by Karan Thapar
‘The media is biased against me because I’m a self-made woman,’ she replied. ‘Politics has for long been a male bastion. The media picks on me because I don’t have a family background like other female leaders of South Asia. Look at Indira Gandhi, Sirimavo Bandaranaike, Benazir Bhutto, Sheikh Hasina. They were all someone’s daughter or wife. I have no such background. I’m a self-made woman.’
I heard out her answer and it’s not that I was unconvinced by it. But I had set myself on a particular course and was determined to get to the end before I moved to another subject. So regardless of what she said, I wanted to carry on as planned.
‘But do responsible chief ministers perform such spectacular U-turns?’
Now Jayalalithaa’s response was not just terse and cold, you could almost feel the anger that underlay it. In turn, I knew I had a challenge on my hands. Part of me was apprehensive. You don’t really take on a woman like Jayalalithaa without feeling a little nervous. But another part of me was determined to continue. This was a test not just of my journalism but also my courage. So, though it was time to change subjects, I was determined to stay on the attack.
I next raised the manner in which she had arrested her political adversary M. Karunanidhi. It had happened just over three years earlier. At the time he was seventy-seven and a former chief minister of fourteen years’ standing.
‘You arrested your predecessor at 2 in the morning on a Saturday, although the FIR against him had only been filed the day before. And then he was taken kicking and screaming to jail. Why was it done in this high-handed fashion?’
In fact, sections of the press had concluded that this was Jayalalithaa’s revenge for the fact that Karunanidhi had arrested her after she lost power in 1996. They called it vengeance.
Once again, Jayalalithaa was incandescent. Her fury was all too visible.
‘The DMK government foisted cases against me and threw me into jail. I languished in jail for twenty-eight days for a case in which I was ultimately acquitted. When Karunanidhi did this, the media gave him kudos, portraying it as the triumph of good over evil. When I became chief minister, Mr Karunanidhi was arrested in a corruption case. At the time his family channel, Sun TV, played a big hoax, putting out very cleverly edited footage. It was not vengeance. I do not regret it at all.’
Once again, changing subjects, I decided to put to her the zigzag way in which she had switched political alliances over the last six years. This was something that everyone was particularly aware of in 2004.
‘Let’s turn to what they call your unreliability. You fought the ’98 elections opposed to Sonia, you fought the ’99 elections as her ally, by 2003 you had changed sides again and now, after the Congress has won, you’re claiming there is nothing personal about it. You seem to change your mind every time the mood in the country alters.’
This time Jayalalithaa refused to answer and she was adamant about it. ‘I don’t want to discuss Sonia Gandhi in this interview. I have a choice to pick and choose the questions I want to answer. I don’t have to answer every question you put to me. I don’t wish to discuss Mrs Sonia Gandhi.’
Yet again, I had a follow-up question ready, regardless of what Jayalalithaa’s answer would be. Of course, I heard her reply but I was unwilling to be silenced or deflected.
‘Do you know what the press says? They say you turned against Sonia Gandhi in 2003 to ingratiate yourself with the BJP and now you are reversing your decision to ingratiate yourself with the Congress.’
But it made no impact. She continued to refuse to answer. ‘If you have any other questions you may put them. I have already told you I don’t wish to answer this question.’
Thereafter, things only got worse. I questioned Jayalalithaa about her ministers who habitually prostrate before her and press accusations that she is dictatorial. With each change of subject her smile became more forced, her voice steelier and her irritation more obvious. ‘I’m sorry I agreed to this interview,’ she said and meant it.
But it was when I turned to her belief in astrology and numerology that I sensed I had gone too far. ‘Who said that I believe in astrology and numerology?’ she retorted, her eyes ablaze. ‘You say it. People in the media say it. What is the proof you have of that?’
It was at this point that I belatedly realized the interview was going terribly wrong. In fact, disastrously so. In desperation, I tried to claw things back. With minutes to go I said, ‘You are a very tough person, chief minister.’ I meant it as praise but the comment backfired.
‘People like you have made me so,’ was her blunt reply.
I felt disheartened. Events have a way of taking over and determining their own outcome. This was happening before my eyes. It was happening to me! Finally, in the last dying seconds, as I thanked her, I stretched out my hand and added, ‘Chief minister, a pleasure talking to you.’
For a moment she stared back implacably. ‘I must say it wasn’t a pleasure talking to you. Namaste.’ She rebuffed my proffered hand, unclipped and banged down the mike, and sailed out of the room.
‘Amma,’ I wanted to shout, ‘you’ve misunderstood me.’ But it was too late.
In hindsight this may sound odd, but the truth is, at the time Ashok Upadhyay, my producer, and I were stunned by the way the interview had gone. We had expected it to go badly but not end the way it had.
After Jayalalithaa walked out in clear and obvious anger, the atmosphere froze. Every single official of the Tamil Nadu government left the room immediately. Suddenly, the crew, Ashok and I were on our own.
We instinctively felt we should pack up and leave as quickly as possible. We felt uncomfortable. Actually, we were on edge.
Perhaps in this tense atmosphere I developed an uncanny sixth sense, but I had a strange feeling this episode wasn’t quite finished. I had no idea what was to come but I anticipated that more was to follow.
We were barely ten minutes into packing up when a messenger from Jayalalithaa walked in. I can’t remember who it was. But I won’t forget what he had to say.
‘Amma wants to do the interview again.’ She wasn’t asking, she was merely informing us. It almost felt like an order.
Despite my apprehension and even nervousness, I felt I couldn’t agree. I knew we had a good interview which would be riveting to watch. There was no need to do it again and, more importantly, any second attempt wouldn’t be as gripping. And I certainly wasn’t going to give up what felt like a winner for something that would be comparatively placid.
Amma, however, wasn’t willing to take no for an answer. A series of messengers followed, not just to repeat and emphasize the request but also to point out that Jayalalithaa was unhappy and upset. The implied hint was that only if we did the interview again would she forgive and forget what had happened.
I was in my forties then and this felt like a challenge to my journalistic integrity. My thoughts were full of self-righteous defiance. Just because someone important is unhappy and wants to do another interview, should I agree? And if I did, wouldn’t I be letting down the very principles I claim to stand up for?
Amma, I sensed, thought I might crumble under pressure and that made me yet more determined to stick to my refusal.
Was I right to take this rigid stand? After all, there had been earlier occasions when I had redone interviews. The one with Ram Jethmalani was redone at my own request. On other occasions, some had been repeated at the interviewee’s request. At the time this had not perturbed me. So was I making a fuss for no good reason at all?
The truthful answer is probably yes. It’s hard to say when you will dig in your toes and when you might choose to be more accommodating. On either occasion there’s always an element of the unpredictable or, even, idiosyncratic. This time, as far as Amma was concerned, I was determined to be difficult.
To bolster my position, I decided to ring the BBC and ask the commissioning editor, Narendra Morar, for his advice. I felt confident he would agree that there were no grounds for redoing the
interview.
However, once he heard the full story and the fact that we were still at Fort St George, Narendra feared we might not be able to get away if we kept saying no. They might just hold us back. Although he never used the word, perhaps he feared we could become hostages.
‘I leave this one to you,’ he said. ‘You’re the man on the spot. You must decide what’s right. I’ll stand by whatever you do. But for God’s sake, stay safe. Let’s not make a bad situation even worse.’
We must have been at Fort St George for at least an hour and a half after the interview ended. All that time we were in ‘negotiation’ with Amma’s emissaries. But finally, our bags packed and our interlocutors exhausted, her officials accepted that no was no. We got up to leave and they let us.
As we drove out of Fort St George, Ashok turned to me, the tapes of the interview firmly in his hands, and said, ‘We better make the most of this interview because Jayalalithaa will never give you another one again.’
Although at the time I was convinced he was right, Amma proved that Ashok was decidedly wrong. Either because she was a great politician or a generous and large-hearted woman, she took me completely by surprise when we next met.
It happened two years later at a National Integration Council meeting in Vigyan Bhawan, New Delhi. I was talking to Odisha Chief Minister Naveen Patnaik when she walked up and joined us. I assumed it was Naveen she wished to meet, not me, so I stepped aside.
‘Where are you going, Karan?’ she said in a voice that sounded genuinely cheerful. ‘I came to talk to you. I meet Mr Patnaik all the time.’
I was stumped. I couldn’t believe what I’d heard. Indeed, I stared back in silence, not knowing what to say. ‘Well,’ she said, smiling, her eyes twinkling with mirth, ‘aren’t you going to say something?’
‘I wasn’t sure you wanted to meet me,’ I stammered. ‘Have you forgotten our last meeting?’
‘Of course,’ she said and laughed. ‘In fact, isn’t it time for another?’ But before I could answer she turned to Naveen and asked how he was. I took this as my cue to leave.
That second interview never happened. I’m not sure if I ever wrote and asked for it. Quite possibly I did not. But the warm-hearted and charming way she put the first behind us left as deep and lasting an impression as the abrasiveness of our original meeting.
It just proves how great politicians ensure they leave behind the impression they want to.
17
WHY MODI WALKED OUT AND THE BJP SHUNS ME
I
t’s no secret that the Narendra Modi government does not think very highly of me. No doubt there’s the odd minister whom I am friendly with—Arun Jaitley being the principle example—but the vast majority, with whom I used to get on extremely well, found reasons or excuses to shun me within a year of Mr Modi becoming prime minister. Men like Ravi Shankar Prasad, Prakash Javadekar and M. Venkaiah Naidu, who readily gave interviews as opposition leaders and even during the first year or so after 2014, suddenly shut their doors. Some like Nirmala Sitharaman even went so far as to accept and set a date for the recording, only to back out at the last moment without explanation.
That I was persona non grata first became clear when BJP spokespersons started to refuse invitations to join discussions on my TV programmes. Initially, I assumed they were busy. However, when this kept repeating itself, I asked Sambit Patra if there was a problem. In a hushed voice and a manner that suggested he was embarrassed, he asked if I could keep a secret before he answered. When I gave him the necessary assurance, he said that all BJP spokespersons had been told not to appear on my shows.
Next were the ministers. From people who were always willing to be interviewed and who enjoyed a challenging exchange, they transformed into telephone numbers that refused to return calls. Their secretaries had only one answer: ‘Sir says sorry. He’s busy.’
The only person I could convince to appear on my show was Prakash Javadekar. He continued to do so well after his party spokespersons or his ministerial colleagues had made a habit of saying no or just not replying. Then one day, he too had second thoughts. I knew this was the case when he rang and asked, ‘Meri party aapse kyun naraz hai? What’s happened, Karan? I’ve been told I mustn’t give you an interview.’
This was the first time I was formally told that the BJP had a problem with me. Javadekar did not swear me to secrecy. Instead, he seemed surprised by the instruction that I was to be boycotted. He had rung to give me advice on how to handle the situation. ‘Aap adyaksh-ji se milein aur isko sort out karen (Meet the president and sort this out).’
Because I knew him, my first point of call was Arun Jaitley. I asked to meet him at the finance ministry where he assured me there wasn’t a problem. He said I was imagining it. Everything, he said, would be okay.
I guess Arun was just being polite because the boycott continued. So I got in touch again. This time on the phone. Now he stopped denying there was a problem and, instead, told me that it would blow over. ‘But Arun,’ I responded, ‘if it’s going to blow over, that means there is something that has to blow away. So there is a problem.’ Arun merely laughed.
I sensed that whatever the problem was, it was more than Arun could handle. I didn’t and still do not doubt his offer or willingness to help but I did come to believe that he lacked the ability to do so.
If there was still room for any doubt, it was finally dispelled by BJP General Secretary Ram Madhav. I asked him for an interview in early January 2017 and, to my surprise and delight, he agreed. The recording was on 16 January. Afterwards, when I thanked him, his response left me – and my producer Arvind Kumar – stunned.
‘You may say thank you,’ he said, smiling but nonetheless serious, ‘but my colleagues won’t [thank me]. They don’t think I should have agreed. They won’t be happy that I’ve done this interview, but I don’t believe we should boycott people.’
This was when I decided to meet Amit Shah. After I wrote a series of letters and phoned several times, he agreed to meet me the day after Holi in 2017. The meeting happened at his residence on Akbar Road. It wasn’t a long one but sufficient for me to make my point and for him to respond.
I told him I had come to meet him because, over the last year, first BJP spokespersons and then BJP ministers had started refusing to appear on my programmes. I added that some spokespersons had actually told me in confidence that they had been forbidden from appearing and that, more recently, senior ministers had said the same thing. I also told him about Javadekar and my conversations with Arun Jaitley. Finally, I said I had come to find out what the problem was and, if I had unwittingly upset someone or said something, I would have no hesitation in apologizing. But what had I done?
Amit Shah listened to me in silence. I don’t think I took more than a minute or two to explain.
We were sitting in the large drawing room of his house. He was in an armchair overlooking the garden; I on a sofa by his side. We were the only two people in the room.
‘Karan-ji,’ he said. He sounded friendly or, at least, there was no trace of the opposite either in his tone or manner. He claimed I had misunderstood the situation. He insisted that no instructions had been given to spokespersons or ministers to boycott my shows. Finally, he promised to ring me in twenty-four hours after looking further into the matter.
I left feeling reassured and confident that whatever the problem, it had been resolved. I was terribly wrong.
Amit Shah never got back. Over the next six weeks I must have written a score of letters and telephoned and left messages perhaps fifty times. I got no response at all. But something did happen: the penny, at last, was beginning to drop.
Amit Shah’s failure to respond made me think long and hard. I didn’t think he was the sort of man who speaks casually and holds out false hope. Something or someone had stopped him. That’s when I started to believe that the problem was probably Narendra Modi.
The more I thought about it, the more certain I felt of this. I ha
d no proof—at least not at that point—but what else could explain BJP spokespersons suddenly refusing invitations, ministers agreeing and cancelling interviews, Javadekar’s and Jaitley’s comments and behaviour and, finally, Amit Shah’s sudden silence after promising to get back in twenty-four hours?
Was the problem the interview I had done with Mr Modi in 2007, during the campaign for his second term as chief minister of Gujarat, when he had walked out after barely three minutes? Possibly, but I suspected that it went a little further back. And it didn’t take long to realize that the roots must lie in a ‘Sunday Sentiments’ column I wrote in March 2002, days after the Godhra tragedy and the horrific killing of innocent Muslims that had followed.
I decided that perhaps it was time to speak to Mr Modi directly. Maybe an honest conversation would clear the air between us. Even if I half-felt this was unlikely, I thought it was worth the effort. So I rang his national security adviser, Ajit Doval, and also his principal secretary, Nripendra Misra.
I got to speak to Mr Misra before I met Mr Doval. Both conversations happened on the same day, 1 May 2017.
Nripendra Misra rang up in response to the message I had left in his office. I told him I wanted to meet Mr Modi to find out why I was being boycotted by his ministers and his party, and added that if I had unwittingly done something to upset the prime minister I was happy to apologize. But I first needed to know what that was. I also said I couldn’t believe this was because of the interview I did in 2007 because that was now ten years ago.
Misra said he would have a word with Modi and get back to me. Later that evening, I called on Ajit Doval in South Block and repeated the same message. He said he would wait for Nripendra Misra to get back to me. He hoped that Misra would be able to sort out matters. But if he couldn’t, Doval said he would have a word directly with Narendra Modi.
Three days later, Nripendra Misra rang. He said he had spoken to Modi and got the feeling there would be no point in my meeting the prime minister. He said the prime minister felt I was prejudiced against him and it was unlikely that my attitude would change. Misra also added that this was why Amit Shah had never got back. He too, presumably, had spoken to Modi and got a similar response.
