned than I had in my earlier newspapers, which was the Motherland and the Indian Express.
#
Because there, what is, it's just the streamline, you know, you take what has come.
#
Nobody questions why did you give that lead?
#
What do you think the reader will want?
#
How will you cut down, you know, the word count?
#
The word count in newspapers used to be that if it's too long, just the end is cut.
#
Nobody gave it any thought.
#
It was in India today that I learned these things about how important the word count
#
is, how you should make the word, your story fit into that word count, taught you about
#
what the reader really wants, you know, not what is, I know everyone talks about the lead,
#
but it opened my eyes to a lot of things and it sometimes needs an outsider to tell you
#
how to see your profession well.
#
Tell me a little bit more about this because I find that very interesting in the sense
#
that in all the professions that I have been in, one, I have kind of come from the outside
#
myself, not really been an insider.
#
And two, I think the advantage of being an outsider is that you are not bound by those
#
conventions and you don't settle into those familiar groups.
#
I feel an outsider's input can be very, very valuable compared to people who have got into
#
a rut and a groove and just, you know, post along.
#
So tell me a bit about that period.
#
I mean, we'll go back to the chronological narrative later, but just to sort of dive
#
in when you say that when you went to India today, he...
#
It was a fortnightly in those days, but there's a lot more research of facts, far more research.
#
You know, with the newspaper, you just rattle off what the story you have, speed is of the
#
essence and you don't bother to check, recheck so much.
#
And you don't give the intro that much thought.
#
You don't think, what are people thinking?
#
You don't look at the visual appeal of a story, you know, things like boxes and all that.
#
When we were in the newspaper in the early days, you know, the stories were all in the
#
form of what do you call them?
#
I don't know the right word to use, but it was like, what do you call it?
#
No, like a seven and up, upturned.
#
Whereas, you know, now if you look at a newspaper makeup, there's so much more to it.
#
I myself was in charge of a newspaper in Sunday Mail.
#
I fortunately had with me a girl who had done the art of layouts from abroad.
#
And there you got so much perspective about the display of a story, you know, the boxes
#
of a story, the photographs of a story, not just all bunched together.
#
And do you think it made a difference that to begin with it was a fortnightly?
#
Because I think what happens in journalism is that it is not one monolithic thing.
#
If you work at a daily, like you pointed out, you often don't have time to go deep.
#
You're expected to do one or two stories a day.
#
You're just filing, filing, filing.
#
Whereas if you're in a monthly, for example, to go to the other kind of possible extreme,
#
then you have all the time in the world.
#
If you're writing a book, you have even more time where you can really go deep.
#
So do you think that, you know, looking back that you, you know, you mentioned that one
#
of the things about India today was it was a fortnightly, that that matters?
#
And do you think that sometimes in modern times, like I had another journalist on the
#
show recently, Samarth Bansal, and we were talking a lot about journalism and the values
#
And, you know, in modern times, his lament was that journalists are sort of chasing content.
#
They are not, you know, that deeper thinking about reporting stories and thinking about
#
it, taking a step back, thinking about a story, letting it breathe, you know, not going in
#
with a pre-decided narrative that this is what it is and all of that.
#
And he's saying that doesn't happen much today.
#
Everyone is taking cues from Twitter or whatever, you know, the news cycle has become shorter
#
and shorter and it's become a content game and no one is sinking more deeply.
#
It depends on the medium rather than the times, because I know one thing very, very frustrating
#
about India today was that it was a fortnightly and you're always living in the tension that
#
your story was going to break, you know, even if you had exclusive fact, it would be reported
#
by a newspaper before yours came out, especially when it's a fortnightly, even with a weekly,
#
So in that sense for a newspaper person, which I think I basically am, that was a very unhappy
#
But I just said certain tricks of the trade, you know, aspects, that yes, you did think
#
more deeply about a story, you didn't just rattle it off the first thing that came to
#
You first did think more deeply before you actually sat down on the typewriter to write.
#
But it could be very frustrating.
#
Like I remember Indira Gandhi's assassination, for example, I had such exclusive information
#
about the actual, how the, you know, security angle and the killing, et cetera.
#
And for some reason India today insisted on first putting out the fortnightly, which was
#
already in the print run.
#
So by the time we came out, we were so late, it was a collector's item.
#
But I mean, so many, I saw so many of my exclusive facts one by one coming out in the statesman.
#
And it was heartbreaking, you know, for a journalist to see that your information, and that's the
#
disadvantage of working in a magazine.
#
So let's go back to, you know, the chronology of your life as it were.
#
You'd done journalism from Boston.
#
At that point, were you, I mean, I know it's a silly question because after all you did
#
a course in journalism, but were you thinking of actually being a journalist for the rest
#
of your life at that time?
#
I'm the type of person.
#
So how did it go from there?
#
Like you ended up in motherland.
#
Yeah, see, I was in Bombay.
#
I applied for jobs in Times, the very limited number of newspapers in there, so in Express
#
there were two, Times and Indian Express.
#
I don't think they wanted women actually, there were very, very few women and the women
#
who were there usually had tremendous pull of some sort or the other.
#
So I wasn't getting a job.
#
I mean, Mrs. Ewing, Gulshan Ewing, she was very kind to me and she kept letting me write
#
for Eves Weekly and she encouraged me.
#
Even Khushwant Singh in Illustrated encouraged me and said, no, no, no, you do this though,
#
But the newspapers were not interested.
#
They didn't even bother to reply.
#
They didn't want women.
#
They had their own pool from which they selected that, you know, journalists.
#
Times had an exam, Times of India had an exam, but you know, since I had come back from there,
#
I hadn't thought of sitting and it was again, I was from Delhi, it was again an accident.
#
My brother-in-law was a politician, Subramanian Swami, and he said, why don't, I've got the
#
perfect job for you, there's a new newspaper starting in Delhi and they're willing to take
#
Now the new newspaper was called, it was being started by the RSS, it was called The Motherland.
#
And I was this person from Bombay who had very little idea of anything about the Hindutva
#
movement, about RSS, Jansa, my general knowledge was quite poor, but I wasn't at all political.
#
But being put, thrown into the deep end into a newspaper, which is just starting, was a
#
great, great advantage because A, this was a newspaper, unlike the few others which I
#
later realized, there was far too few people for anyone to say that because I'm a woman,
#
I'll not do night duty, that I won't do the crime beat, I just had to do everything.
#
And not only that, I had a chief reporter who wanted to get rid of me.
#
So he would send me on three different assignments on the same day.
#
So frankly, my entire salary went on transport.
#
I was fortunate enough that I was staying with my sister, so that was okay.
#
But I mean, he was just trying to push me out and I gained so much experience because
#
there were women in other newspapers in Delhi, but it was usually one woman per newspaper.
#
And those women were always doing the feature stories, the flower show, the zoo stories,
#
cost of living, and not the hard news.
#
But I got the head start because I covered everything.
#
And though I must confess I have a disadvantage, which I have to this day, I don't know how
#
after all these years I've managed, my Hindi was never, it's what you call Bombay Hindi.
#
But I managed, so I covered the cooperation and all and with my American training, I gave
#
a little spin to these stories.
#
So actually, I came in close quarters with all these people, hardcore RSS type people,
#
but they were all very kind and helpful.
#
And they didn't seem to resent my background or my lack of Hindi speaking abilities.
#
So a number of things I want to kind of dive deeper into and one of them is you point out
#
that with your training, you used to give a little spin to, you know, stories that you
#
did by which, I mean, the way I would interpret that is that, you know, a typical reporter
#
would look at a story in a particular way, but you would manage to do something different
#
So can you maybe elaborate on?
#
Yes, I'll give you two examples in motherland, for example.
#
One day they sent me to do a story about a missing school teacher in crime.
#
So I did it like, you know, normally a crime reporter does so-and-so missing blah, blah,
#
blah, mother at home, what is in there.
#
I mean, you know, you come back from abroad and the crime reporter said, all the other
#
crime reporters are asking in Delhi, who the hell is this girl writing all this nonsense?
#
You know, giving it a human angle, going and interviewing the people at home.
#
Whereas normally they just took the facts from the police office as to what was happening.
#
I spent my money, went to, in an off-road rickshaw to the north, Delhi, talked to everyone,
#
the neighbors, which they weren't used to.
#
They couldn't afford to also because it was, in those days, transport was terrible in Delhi.
#
But I did try to put as much as I could into the story.
#
Also in the corporation, it was a question of who said what, he said what.
#
So I used to try and give it a sarcastic tone and bring out that here's this man claiming
#
that he's a loyal Jansanghi to his last breath and the next day he's defected to the Congress
#
and, you know, sort of tongue-in-cheek.
#
And I found actually people quite appreciated this tongue-in-cheek reporting of political
#
events and nobody stopped me from doing it either, you know, in motherland.
#
That was also a very good experience, actually, because I would never have got that head start
#
experience in any other newspaper, the major newspapers in Delhi.
#
I would never, never have been given that chance.
#
So tell me a bit more about motherland, like, you know, if it was like it was set up in
#
a sense so that the Jansanghi or the RSS or whatever could, you know, get its view, get
#
its view across to an English audience, get its view across, because English newspapers
#
were frankly in those days, the only ones that were taken seriously.
#
And there was no official censorship.
#
But the truth is, today the situation is bad.
#
I mean, the government tries to impose what it's thinking on the media.
#
But in those days also, you were not considered respectable if you did not toe the government
#
And it was very much Mrs. Gandhi said this today and so and so said that today.
#
And newspapers weren't questioning at all in those days.
#
They were taking what the government gave them.
#
So it was lovely to be in the only opposition paper, which was, you know, it was very infrequent
#
There were people in the newspaper who, when they asked for an appointment, did not mention
#
the name of the newspaper.
#
And I got away with it.
#
I do remember once that I was doing a story on, it was before the Bangladesh war, and
#
I'd gone to see Padma Jain.
#
It was a very favorable, it was going to be obviously a favorable, and she was collecting
#
material for the refugees.
#
And her secretary had given me the time.
#
And the moment she heard that I was working for the motherland, she said, I will not speak
#
to you, et cetera, you know, and it was very rude.
#
But that secretary was embarrassed, but I, it was part of the game.
#
So I mean, you were not, you were considered, looked at with suspicion because to be on
#
that side of the fence was not considered.
#
I was on nobody's side.
#
I was just doing my job and nobody told me what way to write or not.
#
But as I said, I had the opportunity to do a lot of beats and a lot of stories, which
#
I would not have had to, been able to do in what were considered then the mainline papers,
#
names, statesmen, Indian Express, Patriot.
#
And I guess in terms of learning the craft, they would have been both a pro and a con.
#
And the con would have been that perhaps you don't have experienced journalists guiding
#
you and, you know, helping you out.
#
But the pro would have been that you can write about anything, whereas in the other papers.
#
They were all clear cut.
#
And as a woman, I, you know, they boxed you into a corner.
#
And that was my very great advantage.
#
Because when I first came to the, it was just one woman.
#
It was basically one woman per newspaper or two at the most.
#
And they did not cover hard news.
#
Let's talk about that aspect of women in journalism.
#
You know, another of my guests, Sujata Anandan, who started much later than you, I think in
#
the mid 80s was when she really got into reporting and I had done an episode with her on Maharashtra
#
politics, which was very illuminating.
#
And she pointed out that in her time as well, she was the only woman doing hard news.
#
It was just expected that women will do features, they'll do soft stories, they'll do culture,
#
they'll do all of that.
#
So how did the way women function in journalism, you know, evolve with time through the years
#
that you were there, you know, beginning perhaps with there being no barriers about what you
#
You can do crime, you can do politics, you can do anything.
#
And moving on from there to something that, you know, you would also have been part of
#
later in time where women become the bosses, they become the editors, they become the mentors,
#
So tell me a little bit about that journey through the ages and how it changed.
#
What were the Phillips which made a change and so on?
#
Well, I would say that when I was, as I said, when I came to Delhi first, that women were
#
I was an unusual case because I was in this new newspaper, which one man was trying to
#
show that I should be thrown out, my then chief reporter, and for the rest, there were
#
So there was no question of being given any kind of special favors at all about.
#
When I joined the Indian Express, all the male reporters looked at me, very hostile
#
and said, you're going to do night duty.
#
Because the other girl wasn't.
#
I said, yeah, of course I'm going to do night duty.
#
I've always been doing night duty.
#
Also, the men were keeping women out by using this night duty bogey.
#
Our news editor, Mr. Saxena said, no, we can't have women because they don't do night duty.
#
So they're disadvantaged.
#
And why can't you do night duty?
#
They claimed that we came under the Factories Act, and under the Factories Act, women have
#
to go home by a certain time or whatever.
#
I think as far as women coming into the mainstream of newspapers, Delhi and the English language
#
newspapers were much ahead.
#
I know what trouble I had nothing to face compared to what when I went to Bombay, girls
#
from the Marathi newspapers told me they were treated so shabbily, so badly.
#
And how did this start to change?
#
As far as I was concerned, maybe by my temperament or whatever, I was never really treated very
#
So I was always from the beginning and not because of the circumstances in the men.
#
But also see now in Express, then there were two women, not one when I joined.
#
So now you're not going to give special favors of not doing late night, etc.
#
And then I think the women also started to say that we want to cover beats.
#
And once you have more than one, you know, you break a barrier.
#
So there were women on the desk, but not in reporting generally.
#
One of the laments that I hear from women and a very justified lament is that, you know,
#
that they work in a world which is designed by men for men.
#
The classic example being, of course, air conditioning, that air conditioning evolved
#
in the 1950s where it was mainly men in offices.
#
And therefore the temperatures were set at a particular 21 degrees or whatever.
#
And women's bodies work differently and women find that too cold.
#
Now that's just that's a good metaphor.
#
But more than that, you know, there are so many concrete ways in which a workplace is
#
designed or work routines are designed that you unthinkingly design it in a particular
#
way, which leaves someone out like the journalist Nikita Saxena was on my show a few years
#
ago when we spoke about me too.
#
And she works, worked for Caravan, I don't know where she is now.
#
And she pointed out that when she would go out on the field reporting for her, it was
#
a big deal that in some hotels where you stayed, you couldn't lock the door from inside.
#
You had that automatic click click, but you didn't have a separate kundi, which basically
#
means that any time at any time of the night, someone could just open the door.
#
And I've spoken to other guests subsequently who would say things like, you know, every
#
time we were sleeping in a hotel room somewhere, I would take my chair and I would put it there
#
and I would just, you know, block it just, you know, and she said it might seem paranoid
#
if you're a man listening to this, but it was just something that you did because women
#
had this extra layer of things that they need to be aware of.
#
So what was it like for you in that sense?
#
Like, well, I'll tell you for one thing, neither in the 50s, I was in the 70s, there was no
#
air conditioning in the air conditioning, but that was just a metaphor.
#
But I'll tell you what there was from the beginning, which was there, there was no women's
#
toilet in the motherland.
#
There was no question of that there.
#
So I just had to walk in and without looking left or right and use the loo, you know, and
#
there'd be people on the outside.
#
You just had to get used to that.
#
For that matter, for years, when I was covering parliament, the only women's loo was in the
#
MP side, you can't go down the stairs and somewhere else.
#
So I mean, what do you do?
#
You just walk in, enter the loo and go out, you know, because there were no separate loos.
#
The Indian Express loos were terrible, but there was a loo for women.
#
But what a difference in the loos that you see today when you travel in newspaper offices
#
and the loos in those days.
#
I think the loo was the real thing that women had to put up with things like that, because
#
air conditioning, I think, I didn't know that it made such a difference whether you're a
#
And we didn't have air conditioning at all.
#
That's like a first world metaphor.
#
We didn't have air conditioning really for that.
#
But things like the loo was there.
#
And you said about this lady traveling.
#
Well, you know, mostly when I travel, I didn't have this latch problem.
#
Maybe I was in places where there was a latch.
#
But I know that once or twice, we are very often traveled if you went to, I didn't go
#
that much to very small towns.
#
But when you went with the photographers, there was no alternative.
#
There's only one room you had to share, you know.
#
So a conservative person might have felt, you know, that it's not on.
#
But yeah, you have to do what you have to do.
#
You have to do what you have to do.
#
So another sort of meta question, which is really about the question of how newspapers
#
decide what to report on, how one decides what story one should do.
#
And typically what happens is that, you know, a newsroom may get into a particular groove,
#
a particular way of looking at something.
#
You know, I had a guest on the show, Samard Bansal, who objected to the word newsworthy,
#
where he said that, you know, we really need to examine what that word means.
#
So just that sort of larger question of taking a step back and thinking about why are we
#
reporting what we are reporting?
#
What is the way in which we should report it?
#
When you entered the profession, did you find perhaps in your editors where it should really
#
You know, that kind of thinking where you take a step back or do you just enter a space
#
where there's a particular way of doing things and you just continue and you get the
#
stories out and all of that.
#
You know, all these phrases you use, we never had the luxury of at all that you could sit
#
with these fine sounding concepts.
#
The way it worked in newspapers in the old days was there were two lots of newsgatherers.
#
There was a caste system, there was a three way caste system.
#
There were the reporters, the lowest of the low, they did the local stories and they every
#
morning the chief reporter came and wrote down, you'll do this, you'll do this, this
#
is your beat, beat, beat, beat, beat, beat, beat, beat.
#
You didn't sit to question or not question, you just went to do it and get it.
#
Then number two caste was the bureau.
#
They covered parliament, they covered the politicians.
#
So you know, I was so lowly that once I was asked that Pramila Kalan asked me, what would
#
you like to be eventually?
#
I said, I'd love to be a bureau, in the bureau, special correspondent.
#
You know, we didn't have that many options or ambitions in those days.
#
And there were editors and these editors are very strange type of editors because they
#
sat in their ivory tar chambers and wrote the edits for the day.
#
But they didn't mix, they had a morning meeting, but most of them, not all of them, there were
#
Arun Shourie was an exception, Kuldeep Nair was an exception.
#
And one of my favorite editors and chiefs, Mulgaon Ka, he was totally the ivory editor.
#
He never bothered to know who was in his staff or anything.
#
The editors had their meeting and they decided what was going to be the line and wrote those
#
They didn't tell, you know, and the caste system was so complete that even if your stories
#
were very good in the reporter section, you never got a byline and your stories automatically
#
went on page three and the bureau may be having the most boring routine parliamentary coverage,
#
Because it was the, you know, they were number two in the thing.
#
And of course, the editors didn't write on the news pages, they just did their edit.
#
So it was a wholly different type of caste system.
#
That is as much as women entering the profession was also the change that came about.
#
And I think, and this whole idea, you know, about introducing a featureish touch, an element
#
of not just the bare facts of the news, but giving the interesting slant, it didn't have
#
to be just in what they call feature stories, like going to the zoo or the cacti.
#
It had to be, even in your everyday stories began to change and I think that change came
#
around after the emergency in 1977, India today, before I joined it, they had helped
#
this trend, you know, to give a lot more information, a lot more interviews connected with new stories,
#
give dimensions to the news.
#
And I guess, being a fortnightly, having the space would have kind of helped with that
#
It certainly had an impact on other newspapers slowly as well.
#
So tell me more about what working at the Express was like, that I would imagine that
#
one, you've been thrown into an environment where there are many more people, you know,
#
the pace of work is a certain way and all of that, but there's also more structure to
#
So what were those days like, like what were your big learnings during that period?
#
Very exciting, because it was also a very exciting time in history, I would say.
#
As I said, in my motherland, I was covering the opposition, which was in a way good.
#
You didn't have to check your facts too much, you know, you knew you could write anything
#
against the government.
#
I mean, within a certain mnemonic, but you didn't have to think that much.
#
But Indian Express suddenly, when I joined, it was also against the government.
#
It had just started, Ramnathji had supported JP movement.
#
So we were moving in that direction, which gave us a much greater scope.
#
These other people couldn't write, they didn't write anything except the government line
#
of view of things in general.
#
That's why this new group started, WhatsApp group with veteran journalists on it.
#
I was quite amused to see that how they thought in the good old days, how wonderful their
#
editors were, because they were writing, must have been writing wonderful editor.
#
They never questioned anything that was happening in the government, which is so different from
#
what it is today, you know.
#
Maybe again today, now we are not questioning, but so Indian Express had that luxury.
#
It was a very exciting time to be there, then the emergency came, then the post emergency
#
is when there was a real boom in news.
#
Usually newspapers, magazines like India Today and Sunday were coming out, which was changing
#
the whole view and changing the newspapers as well.
#
And how were you evolving as a journalist during this time, like in the sense, what
#
was your beat when you were at Indian Express and how were your ambitions also evolving?
#
Like did you at some, sometimes did you feel restrained by what you were doing and wanted
#
Well, all I know is that when I joined, I by a fluke, I went with a whole lot of clippings
#
to the, then editor who had just come Mulgaon ka and he said, it was, I think he liked them.
#
So he said, yeah, I'll take you.
#
I said, I'll be happy to join because it was jump up from Motherland to Indian Express.
#
I can't take less than I'm earning.
#
He says, no, no, I'll give you more.
#
When I saw the salary, you see, in those days, our salaries were pittances.
#
It was a question of whether you're getting five rupees more or 10 rupees more between
#
the next man or 40 rupees more, perhaps.
#
The rest of the reporters, they were out with their knives for me because my salary had
#
become higher than most of them, all of them, practically.
#
So then Express, it was another very good thing for journalists' career in that it
#
had a very high turnover rate.
#
In times of India, you were there, you were there for life.
#
People who were reporters didn't ever become bureau or if they became right at the end
#
of their careers, whereas Express people moved and there's really nowhere else to go.
#
I mean, we used to joke, I mean, you can't go to the National Herald or the Patriot.
#
After the emergency, there were two, three people who became chief reporters.
#
And I said, what exactly is the criteria which you become a chief reporter?
#
If it's salary, then I should be the chief reporter.
#
But I let it go because, fortunately, one or two left, though I did think.
#
And finally, we had a new editor, Arun Shourie, and he was the deputy news editor, tipped
#
He said, they're going to make somebody else the chief reporter.
#
I said, that fellow doesn't do a thing.
#
I like him, but he doesn't do hardly anything.
#
I know he's been there for donkey's years.
#
So I went and I met the chief editor, who never bothered about all these things.
#
But I'll say he was fond of me, and he had hired me, Mulgaonkar.
#
So I said, look, I'm leaving.
#
If he's becoming the chief, he just laughed and he says, don't do anything in a hurry.
#
We'll see, don't worry.
#
And they did make me chief reporter, which was a big thing in those days because the
#
first woman becoming a chief reporter, etc.
#
And what were the kind of stories you were reporting?
#
It was a very good time in the Indian Express.
#
Arun Chauri had joined, though as I said, I started off on the wrong note because he
#
I'd been on maternity leave earlier, but then I must give him all credit.
#
He gave the reporters, as you say in Hindi, so much bhav.
#
We were suppressed little people who were told to mind our places in the world.
#
He started fighting for our stories to ensure that they came on the front page.
#
He started planning stories like the Kamla case, the Bhagalpur blindings, all those sort
#
of stories, PILs, you know, and doing not alone always, but with teamwork.
#
He had a very brilliant and I'm very grateful for that because, I mean, it gave us so much
#
more confidence because I told you what was the pecking order in those days.
#
Even the story was not on the basis of the news, but who wrote it.
#
So that opened a whole new world.
#
And he understood that actually people, majority of readers really read more of the what reporters
#
write than what the bureau writes on many occasions.
#
Delhi is a very politicized city where they think that what a politician leaves one party
#
joins another, everyone is interested in.
#
I've noticed in many professions, including journalism, for the brief time that I was
#
a journalist, that most people in any job, in any profession, they will get into a certain
#
groove, a certain way of doing things.
#
And then they'll just be ticking boxes and that deep engagement won't be there.
#
But there are some people who are always thinking, who are always trying, who are always enthusiastic.
#
They wake up in the morning not thinking, okay, let's get through the day.
#
But they wake up thinking, yes, let's get to work.
#
And you obviously strike me as someone who brought that attitude to the table every day,
#
just in the sense that your column alone and Express has been going on for decades.
#
And that's not something that happens by itself.
#
So tell me something about, is it just the kind of person you are or did you also have
#
to work at keeping your enthusiasm?
#
Were there times that you were demoralized and you said, I'm so tired?
#
I think you're either temperamentally inclined to be cynical about the profession.
#
A lot of the old timers were.
#
And I must say, all the young people, I am so impressed.
#
They're far, far better than what I was when I started on because they're cocksure, which
#
And they also have a high sense of their worth, but they're very sure what they want to do.
#
Now in journalism, the old days were a lot of very cynical old timers, you know, nothing's
#
You just give in your story.
#
They used to have a joke.
#
Well, at least, you know, when you'd come excited with a story about it, they'd put
#
you down by saying, well, at least two people are going to read that story.
#
One is in those days, we had the galley proof people.
#
He's going to read your story, so don't worry, you know.
#
So they took pride in being very cynical about their jobs and that everyone was exploiting
#
Nowadays, the youngsters who come are very committed and they come from very, you know,
#
educational background can be very good.
#
So some people used to think of us as the dregs because where do you go, as I said?
#
You go from this newspaper to this, and Times was supposedly the top.
#
Possibly to be in Express was a hundred times better for my career than to ever be in Times
#
because I would have stagnated there because there was no movement.
#
Yeah, I find that the youngsters today, they come from much varied backgrounds and they're
#
much more thinking about the stories they do.
#
And they're committed, but I think their big flaw is they're very full of themselves.
#
Maybe that's an old timer view.
#
No, no, elaborate on that a little bit, not in a negative sense of complaining about someone,
#
but if you were advising a youngster today that don't be like this, don't fall into
#
this trap, you know, what would you, what would you say?
#
I would say that you have to be a little pragmatic.
#
Now we've run this column for how many years?
#
It isn't that I've always managed to get everything I wanted to say inside.
#
So I've been willing to compromise to some extent and not to some extent.
#
If lines are removed or something is done, but these people are prima donnas.
#
If you know, two words are removed, they'll take offense.
#
I think, especially when you're the lower level, you have to go with, you know, your
#
seniors decide, you know, move on, but nowadays there are many more places where you can move
#
There are all kinds of things from writing for entertainment series, documentaries.
#
There were not these openings in those days.
#
You look desperately for foreign, you know, newspaper to somebody thing to pick you up,
#
but there were very few openings for a journalist.
#
I think one of the follies of youth perhaps in any age, and I certainly, you know, can
#
see it when I look back on myself as a young person, is that you think you can change the
#
world, number one, and you think you are so good, you can do it all.
#
It's a passage of time that tempers you, that, you know, makes you practical, like you said.
#
But also I think one flaw that I see around me and that's perhaps exacerbated by the incentives
#
of social media and all is that young people today are much more judgmental.
#
And you need to have a strong sense of what your values are.
#
And it's obviously natural that you will condemn some things and praise others, but one needs
#
to sort of appreciate the complexity of the world and not rush to judgment every time.
#
You'd mentioned while you were talking about your younger self that you were reserved,
#
you were a little bit geeky, right?
#
And being a journalist, especially being a reporter means that you're going out all the
#
time and talking to people, right?
#
And I have also seen that I am also an extreme introvert in a sense, just talking to people
#
is so much effort sometimes.
#
And because of this show, I've really had to kind of come out of a shell and kind of
#
But just at like, like how are you changing?
#
Like when you look back now in hindsight, did you feel it made you a different person
#
than you would have been then say if you were something else, if you were a banker?
#
Yeah, it's a strange thing that I noticed that when I was on the job, I lost my inhibitions
#
because I was, you know, I had to do this.
#
So it was ordered by me.
#
So I had the right to be cross-questioning and things.
#
But if I was on my own in a marketplace, I would think twice before.
#
Not now, but in those days I would be shy.
#
But I noticed this extraordinary change that if I felt I was on the job, you know, I would
#
But in my personality, I was not like that, that I would talk to a neighbor rather shyly
#
or you know, it would take me time if I felt I should be introduced.
#
But as journalists, most of my friends, they're very good.
#
They go up to people and say, I'm so and so from this, etc.
#
If it was for a job, I do it too, because I think I'm entitled to since I'm working
#
It's a funny sort of a concept.
#
But the other point you made about this judgmental-ness is I do feel there's just too much judgmental-ness
#
and too much polarization in our society, not just journalism as such.
#
I don't think that's a good thing.
#
What is happening is I often find that it's now reached a stage which you write against
#
a government, they will automatically place you with whatever you write.
#
They will not see a good story, which can be pro-government.
#
The society is polarized, journalism is polarized.
#
Of course, they have a right to be, they are bitter because they're not always allowed
#
to express themselves about very shocking facts which are going on in our country.
#
But the sense of polarization, even at the highest levels of journalism is such that
#
there's no appreciation for the other side.
#
You know, you can have a good story on many things, but you will only see a story if you're
#
an anti-government person, you only see good in the anti-stories and vice versa, you know.
#
And do you feel that there is a problem there, like do you feel that an essential quality
#
of a journalist is the ability to not choose a tribe?
#
I wouldn't say not choose a side, but the ability to not choose a tribe, like of course
#
as a journalist you have values which you care about, like freedom and human dignity
#
And those can matter to you as an individual.
#
But as a journalist, I think journalists should not pick sides in terms of choosing a tribe.
#
They can have their values which can, you know, inform whatever they write about.
#
But the moment you decide that, okay, I'm on this side or, you know, the moment you
#
decide that everyone who disagrees with you is evil, everyone who works for the other
#
side is a bad person, doesn't that then affect the kind of journalism that you can do?
#
I think it does, which is why I think that we have lost our objectivity.
#
You're not willing to see what is good and that loss of objectivity comes out.
#
I notice it particularly when covering elections because I'll go with some correspondence and
#
you'll talk to 10 people and they're giving you a clear idea of who's the winner.
#
And yet those correspondents will say, but you know that the reason they're saying this
#
is because they think you're from such and such a background or they're too scared to
#
say what they really think.
#
I remember I'd once gone on a trip in the days which was, Rajiv Gandhi was there, but
#
there was a very clear saffron wave in UP.
#
And mind me, my Hindi is not that good and these were all Hindi experts.
#
I went with two of them and we went here, we went there, and it was clear they were
#
all saying, mandir banaige.
#
And a girl who was my very good friend who was with me, she was not willing to.
#
She said, we'll go deeper into the interior, we'll get the real heart speaking, which is
#
Mayawati, she wanted the answer.
#
We went deeper and deeper and the cow was, you know, punctured and whatnot.
#
But the answer was the same, but they were not willing to accept it, which is why they
#
I mean when you don't see a wave which is tearing you in the face, then that shows that
#
you don't have objectivity.
#
I can understand when it's, you know, an election which is a cliffhanger, but there's some elections
#
which have been very, very clear cut and the objectivity is in seeing that.
#
How are they rationalized when they cover the election stories rather than stick their,
#
I find less people willing to stick their neck out and the last few elections have been
#
very clear cut, you know, at least parliamentary ones, I've stopped covering assembly one.
#
Because of this bias that you don't want to accept it and wishful thinking, which is why
#
I think the best way to cover an electoral trend is just talking to people of the pavement.
#
Never, never, never make the mistake of going into a party office because the party office
#
will give you, well, there's so many percentage discussed, so many percentage that cast and
#
they will vote this way.
#
People don't vote necessarily in cast ways, mostly, and maybe in Bihar in some places,
#
but generally they're also looking at various factors.
#
It never go to a party office, never go to the local journalists who are great dadas.
#
They will absolutely confuse you because they have their own prejudices and because they
#
are from the area, you think that they have a valuable input to go, I think the best input
#
is to go with a clear mind and talk to the average person.
#
In this cardinal journalistic danger, almost of deciding before doing the story that this
#
is a story I want and then kind of looking for facts that confirm that, do you think
#
it's worse in present times in this sense that one, of course, everything is polarized,
#
but the other sense is that one, a lot of the media will simply not go against the government
#
in any way, all kinds of incentives come into play.
#
But a lot of the mainstream media because they have other business interests, because
#
you know, I might own a newspaper, but I might also own a chemical factory which could get
#
But when the owner is owning the publication and has other business interests, then the
#
journalist is forced to go online if he wants to continue remaining that.
#
So that's a different aspect.
#
It's not any prejudice, you're getting clear orders from your owner or from the people
#
in charge that we want the story this way, even if your conscience or your own judgment
#
is telling you otherwise.
#
Yeah, but I was making, I was looking, I was making a slightly subtler point, like one
#
of course there is your owner says we'll only do these kinds of stories, we won't talk about
#
X company or Y politician.
#
But the other is that you, you know, if you're in a place like that, one, even if you don't
#
have direct orders, you know what kind of stories run and what kind of stories don't,
#
which could affect the way you do your work.
#
And if you're one of these independent publications, which opposes this, right, and, and obviously
#
more power to them because they're opposing that, but because what they are doing can
#
also sometimes feel as much as activism as journalism.
#
So there's a danger there that you can have an agenda in the other side, that if you decide
#
to say investigate a particular thing that those in power are doing, you can go in there
#
with your mind already set up ki isko to expose karenge.
#
Yeah, since I worked, as I said, in a anti government, my first job, the danger there
#
is that you don't check all your facts, you're so willing to take everything against the
#
people in power, that you do not go through the rigor that you would in a normal newspaper
#
because you're not concerned about a denial about the thing or they'll go on denying and
#
all that and I think the real, real, real sad thing about journalism today and societies
#
today is the polarization.
#
And I blame the government as much for creating such strong feelings against them.
#
There's no attempt at all, you know, to explain what are people supposed to do.
#
You can't blame the journalists also, because it's now reached a stage where you cannot
#
talk to the people who are in charge to give you the facts.
#
I mean, you can make an informed opinion only once you have both sides.
#
But if you have to rely on whatever you get and not get anything from their side, there's
#
less and less interaction between the government and the media.
#
The government seems to be very dismissive of the media.
#
Let's go back to talking about your journey through this period in the 70s, you know,
#
72 to 74, I think, Motherland and Indian Express onwards.
#
What are the memorable stories you did?
#
Like were there moments where you did a story and you felt this is worth it, that I'm so
#
You know, what do you remember?
#
If you're not a journalist, you'd always feel, I'm glad I did.
#
I do remember my first, what I considered scoop, was within a few months of my joining
#
the paper, there was, I don't know if you're too young to remember, what was known as the
#
And the story was that this gentleman who I think we believe worked for Raw or whatever,
#
con man or whatever you're supposed to be, he was a Parsi, my great advantage.
#
He was supposed to have taken 60 lakhs from a state bank of India imitating Mrs. Gandhi's
#
Now which cashier gives 60 lakhs on the voice and the man comes and takes it, etc.
#
But it was taken at face value by everyone.
#
It was just before the Bangladesh war and I think they did have secret funds also.
#
There was a miscommunication in the government somewhere and whatever it is, I was told,
#
go into the Parsi Anjuman and see if you can find out anything about this gentleman.
#
And I went to talk to the priest and he says, well, I can tell you one thing that they're
#
saying to him, he imitated Mrs. Gandhi's voice, but he can't do, I never heard him do a cat
#
or a mouse and is one side of his facial muscles, you know, paralyzed.
#
So where is the question of this man imitating Mrs. Gandhi's voice, which was the official,
#
I mean, such a stupid defense they had given.
#
So I remember that story gave me a lot of care because all the opposition picked it
#
up and said, what is this nonsense about saying that the money has been taken out by the cashier
#
was mistaken into thinking that.
#
But over the years, I mean, there've been many rewarding stories.
#
One of the rewarding periods was at the end, towards the end of the emergency, when there
#
was still censorship and elections had been called, but nobody bothered then.
#
And suddenly you had full rein to do whatever stories you wanted, that was the beauty of
#
And you could do stories about all the hardships that the people had faced for those 19 months,
#
you know, people in jail, people who had the sterilizations, forcibly sterilized, all the
#
kinds of horror stories.
#
And none of the other newspapers were doing them, only the express.
#
I mean, express, I remember going with my friend, she's passed away now, Nandini Chandra
#
from the Hindustan Times to a rally.
#
And you know, I was treated, I've never been treated again like that, but like if I said
#
I was from the express, I mean, can I get you a drink, can I get you a chair, when you're
#
covering a rally, can I do this?
#
And to her, you know, she had to keep apologizing, you know, it's, we are not writing, it's,
#
They say, how can you say this, this, this, this, this, this?
#
So that was also a very gratifying experience.
#
So you know, I do want to talk about the emergency a lot because your wonderful book on that
#
is, you know, has so much insight on that period, but before that, let's take a quick
#
Long before I was a podcaster, I was a writer.
#
In fact, chances are that many of you first heard of me because of my blog, India Uncut,
#
which was active between 2003 and 2009 and became somewhat popular at the time.
#
I love the freedom the form gave me and I feel I was shaped by it in many ways.
#
I exercise my writing muscle every day and was forced to think about many different things
#
because I wrote about many different things.
#
Well, that phase in my life ended for various reasons and now it is time to revive it.
#
Only now I'm doing it through a newsletter.
#
I have started the India Uncut newsletter at indiancut.substack.com where I will write
#
regularly about whatever catches my fancy.
#
I'll write about some of the themes I cover in this podcast and about much else.
#
So please do head on over to indiancut.substack.com and subscribe.
#
Once you sign up, each new installment that I write will land up in your email inbox.
#
You don't need to go anywhere.
#
So subscribe now for free.
#
The India Uncut newsletter at indiancut.substack.com.
#
Welcome back to The Scene and the Unseen.
#
I'm chatting with Kumi Kapoor and you know, through your personal chronology, we've just
#
sort of hit the emergency, but before the emergency also there are significant events
#
in your life which we haven't spoken about yet, which is that you met your husband Virender
#
while working in Motherland and then he shifted I think to Financial Express.
#
You've done your homework.
#
So tell me more about, tell me more about how you met.
#
Well, as I said, there weren't that many people in Motherland, especially in the reporters
#
rooms so, you know, we got friendly and I had joined Express before my marriage and he
#
was still in the Motherland and we continued to what you would call date.
#
And I think my parents were aware of it, they didn't approve, but we took a while before
#
And how was it for two journalists to be married to each other because, you know, you both
#
got odd hours, you both, and at least in my time I remember journalists would absolutely
#
work much more than they needed to in terms of how many hours they put in in the day.
#
So how was sort of the early dynamics of that?
#
I remember the late Keval Verma who was a very well-known economic journalist, his wife
#
told me, it's bad enough being married to one journalist, but for two journalists to
#
be married to each other is unforgivable.
#
And my children do reproach me for, you know, they said you weren't at home.
#
But I rationalized that because, you know, I was the chief reporter and I used to live
#
In those days, Dizamuddin where I still live, it wasn't that far from Indian Express, took
#
Though I didn't have a car, but I did use an auto rickshaw.
#
So I used to come home for lunch and it's true that at night time I wasn't there.
#
And I am really very grateful to the maid who stayed with me for so many years till
#
my daughter got married.
#
Yeah, but it is in a way unfair on children.
#
But I find in all professions, it's not only journalism, my daughter is a lawyer and she
#
But of course, she's a far more conscientious mother than I ever was.
#
It's interesting that you should talk about, you know, being a far more conscientious mother.
#
And I did an episode with Mrinal Pandeyji who was a journalist around the same time
#
And even she speaks about how one of her daughters would always say that, hey, you were never
#
there and so on and so forth.
#
So, you know, what I find interesting about many younger people and a good thing is that
#
there is more intentionality about the things that they do and the reasons why they are
#
So if they, for example, get married or if they become parents, it's not that they've
#
sort of drifted into that path of things and things just happened.
#
But sometimes in some cases they've thought about what it entails and what it means and
#
So do you feel that in an earlier generation, like certainly I see it as true of my generation,
#
that people would often just drift along certain paths and not give too much thought to stuff
#
Well, I'm a classic example who drifted along to certain paths without thinking.
#
And my mother was not a working thing, she only worked for charitable clubs.
#
But I think that what each generation you become more conscious of child rearing than
#
the one before because we were left to the nannies basically to be brought up.
#
It was just the way things were done in those days.
#
So I think I had a very close bond actually, which I hope I have with both my daughters.
#
We talk to each other every day and must have done something right.
#
So give me a sense also of the political landscape of those days, number one, and your own, your
#
own awareness of it as journalists, in the sense that I imagine that in the fifties and
#
the first part of the sixties...
#
Yeah, I wasn't in the...
#
I mean, I wasn't working as a journalist.
#
I joined journalism in the seventies, Mrs. Gandhi was the thing.
#
Yeah, but I'm just thinking about how politics itself evolved before that, where in the fifties
#
and the first part of the sixties, they would just have been the Congress and everyone would
#
have been idealistic and there would have been the sense of, oh, this great nation is
#
But by the seventies, a lot of that has frayed.
#
Politics itself became cynical.
#
You know, in your book, you've reproduced this great letter from Indira to Sanjay.
#
Indira to Sanjay, that's one of my scoops, how I got it.
#
Yeah, and the letter is circa 67 and she's basically saying that, hey, I don't believe
#
Yes, I thought that was so amazing.
#
It is much more than her letters to anyone else.
#
She's been so frank with Sanjay, whom she obviously was in constant, you know, they
#
were on the same wavelength and she talked with them and she, yeah, she had a very cynical
#
view of politics, how she runs down Lal Bahadur Shastri.
#
And you know, the funny thing is I made a big effort to get those letters.
#
I was so excited because you're talking about scoop.
#
I got all of the letter and I won't tell you who gave them to me.
#
But anyhow, I got them and there was no camera, phones and all in those days.
#
I was given them, they were already falling apart in those days and I took notes, took
#
as much notes as I could in those days.
#
And I thought, I promised the swaps that it'll be a great story.
#
She says, no, it won't be carried.
#
I said, no, no, just leave it to me.
#
Now I was leaving the Express.
#
I was in my notice period in the Express and I was going to India today.
#
So I thought first the new one better and I went even before I joined and I suggested
#
that I'll do the story.
#
Suman Dubey was the editor then.
#
He hummed and hollered, but it was clear it wasn't going to be carried.
#
Then I tried with Mr Varghese in the Express and I mean, it was history.
#
If you read those letters, it's just full of all kinds of observations of Indira Gandhi's
#
And he also hummed and hollered and said, no, no, it's too personal.
#
So the person who gave me the letters was right.
#
Nobody was going to carry it.
#
Then my husband in those days was the editor of the Free Press Journal in Bombay.
#
So I gave a portion of it, I made a story and I gave it to him and he carried it without
#
It was Rajiv, there was a poster in those days, Nation's Hope, you know.
#
And I still remember the headline because the letters show that she was in despair about
#
Rajiv's future and what was he planning to do and what profession was he going to do.
#
Any mother would be worried.
#
The headline was Nation's Hope was Mom's Despair.
#
And Guardian and others picked it up, but we didn't carry it.
#
So you know, even in those days, there was a little bit of censorship.
#
It's not as if there was total freedom.
#
I mean, we didn't go into private matters and things like that.
#
And this particular letter that I'm referring to is dated 5th January 1967.
#
There was a whole bunch of them.
#
And as I said, I was scribbling away furiously.
#
And what I actually did eventually was I kept my notes and a portion of it I used then.
#
But when I started my own agency service for newspapers, I used it as my first story.
#
And did any of the newspapers?
#
Everybody, all my newspapers carried it, in big, in very little.
#
So obviously times had changed by then.
#
But I just want to read this line out because it's so illuminative where she wrote to Sanjay
#
in January 1967, quote, the problem is not one of right or left, but a struggle for power,
#
And this is so illuminating in the context of what happened next.
#
Like these words were of course 1967 and the whole tilt leftward to sort of outflank the
#
syndicate and this whole Garibi-Hattao nonsense where, while that was clearly from her policy,
#
the last thing she wanted, you know, it's so clearly because of political calculation,
#
not a sincere belief in a particular worldview, nor a desire that better things should happen
#
to people, but simply a question of how do I position myself?
#
How do I outflank my opponents within the party and perhaps later on, how do I get votes
#
by making the right noises?
#
The letters were given to you or you had to copy down whatever was in them?
#
They were not presented to me.
#
I had to copy down and they were taken away afterwards.
#
So tell us, me and my listeners, a little bit about sort of the political mahal of those
#
days as it were, and I'm talking pre-emergency because-
#
That's what the mahal, as I said, that is when I entered journalism, was that she basically
#
And actually at heart, she was really a right-wing person, as you could see from the emergency,
#
the way she supported us.
#
But socially right-wing, economically extremely left.
#
Yeah, left because it was what she had inherited and what she thought she should push.
#
Her battle with Moraji Desa and the syndicate was not really about, as she said, it was
#
a struggle for power, not about left or right.
#
And of course, she was Nehru's daughter who had genuinely believed in all the socialism
#
Her son was totally opposite Sanjay.
#
I don't know how he came up with that family, but he was definitely right-wing.
#
I would say that he was, economically, he was also a statist.
#
He wanted to use the state to do his things.
#
But during Maruti, he used the state in so many classic cronyism.
#
But that is a difference for personal gain.
#
But if you read anything about the emergency, you will see his knives are out for all Mrs.
#
Gandhi's leftist advisors, starting with Huxer.
#
He thought they were all a bunch of hypocrites.
#
And he went around with this gang of tough goons who had no right or left beliefs, but
#
just staying in power, Bansilal, VC Shukla.
#
But I think at heart, very much, he was against the leftist policies.
#
So he was, towards the end of the emergency when Mrs. Gandhi had to then sort of make
#
amends, he gave an interview to Uma Vasudev, where he's hit out at the CPI, who are allies.
#
And it created such a furor.
#
And then Uma Vasudev was forced to, you know.
#
I mean, I, looking back-
#
Black out the interview.
#
I mean, I agree with everything you've said, and I think he was an absolute monster.
#
But it's just, I think while he was against leftists, per se, he wasn't for free markets
#
I didn't see that expression.
#
I don't think he thought so deeply about it.
#
So it was a reflexive antipathy towards an unpleasant bunch of people who happened to
#
No, but the fact that he wanted to start an enterprise of his own, it helped him.
#
He wanted it to be his own profit-making venture.
#
But the methods were crony capitalist and therefore classically-
#
But that's because he had the advantage of having the mother who was the prime minister
#
so that he could use the instruments of the state to further his own capitalist venture.
#
Which in my mind is more left-wing than right-wing.
#
Because it's, left-wing means using the power of the state.
#
And, you know, restraining economic freedom.
#
I'm sure if later on in time he had an established corporation, he would have crushed any competition,
#
which is, again, that's not economically right-wing at all.
#
But you know, we'll come to Sanjay and his cronies, but you know, you've got another
#
lovely letter from Siddharth Shankar Ray to Indira before the emergency, a few months
#
before the emergency, where he's advising her on what she should do, which kind of tells
#
you that everything was planned, like if I may quote from the letter.
#
You know, in both my books I have been very fortunate because in both I have managed to
#
get, I had to do a book which is just a rehash of putting together and researching what other
#
I think I managed to break new ground in both of them.
#
In the case of the Parsis, about the whole Tata's, which is clothed in so much secrecy
#
and you know, there's so much that nobody wants to cast a stone.
#
Whereas in the case of this, there was actually the motherland had brought out this story,
#
but nobody believed the motherland story that she had planned actually to impose the emergency
#
much earlier when Alan Mishra was killed.
#
That comes out very clearly.
#
I'll tell you who gave me the letter if you want, since he's dead, R.K.
#
Dhawan gave you the letter.
#
So yeah, it's an interesting letter, which, okay, I won't read it out, but it gives in
#
great detail, all the things she has to do.
#
All these suave, you know, educated liberals in the West from all the big universities.
#
I mean, when it came down, they gave Mrs. Gandhi the reason for carrying out her emergency.
#
I mean, they clothed it in so-called constitutional language, but it.
#
So tell me about, so we'll take a brief digression here before we come to the emergency itself,
#
which is you've pointed out that so many people, you know, gave you so many letters and confided
#
in you and trusted you.
#
And one of the themes that has, you know, one of the questions that pops up when I look
#
at your remarkably long running column, many decades, where you are literally as a name
#
indicates giving the inside scoop on so many different things.
#
How do you, and I won't even say cultivate sources because that seems like a cynical
#
term where you use people in an instrumental way.
#
But you have clearly built up the trust within so many people where they're willing to trust
#
you and talk to you and occasionally give you documents as well and all of that.
#
Like, is it something that you strategize that you say that this is how I will behave
#
This is how I will treat them?
#
Or does it just come naturally to you that you're friendly and straightforward so people
#
I think people do trust me and I've never been treated to trust ever, ever.
#
I mean, if you've kept it going for so many decades, because it's something that I would
#
I mean, today, of course, I'm very fortunate that people who come on my show kind of...
#
Well, I've reduced it to a fortnight because I found in this government it's very difficult
#
to get information and I wonder how long it can continue.
#
But you know, I've done my...at my age, I should have retired long back.
#
But you know how I started this column?
#
It didn't start with the express, this what they call it gossip.
#
But I want to tell you that if you get any fact wrong, which is why I suffer from anxiety
#
column, you'll get a strong letter, a contradiction, a thing and touchwood, I've so far managed
#
to avoid any court case of any sort.
#
But the point is there's an art of writing something, but that I think I did have a flair
#
for and how I first started out in this line is Udhyan Sharma, who's now dead, he used
#
to be with the Sunday, he started a gossip column.
#
We never had them in mainline newspapers, it was called D.E. Nizamuddin, that was his
#
Udhyan went off to Calcutta, I think.
#
So he asked my husband to continue the column.
#
My husband went off to become editor of the Free President.
#
So I was in Delhi, they said, you do it.
#
So I started doing it at that time for some time.
#
And I saw that I have a natural aptitude, at least I thought I had an aptitude for it.
#
And those days salaries were so poor that you quietly moonlighted as well.
#
Then after I left India today, I decided to go on my own, which is why I started offering
#
people a syndicate in which I offered them two or three stories a month.
#
I've forgotten how many stories for a month.
#
And I was going with Vinod home in Bombay, he was giving me a lift, Vinod Mehta.
#
And he said, you know, the thing people really want to read is gossip, news gossip, because
#
he had in The Observer was carrying something.
#
So I thought about it and I said, I'm offering both the newspapers to these newspapers, they
#
were in different languages, and this column.
#
And it was an instant hit.
#
And after that in some form or the other long before I started the Express one, it was going
#
because even when I stopped the syndicate and I joined the Sunday Mail, I was writing
#
And I saw that generally it was appreciated.
#
I never thought a mainstream paper like Indian Express would carry it.
#
It's to the greatness of Nandini Mehta, who was the Sunday editor, that she said, yeah,
#
I thought they'll never carry it, it's too lowbrow for them.
#
But it started, the first one in Indian Express was, but the column was much before Indian
#
But the first one in Indian Express was on the week that Rajiv Gandhi died.
#
And I'd given all the details of what went behind the scene of how this pressure for
#
Sonia to take over and how Amitabh Bachchan had scuttled it, et cetera.
#
Wow, and 30 years, and you know, the thing is, I feel the word gossip doesn't do justice
#
That's what I always say, because Vinod and I had an argument once, we were rivals, I
#
was editing the Sunday Mail, he was editing the Sunday Observer, and he wrote something
#
about the Sunday Mail in his gossip, not he, one of his staffers.
#
So I said, Vinod, it's okay, but this, this, this fact is wrong there.
#
So he said, you know, gossip, and then he wrote it actually, it's 60% correct.
#
But it was totally wrong, you get one fact wrong, you don't even get a fact wrong, still
#
a person will write a letter saying something else.
#
I remember, so obviously, these little snippets sting people quite badly.
#
On one occasion, he wrote something about Rahul Gandhi having to pay admission because
#
they thought he was not an Indian.
#
This is before he joined politics, it was correct, as far as I know, it was correct,
#
that his sister, who never writes a letter, wrote a long letter to talk about things that
#
I'd never said, and about my, what my brother-in-law said was just nothing to do with me.
#
So this, you can't get away with writing gossip, it has to be, you know, authenticated.
#
And these days, frankly, I'm getting my newspapers breathing heavily down my neck to ensure that
#
each fact, because people are willing to deny anything that if they get half a chance.
#
Why I like your column is that I think it, it gives an inside view, which is authentic
#
and which, you know, gives us all so much better understanding into people and the things
#
that happen and so on and so forth.
#
So I feel that gossip is a little unfair because the implication of gossip is that this is
#
frivolous, this is hearsay.
#
But in a newspaper, anything that's written in a newspaper is whether you can't say it's
#
hearsay, you know, you'll have to stand by what you've written.
#
So quick question, in your book, you mentioned this foreign journalist who once wrote what
#
appears to be a classic piece of gossip that he said he overheard saying something that
#
Sanjay Gandhi slapped his mother six times and straight away the journalist was like
#
packed out of the country.
#
Was there something to that?
#
See, it was a gossip going around at that time in the emergency and people love that
#
But where he could have got such information is hard to believe.
#
After my book came out, somebody asked him the question, the gentleman was alive and
#
he says, yes, it's true, but he never revealed his sources of where exactly it came out from.
#
I mean, it sounds very hard to believe.
#
Yeah, I mean, I mean, scoundrel as he was and she might well have been under his sway,
#
That's what I mean by, you know, people become so anti a particular side that they feel they
#
are entitled to write anything.
#
Let's get back to, you know, the emergency and your book is so vivid in terms of all
#
And I think those are important because, you know, the current times are, of course, pretty
#
You know, I've been a dissenter, I've gotten into trouble.
#
But at the same time, I feel it is facile when people say this is like another emergency
#
or they downplay the actual emergency and say, no, that wasn't that bad.
#
And I'm like, you know, a friend of mine who's a journalist, oddly enough, said something
#
like this to me the other day.
#
And I said, boss, have you read about the emergency?
#
Have you read about what happened?
#
In fact, I recommended your book to him right then.
#
Because I just feel that so much of what happened in the emergency, we've just completely forgotten
#
It's just become a word.
#
You know, the fact that the entire political opposition was in jail.
#
What happened to the media?
#
At one point you've pointed out that during the emergency, Indira Gandhi arrested more
#
people than the British Empire did during the Quit India movement.
#
You know, and all of these kind of give a perspective on how horrendous it was.
#
So as individuals who actually lived through this period, reported on this period, your
#
husband actually went to jail during this period, tell me a little bit about how it
#
unfolded for you when it began.
#
There's no other word to describe it but nightmare.
#
A nightmare which kept getting worse and worse and worse.
#
When you think things couldn't get worse, it did.
#
So because you know, my husband, I thought when he comes out of jail, it will be better.
#
But actually things became worse when he was out of jail than when he was in jail because
#
we were followed everywhere.
#
I mean, he couldn't go anywhere.
#
I mean, as journalists, if I went to meet somebody, very often the fellow who was following
#
me, following me not because of my husband alone, because of my brother-in-law who was
#
wanted by the government.
#
My father who was suffering from cancer, his house was raided many times.
#
I mean, it was just one long nightmare.
#
But I mean, that doesn't justify.
#
I don't want to do what about tree and I don't feel we should do what about tree of today's
#
suppression of both the media and freedom of expression because that was at least one
#
It was all on paper very officially that you have censorship, that you have no laws.
#
Yeah, ostensibly we do, but you can certainly see a lot of pressure that you don't write
#
against the powers that be, which is very frightening.
#
And the biggest horror for me of the emergency was that I never knew it.
#
I never believed she'd lift it because a friend asked me that, well, your husband is going
#
You know, you read all these books about Soviet Russia and all that and you think it's for
#
So it was a bad period, but it's sad that knowing that bad period, the present people
#
in power do not realize that they're going in the same direction.
#
I have a question for you.
#
In your book, many of the characters are people who actually came to power in 2014.
#
You know, in the sense Arun Jet Li went to jail during that time.
#
You know, he's part of your-
#
They came more to power in when Vajpayee became Prime Minister.
#
But in terms of like Narendra Modi, for example, is one of the minor characters in your book.
#
But he's one of the minor characters in your book.
#
And he, you know, when your brother-in-law would go to Gujarat, he would take him to
#
Makarand Desai's house and meet him often and all that.
#
And I would have imagined that all of these people, Mr. Jet Li, Mr. Modi, a lot of the
#
people who are, you know, involved in this government in some way or the other, that
#
the lesson that they would have learned from the emergency is that the Indian state can
#
be this oppressive beast and we must never let this happen.
#
But instead, the lesson that they seem to have learned is wait for it to be our turn,
#
At least from Mr. Modi, that's an attitude that-
#
Well, you mentioned Mr. Jet Li's name.
#
I don't think he was a close friend and I don't think he ever had any such view.
#
And you will notice that things have become much harsher in the second avatar of this
#
government than the first one.
#
Mr. Jet Li went out of his way always to extend a hand to the media and even people he disliked,
#
he was free with information.
#
Today, he has reached a stage where nobody wants to talk to us, you know, we're not allowed
#
in any of the places unless you're one of the favored few.
#
I mean, the press has just looked as a hostile opponent.
#
In fact, just as a tangent, one hears of another great tradition that sort of ended with him
#
in the sense that not only was he good to the press, he would always reach out to the
#
opposition, talk to people in the opposition.
#
That was an earlier tradition.
#
And that was a bipartisan tradition that, you know, when Chidambaram was FM, he would
#
When Jet Li was FM, he would talk to the other side.
#
In fact, as Pooja Mehra writes in her book and speaks about in an episode with me, there
#
was that continuity in the finance ministry between the Chidambaram ministry and the Jet
#
And everything kind of went to hell.
#
It doesn't mean that you have to change everything that has happened in a previous government,
#
But with regard to those people who were there then who didn't learn that lesson like our
#
prime minister today, why do you think that happened that you lived through those times
#
He was very young, actually, then.
#
I think they have not been brought up in the right traditions.
#
You must also remember that the first avatar of the BJP, which was under Vajpayee, they
#
were very conscious, had a far more liberal bent and a background, whereas these people
#
have come from a rather parochial state governments where there was always rather suppressive
#
and authoritarian and have now tried to impose the same model at the centre.
#
They did not have such a wide worldview, a picture of what things are.
#
Mind you, at the same time, I will give them all credit which their opponents are not,
#
which is why I talk about this unfortunate polarisation.
#
The fact is we must give this government all credit for the extent to which they have been
#
able to deliver the services from the government to the people, which we have seen in earlier
#
governments totally went into the wrong hands, partly because of computerisation, Aadhaar,
#
whatever it is, they must be given full credit for that.
#
So many journalists failed to see this when they went on tours in the 2014 election.
#
You could see that people were saying that, look, I've got this gas, I've got toilet.
#
No, no, that's right, 2019.
#
Because that's when they delivered.
#
When they delivered, that's right, 2019 when they delivered, yeah, 2014 was more against
#
It was an anti-vote of corruption, but 2019 was, it was very clear.
#
Yeah, though I noticed a lot of the journalism on this was after the fact, where people realised
#
that, hey, we got it wrong, and then you started hearing narratives about delivery.
#
If you had an objective frame of mind, neither one way or the other, you would have seen
#
But they always rationalise.
#
And now they'll talk about it as if, hey, we said it all along, delivery of welfare
#
I also made a mistake, which I broke my cardinal rule at one point.
#
I went to Western UP, and I went with two other journalists, and then one of them took
#
me to see all the local journalists.
#
And they said, no, this, you see this leader, this, and this one, that, and this caste here,
#
and that, and this Muslim solidary, and they give a quoting figure.
#
So I played it safe and said almost neck and neck.
#
But in my heart of hearts, I knew then.
#
That's why when the second time I went during the same election period, I said, I'm going
#
And I went to Haryana, and the writing was so clear on the wall.
#
I said, I've never been to an election where I can say 10.
#
I said nine out of 10, only possibly Huda can retain his seat.
#
And my newspaper wasn't willing to put it on the front page.
#
I was giving a clear election trend.
#
You don't stick your neck out.
#
I mean, you always play neck and neck, you know, so and so head and all that.
#
But even when you do, people are scared that you could go wrong.
#
But bias is shown very often in covering elections.
#
So one of the sort of things that you detail in your book is about how there were so many
#
arrests and how they unfolded.
#
Like, first of all, when they were planned, you speak about how the Delhi DM and the police
#
and all of that were told arrests them under MISA, Maintenance of Internal Security Act.
#
In fact, Lalu Prasad named one of his daughters after that in protest, arrests them under
#
MISA because then they can't go to the courts.
#
So that's part one of the planning.
#
The entire opposition is sort of arrested or ordinary people are arrested to the point
#
that at one point the entire Sanskrit department of Delhi University is in jail, students everywhere
#
are, you know, doing peaceful civil disobedience and being taken to jail.
#
And what you also have here is that in the Soviet Union, it was very famous how there
#
is this widespread distrust to society because you cannot trust your neighbor.
#
And even here you point out that some people are taking sides, who do you trust?
#
Like there's a story about how Arun Jaitley at one point was supposed to be picked up
#
by Prabhu Chawla on a scooter behind a building and then Prabhu Chawla will make an escape
#
But Prabhu Chawla didn't turn up.
#
And then he later he finds out that Prabhu Chawla has signed Mrs. Gandhi's 20 point
#
program and he's gone to the other side.
#
So what was the social environment?
#
And you didn't want to embarrass other people.
#
But you saw straight away how very decent ordinary people, you know, they didn't want
#
They wanted to save their own skins.
#
In fact, I mentioned in the book that even when I just said on the phone to a family
#
friend that, have you heard that she's, you know, imposed an emergency, she said, what,
#
And she put down the phone because she obviously went to consult with her husband, but she
#
never gave him to even collect what she had left with me.
#
She sent the driver and never saw her again.
#
And there were many people.
#
And I also didn't want to get them involved because in my case, it was particularly messy,
#
as I said, with my brother-in-law wanted very badly.
#
Tell me a little bit about how it was when your husband himself was arrested.
#
And it was in this very bizarre incident where he wasn't actually arrested for what he did.
#
He was at this event and Ambika Soni, who was one of Sanjay Gandhi's cronies, was, you
#
know, getting a boy roughed up by the police and he said, you know, leave the boy alone.
#
And she said, who the fuck are you?
#
Come to jail, that kind of thing.
#
So what was that period like when that happened?
#
You mentioned that you were scared that he may never come out because, you know, we didn't
#
know about, but when he finally came out, it was in a way worse than when he was in
#
jail, because he was also traumatized by his jail experience and, I mean, you were an untouchable
#
because that was the time when Swami resurfaced, you know, made an appearance in jail and then
#
So the police was not only following my sister, she's a very courageous woman, I'm not.
#
So she, everywhere, I mean, my family's house was raided.
#
My house was searched several times.
#
It was just a terrible period.
#
And I mean, an ordinary person like me, what am I going to know?
#
You know, I travel in a bus and behind the bus would be these motor scooters and a car.
#
I mean, can you think of how one of the people in Vittalbhai Patel's house where I was staying
#
in an MP squad, I said, you know, I've never seen such security except for Farooq Abdullah
#
Yeah, I mean, if they were going to follow you, why didn't you take the...
#
And I was a very minor player, I was not the main one, I can understand my sister or somebody
#
No, I'm just thinking that if you were going to go by bus and they're going to follow you
#
by car, you could just have taken a lift with them because you have to come.
#
I'm also struck by one of the anecdotes where you talk about how, you know, when Virenderji
#
was in jail, you know, Charan Singh took him to a room and he told your husband, quote,
#
dekh le Kapoor, isi kothri mein Indira Gandhi ko rakhunga, stop quote.
#
How did people, like so many, not just politicians, but journalists, people in society spend so
#
How do you deal with it?
#
Like, what are the different stages?
#
Like one, of course, this is an angry thing that Mr. Charan Singh is saying.
#
No, he was determined, half the reason, I mean, one of the reasons why the Janta party
#
fell, government fell was that Charan Singh had a one point program to put Mrs. Gandhi
#
You can put her in jail for many things, but it takes time, you know, the Shah commission
#
was going on, but his was really stupid things.
#
He got the CBI, he got them to say that there was some money or something under house.
#
I mean, the Janta government looked ridiculous and she came out the heroine.
#
And another sort of interesting story is that when your husband with a handful of other
#
people was being shifted from Tihar to Bareilly, you know, while he's on that van, he realizes
#
that he's being shifted and he wants to get a message to you.
#
So I love reading about the way he sent you that message, tell us a little bit about,
#
Yeah, he sent it through somebody who was on a scooter behind him and that man phoned
#
So he dropped something on the street and the scooter.
#
No, he didn't drop it on the street.
#
It was the scooter, he was in the van, which has barbed wire.
#
You can put your hand out and the scooter while I was coming behind on the roads.
#
So he indicated to that man to take it.
#
It was very good of that man.
#
And that thing had your phone number and a message and it had my phone number and message
#
saying I'm being transferred to Bareilly.
#
And so I rushed to the railway station in Bareilly.
#
But after I got the message from him, Mrs. Malkani also phoned me.
#
The IRS was quite organized and they said your husband is being transferred to Bareilly
#
But my first message I got was from this.
#
Wow, it's like so cinematic.
#
Like in today's world everything is smartphone, WhatsApp, you think that's how messages go.
#
But to think of the privations of those times.
#
And later you point out how he managed to smuggle across a letter from Bareilly to you
#
where in which he had written quote, do something to get me out of here.
#
I'm going mad in this place, Tihar was heaven compared to this top court.
#
Yeah, because what happened was in Bareilly, that's why I said it was the worst time because
#
what happened was in Tihar, I've described the jail.
#
But when these four prisoners, very strangely selected, he had nothing in common with the
#
other three, came there to Bareilly, they had all heard about the jailbreak, which was
#
why the prisoners were being.
#
So they thought these were the escapees and they put them for one month in solitary confinement.
#
And one month in solitary confinement will do anything to a person's mind because every
#
six hours they just tap even when you're sleeping, you know, on the thing to see that you haven't
#
You're not allowed to talk to anyone or have any connection.
#
And the reason I referred to, I was struck by, you know, Charan Singh's anger and what
#
he said is that I think, you know, if I try to imagine myself in that situation, being
#
in jail for a while, being in solitary for a month or whatever, I think I would be filled
#
Or I would just give up and just, you know, become completely apathetic.
#
But that's not what is happening.
#
All of these people who are in jail from politicians to journalists and all of that, they are coming
#
back after the emergency and, you know, in what, what are the different ways in which
#
they change and what are the ways in which people like you dealt with the anger?
#
You suffered a lot through this period as well.
#
But I find politicians are particularly resilient, actually, more than the rest of us.
#
Well, there was no option in the matter.
#
One had to cope where the best one could, you know, live from day to day.
#
And when it came to the friends who'd stopped talking to you during this period because
#
they wanted to be safe and all that, did you at some point find it in your heart to forgive
#
them or were you like, no, we have seen?
#
I didn't have any permanent, I understood their viewpoint, you know, because you don't
#
want to talk to somebody.
#
In fact, I remember somebody seeing me from UNI journalists and he said, hi, how are you?
#
I said, just go to the other side of the road.
#
There are people behind me.
#
And he fled, but, you know, because he would have had people going after him as well.
#
One of the unique things about the emergency is, you know, that extra constitutional authority
#
in Sanjay Gandhi, so to say, Sanjay Gandhi running amok, his coterie running completely
#
And you've sort of written a lot about him in his book, which I won't get into.
#
And a lot of it is kind of well known.
#
And you know, before I ask you about the coterie, I'm just struck by something that every time
#
his birthday comes around every year, you know, the Congress will put out all these
#
tweets and all of that saying the great visionary leader, Sanjay Gandhi, this and that, even
#
when, you know, Gulab Nabi Azad quit recently from the Congress, he said, oh, Sanjay had
#
got me into the party and this and that.
#
And is it like we haven't come to terms with our history or what a monster he was, how
#
he was just an order of magnitude worse?
#
I will tell you one thing that most of these people of that generation, Kamal Nath, Gulam
#
Nabi, the whole lot of them who came into the party at the time were brought in by Sanjay.
#
Rajiv only took what he inherited apart from Arun Nehru and Arun Singh.
#
I don't think there were many people whom he personally recruited from into the party.
#
They brought a whole Ambika Soni, all these were brought, Sanjay's recruits.
#
Well, firstly, most of them are dubious people and I don't know if they were dubious, you
#
know, times and things, everyone wants to be in power.
#
But secondly, if you're in politics.
#
But many of them like Jagmohan, like Ambika Soni behave pretty badly then as, you know,
#
But the other aspect of it is that you would imagine that you don't want to, do you want
#
to wipe this out from your history?
#
You don't want to talk about this guy?
#
That's what I would imagine, after the kind of things he's done, you'd be embarrassed
#
to talk about an association with him.
#
And yet it seems we have learned nothing from history, we are still celebrating him, we
#
Actually, the Congress doesn't celebrate him that much.
#
Every birthday on Twitter, they go nuts.
#
I don't know about the Twitter, but generally it is, you'll notice it is Rahul Rajiv's
#
birthday, Indira Gandhi's.
#
No, no, those are understandable, but there was one, I think a couple of years back on
#
his birthday, I took a lot of screenshots also, because I couldn't believe it.
#
I was like, what are you doing?
#
And it's not just one Congress handle, every Congress handle, regional handle, state handle.
#
Congress is a little embarrassed as the…
#
But let's talk a little bit about, like one, of course, there is his youth where he was
#
incredibly sort of anti-social, stealing hubcaps from cars, stealing cars and going on joy
#
rides and all that nonsense was happening.
#
And of course, using government machinery in the way he did, where he would force people
#
to, you know, sort of invest in Maruti as it were.
#
And this is not the Maruti Maruti, this is his company called Maruti before, you know,
#
Tell me a little bit about his coterie, this bunch of people who were attracted to power
#
Because he chose men of action rather than men of values.
#
No, not values, well, who thought they were thinkers, Bansilal, who was a no-nonsense,
#
you know, believed rough and ready methods, Ambika was a hangar on and…
#
But his basic people, Dhawan was another one.
#
They all just followed orders.
#
There's a great quote about Bansilal over here, in fact, where I'll read out this passage
#
about Bansilal from your book.
#
Quote, Bansilal terrorized his officers and ran the state, and this is Haryana, Bansilal
#
terrorized his officers and ran the state with despotic ruthlessness.
#
When an old and respected lawyer of Panipat denounced Lal's corrupt rule, he was arrested
#
and stripped naked, his face was starred, and he was dragged all through the streets
#
When a Bhivani newspaper, Chetna, dared to criticize Lal's barbaric ways, it had to
#
A senior officer of the municipality arrived with a gang of 30 workmen armed with spades
#
They started knocking down the front portion of the building.
#
Later, during the emergency, Chetna's editor, Debrata Vashisht and his father were arrested
#
on 13 trumped-up charges.
#
Vashisht's wife continued fearlessly to bring out the newspaper.
#
Her 17-year-old son was beaten to a pulp with rods, chains, latis and belts.
#
The police refused to record the FIR, and the local doctors were too frightened to even
#
And you later quote Bansilal saying to B.K.
#
Nehru at one point where B.K.
#
Nehru is saying, should we have a presidential system?
#
And Bansilal says to him, Nehru saab, get rid of all this election nonsense.
#
If you ask me, just make our sister president for life and there's no need to do anything
#
And Bansilal also was one of the ruthless enforcers of Sanjay Gandhi's crazy coercive
#
family planning this thing.
#
And people like this kind of survived in politics and many of them thrived in politics even.
#
Bansilal won election after election.
#
His family still continues to get votes on his name.
#
So people also like doers.
#
It's not that everyone believes in democracy.
#
I think a lot of people feel unfortunately that if you're making progress and he was
#
a doer as chief minister, he did help to change Haryana, begin the change.
#
So I mean, I think a lot of Indian people are not so bothered about democracy or authoritarianism
#
They're more concerned about bread and butter issues.
#
And is that something you lament?
#
I mean, the fact is that all of them were reelected, all of them came back.
#
So within a few years, it was forgotten.
#
I mean, but winning an elections, you may win elections, but that doesn't mean that.
#
I'm not saying it's right.
#
I'm saying that what are the priorities for the people?
#
I'm lamenting along with you.
#
So during this time, since the media was suppressed, LK Advani famously said that the press was
#
asked to bend, they chose to crawl.
#
During this time, your book has so many details of atrocities, all the things Bansi Lal did,
#
all the things VC Shukla did, all the Turkmen Gate massacres, for example, all the things
#
that were done with bulldozers then.
#
We talk about bulldozers in 2022, we forget the bulldozers of 1975, right?
#
All the things and both are equally monstrous.
#
Were people at that time aware that all this is going on?
#
And as journalists, what were the pressures upon you in terms of reporting what was around
#
Well, when it was happening at its height, you couldn't write anything because the newspapers
#
all went to the censor and all they would have done would have been to hold your paper
#
so that it didn't come out at all.
#
So this idea that the newspapers could do anything for most of the time was incorrect.
#
I mean, you could hint, like I remember when I was covering the Turkmen Gate, the relocation
#
of people to these, what is that area, Jamuna areas.
#
We could only write that they were going in pouring rain, which they were, and their houses
#
were, you know, it just had to be a slight hint here and there.
#
The girl who came first in her exam, CBSC board, you know, you said her father is in
#
jail, but you couldn't explain.
#
So if the reader got the hint, it had to pass the censor.
#
The real independence was after elections were announced, though there was supposed
#
to be censorship, it was not carried out.
#
So all of this stuff was happening, you guys were seeing it as journalists.
#
And Delhi knew about it, Delhi, everyone talked.
#
So the common people in Delhi know.
#
But a lot of the stories I did in that small period, when I went to Bombay, they all said,
#
but we didn't know that this was all happening.
#
So I think Delhi was an extreme, it happened in an extreme, and everyone knew about it.
#
The sterilization drive, everybody was affected, it's not one or two people.
#
And it's quite clear when we sort of read about that period and even from, you know,
#
you've quoted Bansilal in your book as saying, why have elections, didi ko bana do, we look
#
back on history with hindsight and think that everything that happened was inevitable.
#
But at that time, you said there was a fear this will never end, you know.
#
So when you think of it, do you think we got really lucky that, you know, Indira seems
#
to have cared about what the liberal press in the West will think of her, and she seemed
#
to have this hubris that election karenge toh, of course she will win anyway.
#
So do you think we are really lucky that she was delusional in that way?
#
It's only that she thought, I don't think she'd have called it if she thought she'd
#
Sanjay, I know now, I have found out was dead opposed to it.
#
He said give a few more years, how could you call it?
#
She didn't consult him before.
#
Maybe the pressure was getting too much for her, I mean, she was Nehru's daughter and
#
all her liberal friends abroad were ostracizing her, she didn't want that situation.
#
And she thought she had broken the opposition and it would be difficult for them to get
#
together because they were very limited time.
#
I didn't believe it myself, you know, when it happened, when I used to say that I just
#
don't want her to get a two thirds majority so that she can change the constitution and
#
Never occurred to me, though I did, I was sent to suss out the poll scene in Delhi.
#
I said in Delhi, they're winning seven out of seven Lok Sabha seats.
#
But I didn't realize in the rest of the country, I mean, when we heard that about, everybody's
#
thing was that the moment turning point for everyone when they realized hope was there,
#
when they heard that Indira Gandhi is trailing in dry barely.
#
I mean, that was an impossible thing to believe and that only came later in the day because
#
in the early point of the day UN PTI and UNI were only giving results from the south which
#
And even though when I first heard that she's trailing, I had come back from covering East
#
Delhi counting which hadn't even started.
#
I came back to the Indian Express and the stringer or the local fellow over there said
#
It was not in writing that she is trailing in dry barely.
#
I mean, that was the turning point when people realized that she is trailing.
#
I mean, she was like invincible, so invincible that for many, for more than a year after
#
that whenever I heard Doordarshan and they said the prime minister said this and the
#
prime minister said that, I scratched my head and said, why is she saying that?
#
Before I realized that she's not the prime minister, it's what I did yesterday.
#
And I wonder if she bought some of her own cool aid in the sense that you mentioned that
#
when the media was completely muzzled, that her narrative was that, see, nobody supports
#
It was only media, the propaganda and now that the media is not spreading the propaganda,
#
So, I wonder if she bought some of that and assumed, you know.
#
This is what happens everywhere, which is happening in the Congress today, unfortunately.
#
They're not given a true picture of what is on the ground.
#
I'm sure it's happening in the BJP as well.
#
We're a nation of, you know, psycho fans, unfortunately.
#
Psycho fans and psychopaths.
#
And they don't want to convey what they feel is unpleasant news.
#
So one of the, you know, the finest headlines during this period, I think, was when Jagjeevan
#
Ram had this big rally after the thing and they didn't want people to go to the rally.
#
So they decided, okay, let us telecast Bobby on Doordarshan during that time.
#
And his nickname, of course, was Babu and the headlines in X-Ray was something like
#
Babu Beats Bobby because everyone turned up at the sort of rally.
#
I must confess, I watched Bobby, not because I wasn't assigned that day.
#
It was Sunday and I wasn't assigned on duty that day.
#
So we were watching things.
#
I would never have thought you are one of the people who watched Bobby.
#
No, I wasn't support of India, I think, but I wasn't on duty and I was home with my kids.
#
So they were watching and...
#
So here's my question to you.
#
We know the media was muzzled, so all of the atrocities and news wasn't getting out.
#
You also mentioned that while people in Delhi kind of knew what was happening, people in
#
the rest of the country, it was obviously much harder.
#
Yeah, I don't think because Bombay was certainly not.
#
I got so many things up on some of my stories, reactions saying, because they were supporters
#
of the emergency, they were saying that we didn't know all this.
#
So my question is that what led to this incredible wave of support for the opposition, the anti-Congress
#
If the news wasn't getting out that things are bad, I mean, the news getting out was
#
the trains are running on time.
#
I think that word of mouth in Delhi, it had certainly spread everywhere.
#
So the people I met in Bombay were from the upper middle class type people who were not
#
So one of the funny bits you point out about sort of a minor character, even in the cast
#
of Sanjay Skotri is something that happens after the emergency, where you write, quote,
#
one of his storm troopers, Bhola Pandey, brandishing a cricket ball, which was assumed to be a grenade,
#
hijacked a Delhi bound Indian Airlines flight from Kanpur, demanding the withdrawal of all
#
cases against Indira Gandhi.
#
Upon the Gandhi's return to power, he was rewarded with an assembly ticket, stop quote.
#
And what seems to be happening is that even though the emergency is over, even though
#
democracy seems to have reasserted itself, it's actually, in a way, the political game
#
is the same old, same old.
#
The game of still the same kind of cronyism, the same kind of coterie is the same kind
#
As extreme as it was during those 19 months, but yeah, and this is one of the worst periods.
#
There was another period which was bad.
#
I felt threatened now, I felt threatened then.
#
And towards the last days of Rajiv Gandhi's regime, when the buffers was coming out, not
#
Rajiv himself, but the people around him were also trying to, I know that the Indian Post,
#
the newspaper I was working for then, the owner, Mr. Singanya, was given a list of people
#
who were not to be written about.
#
He gave it to Vinod, Vinod told me on the phone.
#
And I thought when you're written about, it means that you have to get an exclusive
#
So when I did a story on Satish Sharma, which was a press conference by Irani from the Statesman,
#
I just was doing my duty, I did cover the press conference, the desk got carried away
#
and made it the first lead.
#
And the next thing I know, it was finito for the Indian Post.
#
So I mean, there have been other periods not so well known, when there's been a huge clamp
#
So when you say finito for the Indian Post, what happened?
#
Singanya's family made it clear that he had to get out of that newspaper.
#
And he was financing it.
#
And I think he's in his biography also, he mentioned it in a little very, they're all
#
business people, so they can't, and Vinod said, wow, what are we going to do?
#
They're closing down, then Times of India came out with the idea that they'll take over
#
all the people from the Indian Post, but the Times of India's idea was they have these,
#
they did not want any newspaper to cut into the circulation of the Times.
#
So their idea is to put a rival type of thing and like the mirror in Bombay, and eventually
#
you close it down when it's served its purpose.
#
I stayed with the Indian Post for the few months that was there, but it was run by the
#
Samachar people, Gujarat Samachar people.
#
Wow, so it was your story that caused it to be shut down.
#
No, I mean, I realized it was, that's why it, I felt terrible about it.
#
I felt terrible, but I tried to rationalize that I wasn't doing a special stories.
#
I was doing a press conference, but I did it, perhaps I wrote it with too much passion
#
and they put it as the lead.
#
Obviously the desk people were not aware.
#
No, and I'm just guessing that if it was not your story, it would have been something else.
#
It would have been something else.
#
Let's talk a little bit about politics now, because I feel that your understanding of
#
the inside business of politics and the people in it is like so acute and almost second to
#
And I'll take a quote from your book first to get to my question.
#
And you're really quoting something that Ajit Bhattacharya wrote in Times of India on July
#
16, 1973, a few months before I was born.
#
You're saying that quote, he pointed out that in the seven and a half years, Mrs. Gandhi
#
The central government had invoked president's rule 22 times to take over the administration
#
of a state and in the previous 16 years, these powers had been used only 10 times.
#
You know, despite many representations and pleas, she refused to revoke the emergency
#
powers invoked in 1971 during the war with Pakistan, which included the state's right
#
to make preventive arrests without trial under MISA.
#
And the question I'm getting at is this, that in what ways did the Congress as a party change
#
Like I had an episode on the decline of the Congress with a political scientist, Rahul
#
And one of Rahul's points was that this is actually a critical period in the history
#
of the Congress because the Congress over here centralizes power massively.
#
I think Sugata Srinivasaraju also might have made the same point, or I think Vinay made
#
the same point when we were talking about, you know, the Congress.
#
And the idea being that, you know, chief ministers had much less power, everything was dictated
#
So as a party, you will decide, you know, which person in your party becomes the CM
#
And equally, you know, outside the context of the party, when you're in government itself,
#
there is this complete centralizing mindset.
#
And you know, Gyan Prakash in his book on the emergency rights that look, the emergency
#
was constitutional and not a surprise, because the people who framed our constitution under
#
the pressures that they were in with the country falling apart and you didn't know if the center
#
would hold, centralized a lot of power in the constitution.
#
So there are these two centralizing impulses.
#
One is of the Indian state, which has been designed to be centralized.
#
And the other is of the Congress party itself, which almost as if it is mimicking that, is
#
centralizing everything so much that there's practically no democracy within the party
#
So what is your sense of these movements?
#
These are centralizing may be a bad thing, but eventually there is the constitution,
#
which the makers of our constitution made sure that they protected our fundamental rights
#
and which the Supreme Court also held that you cannot amend what is the basic structure
#
So eventually how our country goes in the future, I feel depends even more than on the
#
media that is on the courts, how they will interpret these authoritarian moves to seize
#
all power and take away the rights of citizens.
#
The media of course plays a big, big role in awareness, but eventually everyone looks
#
to the courts once the courts become, you know.
#
To some extent, I would push back and say that our constitution doesn't protect all
#
our fundamental rights, like the right to free speech, for example.
#
Well, it's our interpretation.
#
The court is left to interpret this and that maybe was a lacuna in, I mean, it has to be
#
left to the courts to how you interpret it.
#
So the way you select your judges is key to keeping a democracy.
#
So I'll go back to the, you know, one part of the question, which was about the Congress
#
Party, like where we, what do you feel about the way the Congress is today?
#
Because what appears to me to be the case is that gradually over the decades, party
#
with power within the Congress was so centralized that even if they didn't have inner party
#
elections, that's a separate matter and a separate problem.
#
But that sense that state leaders are powerful, that state leaders have a voice and all of
#
Yeah, that all went away with Mrs. Gandhi.
#
The strong leaders, Nehru, you know, with such a big mandate, he was very conscious.
#
He allowed powerful chief ministers who were not at all subservient to him to continue.
#
It was Mrs. Gandhi who had the authoritarian streak and it has been followed by, when Narsimha
#
Rao was there, I think we had a lot of progress in this country because there was no strong
#
And what do you feel about the state of the Congress today in the sense that what Indira
#
Gandhi started in the late 60s, centralizing power, building a coterie around her, stripping
#
Do you think that that would inevitably have led to where we are today, where you have
#
the people in charge of the Congress are completely out of touch with reality, completely out
#
of touch with the people and, you know, the party has just sort of been deracinated?
#
I think the basic fault lies with the Gandhis who somehow feel the sense of entitlement
#
that only they are in a position to lead the fortunes of the Congress.
#
You know, we hear all the story about sacrifice, but that's not true because always, why was
#
Narsimha Rao given such a hard time?
#
Because though he tried his best to mollify them, they really wanted back control of their
#
party, you know, the government.
#
And I think they might have become slightly delusional in thinking that nobody else but
#
It is true that if they don't step aside, nobody else can take control of the party.
#
But if they were noble enough and self-sacrificing enough to say, let's have a genuine election,
#
I think there's a great future for the Congress because we all want a strong opposition.
#
We all want a liberal voice.
#
The Congress, as I say, represents all the right values that most of us hold dear.
#
But they have, they don't follow them themselves.
#
I mean, the fact that they don't have any inner party democracy themselves.
#
The way they have been throwing out, you know, I mean, the stalwarts in their party are leaving.
#
You can say you have young people, but the fact is it's nothing to do with young or
#
You only want psychofans around you.
#
You're not even that interested in running the country.
#
I mean, nobody would leave at a time like this.
#
Yeah, and we are recording this on August 30th, by the way.
#
So whenever this airs, who knows what would have changed between then.
#
But I don't think the Gandhis would have given up their hold on the Congress for sure.
#
I don't think it's possible now.
#
People have long forgotten that actually the party was not founded by any Gandhi or Nehru.
#
Exactly, and it is still a party with a deep organisational base.
#
I don't know how much of that organisation remains.
#
It remains in some states, in the South, yes, it remains, but in UP, when they get down
#
to 2.5% of the vote, there's not much organisation left.
#
So when people say that, oh, you're a turncoat and the last few people have left, I say what
#
option do they have to join the BJP?
#
They may not have a proof of everything in the BJP, but if you want to be in politics,
#
there's no point being in the Congress in the UP.
#
Tell me now about a class of people you actually live among, you know, what Prime Minister
#
Modi derides as a Lutyens elite.
#
And you know, I have many friends who would fall into the class of typical Delhi Liberals.
#
And my big sort of complaint against them is that they're living in a bubble, that they've
#
always been in a bubble, they don't see the real country, and a lot of their reflexive
#
positions are, as history has borne out, just flat out wrong.
#
But you know, just leave that aside.
#
But I feel that there is, that this bubble deprives them of the ability to actually understand
#
For example, I know many people will still say, no, no, Rahul Gandhi is the option to
#
When it is clear that Rahul Gandhi is enabling Modi, that, you know, one of my friends said
#
that Modi probably has a portrait of Rahul Gandhi in his office and every day.
#
First time I wrote it, they toned it down.
#
But I said his biggest ally, Modi's biggest ally, is Rahul Gandhi.
#
So tell me, tell me a little bit about this, you know, this stereotype class called the
#
One thing I should make clear, I am certainly not a part of this Lutyens, they look upon
#
This is what I call the polarization of society in Delhi, which is not there in Bombay.
#
I am looked upon with suspicion and I will always be looked upon with suspicion because
#
I started my career in the motherland.
#
I am looked upon with suspicion because I am related to Subramanian Swami who was for
#
many years in the thing.
#
My husband happens to be a supporter and was in jail.
#
So people will not look at me as an individual in my own right that I have many times criticized
#
the government and indirectly may have in my columns, I think as well.
#
But I have been categorized because that's the way Delhi society works.
#
In fact, oh, you wrote that piece.
#
How did you write that?
#
You know, recently I wrote a piece about the media, you know, making fun of the government.
#
But they expect that you will write only on one side or the other.
#
That's my quarrel with Lutyens Delhi.
#
Yeah, and in your body of work, you have been ruthless with everyone.
#
You've criticized everyone.
#
You've torn apart everyone and yet they will say, oh, but you know, why are you against
#
Senior Congress leader, I shouldn't mention his name, sent me a message the other day.
#
Oh, for Nikarwala, you are suddenly turning colors.
#
Just because I don't have to pay like you, you know, be since you're your first family
#
does not mean that you can call me a Nikarwala or anything like that.
#
Why does everyone have to have a, you know, a particular way?
#
Why do you have to associate if somebody else is in your family or you worked in such a
#
paper that you have to be one way or the other?
#
Yeah, my friend and someone I admire greatly, Ramchandra Guha, he shares our distaste for
#
this Congress leadership.
#
And he's also so targeted by Congressy people on Twitter with one person calling him a Sanghi
#
How is, I mean, this is one of the bravest dissenters of our time and you're calling
#
him Sanghi uncle because he doesn't like the chief of your stupid little tribe and your
#
There was a time once, I don't usually go on television once, he was singing with Sonia's
#
praises, but I guess he's realized since then.
#
I don't know when this would have been.
#
This was many, many years ago.
#
I think when Manmohan Singh was there.
#
Yeah, but the thing with Ram and why I will defend him is that...
#
No, no, I admire him greatly.
#
I love his books, but even they are also see everything in a polarized fashion.
#
Either you're on my side or you're against.
#
They can't see shades of gray.
#
It's all black and white.
#
Yeah, I mean, in Ram's defense, I'd say he's intellectually honest, so he will change his
#
No, no, I don't mind them changing.
#
Tavleena has changed her mind also.
#
But my point is that why can't somebody write one time complimentary and one time, you know,
#
analytically about the same person without having any agenda?
#
I'm tired of crying myself hoarse about how I'm an equal opportunity offender because
#
every time I write something against one party, people will be like...
#
Tell me, you know, we've spoken about the decline in the Congress.
#
Tell me about what happened, what's happened to the BJP.
#
It's a totally new party.
#
From what it was in Vajpayee's time, people always said that it was a battle between Vajpayee
#
and RSS, Vajpayee with his liberal values, and it was a ding-dong battle, one side up,
#
But I think in this particular time, Mr. Modi has complete control, and the RSS is not going
#
to tangle with him, and he believes in action and that only he can decide.
#
He does not believe in compromise or in debate.
#
You can see the way the parliament runs.
#
I mean, there's no attempt anymore to get views from the other side.
#
It's a dictatorial style.
#
A lot of these people have come from states where this model was in force, and they've
#
reproduced it at the centre.
#
So enlighten me on this, and you're someone who's sort of not just written about these
#
people for 40 years, but in many cases you've known them as well, and I have no idea how
#
well you know Mr. Modi.
#
But something that confuses me about him and about many of the people in this dispensation
#
is that I know what they are against.
#
Like, are they just driven by, say, anti-Muslim hatred or anti-Latins elite hatred or whatever?
#
Those are the things they are against.
#
They've neglected, you know, the Latins, Delhi people, also I think may have left a deep
#
complex in a lot of people who came from other parts of the country to Delhi for their political
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work and were sneered and looked upon and treated as if they were second-class citizens.
#
I think that impact may have had its own consequences also, no?
#
I can't say, I don't know, mind reader, but there was a class of people in Delhi who thought
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that they were the arbiters of taste, of morals, of politics, and that was a form of dictatorship
#
That's a great way to put it, and you feel that some of these people coming from the
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outside would then resent it.
#
Definitely, definitely, and rightly so as well.
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I mean, you sneer at their language, at their pronunciation, at their articulation.
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Is then so much of politics tragically driven by the resentment and anger of individuals
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as opposed to a vision for what the world should be?
#
No, not so much of politics, but with some people, yes, and some people, no.
#
But unfortunately, India has had more than its share, perhaps.
#
So let's come to the current time, that when you sort of look around you today, you've
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seen 50 years of journalism, how it's evolved, how it's changed.
#
What's your overall sense, like, if you were 20 today, what is it about these times as
#
a journalist that would excite you tremendously?
#
And what is it that you think you would not have had, which you perhaps had then?
#
If I was 20 years today, I know I wouldn't go into journalism, and I gave my advice to
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my children also don't go into journalism, because I don't think you'll have the full
#
freedom to express yourself and lead to other problems.
#
You'll either become cynical, opportunistic, I mean, it's not a career that one would
#
should start with it any longer, let's put it that way.
#
But are you cynical today?
#
No, I'm not cynical, I'm at the end of my career, I have nothing to lose one way or
#
But you feel young people could become cynical if?
#
Well, or they would become bitter, because who knows?
#
There's no doubt that in the last, since 2019, freedom of the media has declined enormously.
#
Ownership has become much more, you know, media ownership is being brought under the
#
stranglehold of the government's control.
#
So it's not a happy position to be in.
#
I mean, we saw that NDTV, for example, whatever else, it's extraordinary that this gentleman
#
should have enough money to take it over and I don't think he could have done so without,
#
not just the blessings of the government, but an active participation.
#
You know, in the earlier days, there were committed individuals who brought out publications
#
Now most of the people who own the media are businessmen who have other interests.
#
And when they used to say that about the jute press, to be fair to Ramnath Goenka, I don't
#
think he had any jute press, he went by his convictions.
#
And that you feel has changed?
#
I don't see many places, I do see, but they're, you know, in a great minority.
#
They're not mainstream.
#
It's like my motherland.
#
So one sign of hope that I do see and tell me what you feel about it is that I think
#
that one thing that has changed for the better, and I agree with all your laments about everything
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you said, but one thing that one possibility that has opened up rather is that the means
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of production are now in the hand of the individuals.
#
So at the very least, if no mainstream paper will publish something that I write, I can
#
I agree with you totally.
#
It is the benefit, the real savior will have to be the social media, because that is the
#
difference between the days of the emergency and today.
#
In the past, Indira Gandhi had simply to control a very small number of publications.
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Even the TV wasn't there.
#
It was Doordarshan, everything state owned and so there was nothing to fear.
#
All you had to fear was word of mouth, which is very powerful, but today it's not just
#
It is word through the internet, which is such a powerful spreader of the message.
#
And that's what you're right.
#
And not just word of mouth, but word of mouth given scale.
#
So in that sense, yes, if you're talking, I was talking about journalism in the conventional
#
media, but you're talking, I'm old fashioned, but you're talking about it in the social
#
With that, I agree with you.
#
There's plenty of scope for youngsters to come into that.
#
And one way in which at least something is happening.
#
The marvelous thing about technology today is that you don't need an organization.
#
You can do it on a one man show and have enormous impact.
#
Do you think that's what you would do if you were starting today?
#
Oh, I'm a very established person who bread and butter jobs were important to me.
#
Okay, two last questions.
#
And okay, actually three last questions, because what I asked you about journalism, I also
#
want to ask you about politics, which is that you've spoken about how polarized the times
#
have become and how a lot of the graces and courtesies of past eras where people like
#
an Arun Jaitley would reach across the aisle and those are kind of over.
#
But have things gone so bad that there is no coming back from here?
#
Because what I see in modern times is that there is an incentive to always go to the
#
extremes, that how do you rise within your own party or your own tribe by being more
#
extreme than the other guy.
#
And there is that competition to be more extreme.
#
Equally, we are in a situation where if you're in politics, you're never going to praise
#
what your opponent does or agrees with it.
#
No matter what it is, you must reflexively fight it.
#
So do you feel that we've crossed a line that there is no going back, that the rhetoric
#
of politics will always be ugly and everything will always be about narrative battles and
#
not a pursuit of the truth or of welfare?
#
They're always idealistic people also.
#
So I don't think it's beyond change at all.
#
And I have lived so long that I have seen that situations which you thought were there
#
for a lifetime and last keep changing.
#
I mean, like the emergency, like the emergency is one very thing.
#
That was within a few years.
#
So I don't know, I think that by nature we are a very, we've had democracy so long.
#
That's not something that the people will give up lightly.
#
It's not like a China or a Russia, you know, where they've always had a system of autocracy
#
So and I've seen that always something happens and things change, nothing remains static.
#
My second last question is about, you know, something you might say is not a big deal
#
and you'll take it for granted.
#
But one of the things that I admire about you from a distance, obviously, because it's
#
the first time we've met, but one of the things I admire about you from a distance is the
#
engagement and the energy.
#
The fact that, look, I've been a columnist, okay, I haven't managed to be a columnist
#
in a newspaper for more than two or three years.
#
This podcast has gone on for almost six years, that's great.
#
You have, you know, this column itself is that your writing is more than 30 years old
#
and as you mentioned, it started before that even.
#
And not just the fact that you are still doing a column, but the fact that you are still
#
showing such enthusiastic and passionate engagement with the world.
#
Whereas looking at myself, sometimes I feel so jaded.
#
Sometimes I just want to give up and just forget about it, you know, just do my own
#
You know, when you wake up in the morning, you're the kind of person I imagine is looking
#
forward to whatever you set out to do that day.
#
So what kind of drives you and like, is there something intentional in that you have sat
#
down and thought about the things that may make you happy and you've decided, okay, I'm
#
going to do these, this is how I'm going to live my life and nobody dare come in my way.
#
So tell me a little bit about your personal philosophy towards yourself.
#
Oh, sorry to let you down, but I really don't have such a structured personality.
#
I never knew how long my column would last.
#
I always said it was going, it's going, praise of God, it's lasted so long, who knows.
#
I mean, you have normalized it for yourself, but it's so inspiring to see you at work.
#
My final question and a question I ask all my guests, whenever we do the show, I'd like
#
you to recommend for both me and my listeners, books, films, music, that means a lot to you.
#
That makes you so happy or that means so much to you that you want to share it with everyone.
#
I haven't most high class tastes in books and music.
#
Well, I just read a book which I really, really liked.
#
I don't read that much fiction, but I just read it very recently and I'm trying to remember
#
the name, All the Light That You Can See by Anthony Doerr.
#
It's a beautiful book, but my real preferences are for biographies.
#
So which are the memorable ones you've enjoyed?
#
So many gossipy biographies about people.
#
And what was the last film you saw which really moved you?
#
I am terrible, I don't go to cinema theater, I watch entertainment, I see it on Netflix
#
or this and they're very good.
#
Some of them are excellent and the last one I saw, which I saw this young actress and
#
I thought she was very good, Alia Bhatt.
#
One was Ganga Bhai and the other one was terrible, I don't really know much about it.
#
She's a very good actress, darlings.
#
I mean it fizzles out a bit at the end, but it was good.
#
I saw this serial called Panchayat, I liked it.
#
They're quite a few, but I don't really remember their names, you know, I watched them at night.
#
Kumi ji, I need to thank you so much for all your time because you know, one of our mutual
#
friends told me about you.
#
He said that Kumi is a kind of no-nonsense person who will never waste anyone's time.
#
If she goes to somebody for a story, she'll get what she wants, but she won't do small
#
talk and she'll respect that person's time and space.
#
And knowing that, hearing that just makes me feel even more thankful that you've given
#
me three hours of your time today and thank you so much for your kindness.
#
It's kind of you calling me.
#
I hope it's of use, I don't think it is much, but anyhow, thank you.
#
If you enjoyed listening to this episode, do check out the show notes, enter RabbitHoles
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Kumi is not on social media, but do buy all her books, especially her remarkable book
#
I recommend it highly, it's a must read.
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You can follow me on Twitter at Amit Verma, A-M-I-T-B-A-R-M-A.
#
You can browse past episodes of The Scene and the Unseen at sceneunseen.in.
#
Thank you for listening.
#
Did you enjoy this episode of The Scene and the Unseen?
#
If so, would you like to support the production of the show?
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You can go over to sceneunseen.in slash support and contribute any amount you like to keep
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