Devil's Advocate

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by Karan Thapar


  ‘But do you know something else?’ Pavan added. ‘Modi said to Prashant that he will never forgive you and when he gets an opportunity he will take his revenge. This is something Prashant repeated at least two or three times. It wasn’t just an occasional comment made by Modi. Prashant was convinced that this was Modi’s intent and he wouldn’t rest till he had got even with you.’

  I have no reason to disbelieve Pavan. He has nothing to gain by misleading me or even embellishing the truth. More importantly, what he said seemed to explain the way the BJP has treated me since around early 2016. This, no doubt, is why party spokespersons have been told not to appear on my programmes, why ministers started to decline interviews and, ultimately, why Amit Shah, after his initial reassurance, failed to get back or even take my calls. Perhaps this is also why, when Nripendra Misra spoke to him, Modi refused to meet me and resolve matters.

  EPILOGUE

  A

  t the end there’s only one question left to answer: why did I write this book?

  It’s not that I see myself at the end of my career and feel an urge to reflect in retirement. I still believe I have many active years ahead of me. Nor am I itching to tell my story. After all, I have shared aspects of my life with readers of the Hindustan Times for over two decades. A lot that I wanted to say has already been expressed in my weekly ‘Sunday Sentiments’ columns, albeit in fledgling form.

  So why did I write this book? The truth is stark and simple. I had time on my hands and this felt like an easy, even an interesting, way of occupying myself.

  Let me go one step further. A second truth is that this book was started on a whim. It wasn’t planned and it certainly wasn’t structured. Nor did I think carefully about how I would write about myself. It literally just happened once it began.

  One afternoon in September 2017 I asked my long-suffering secretary, Santosh Kumar, to join me in my room and started dictating this book. This is why I say it began on a whim. I wasn’t certain how far it would go or even where it would end. It just kept happening.

  On some days I would dictate a few hundred words, on others several thousand. Santosh would type them up and I, in turn, would edit, correct and ensure the content had a sense of flow.

  Readability was my key concern. Since I was relying on my memory, I was confident that only those moments that would be of wider interest would be covered. The pedestrian would not be recalled because they were forgotten.

  Since I have a pretty good memory, I was also confident that my recollections were accurate. Occasionally, I would have to check facts and, sometimes, my earlier ‘Sunday Sentiments’ columns to ensure the lapse of time was not leading to unintended error.

  Yet the funny thing is, when you begin to look back on your life, you start remembering things you had forgotten. The past comes tumbling back just because you’re making an effort to recall it. One thing leads to another and a picture that has slipped out of memory suddenly forms itself all over again.

  It’s a bit like reliving your life a second time. Except this time, you do so with the benefit of hindsight, which means with the advantage of knowing how each episode will end. The danger, of course, is that you recapitulate what’s happened in the light of your knowledge of how it will culminate. In other words, you write the finale into the telling.

  I’m sure I’ve done that. Probably many times. But the truth is, it also makes it easier to understand events that otherwise, as they were happening, were neither logical nor explicable. They were just events. It’s only when you look back that you can see the thread that connects them and, in the process, gives them meaning.

  Now, as I said, most people write their books, type them or feed them into a computer. I chose the lazy option of dictation. But it had one unforeseen and even unintended advantage. I could hear myself speak as I dictated and discovered that this gave me the ability to assess how it would ‘sound in the head’ of any future reader. My voice provided me a second filter of judgement.

  Finally, this book didn’t take long to write. Most of it was over before Christmas 2017. The last few chapters were written the following January. This means that in the space of five months the book was done.

  I hope all of the above explains the idiosyncratic and, often, self-focused character of the stories I have to tell. In fact, what I’ve done is relate different stories connected with my life. After the initial chapters, I’ve deliberately focused on events or episodes connected with the famous and I’ve had the good fortune of knowing several. Their roles in these stories make the latter more interesting. They also, I hope, reveal something about the people in them.

  Of course, in the first instance, this book tells you about me, but I also hope it says something of people as different and varied as Lal Krishna Advani and Barack Obama, Sachin Tendulkar and General Pervez Musharraf, Sharmila Tagore and Jeremy Thorpe, Benazir Bhutto and Kapil Dev.

  The chapter on my differences with Narendra Modi, his party and government is one that I wrote with particular care and attention to detail. Here I did not rely simply on memory. I made the additional effort of cross-checking my story as carefully as I could.

  I know that at the end of that particular tale I have relied on what Pavan Varma told me. But I have no reason to disbelieve him. And what he said was spoken without any prompting on my part. I believe what he told me, which is why I have recounted it in the words that he used.

  If this book has a beginning and a middle but just ends without seeming to there’s a very simple and, indeed, truthful explanation I can offer. My life is not over! The end has not been reached. The book is done but life continues. I’m greatly looking forward to the years to come.

  A FINAL WORD

  I

  want to thank Santosh Kumar sincerely for all his diligence and forbearance. I am not an easy person to have dictating copy. I am also grateful to Krishan Chopra for so readily accepting this book when I offered it to him, and to Amrita Mukerji, Bonita Vaz-Shimray, Rohit Chawla and Aman Arora for putting up with my crotchety behaviour. Even though I won’t accept it, I have all the bad habits of a curmudgeonly old man!

  To all of them, my thanks and apologies.

  INDEX

  Abdullah, Farooq

  Abidah

  Abo

  Adhikari, Markand

  Adhikari Brothers, Sri

  Advani, L. K.

  Advani, Pratibha

  Agarwal, Satish

  Al Jazeera

  Alva, Nikhil

  Amarnath, Mohinder

  Amitabh Bachchan Corporation Limited (ABCL)

  Anand, Praveen

  Anjali

  Aris, Michael

  Asian community in Britain

  Aspel, Michael

  Aung San, Madame

  Ayodhya Mandir-Masjid dispute

  Azhar, Masood

  Bachchan, Amitabh

  Bachchan, Jaya

  Bandaranaike, Sirimavo

  Banjo

  Beatty, Warren

  Best Bakery case

  Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP)

  Bhardwaj, Anand

  Bhartia, Shobhana

  Bhutto, Benazir

  Bhutto, Nusrat

  Bhutto, Sanam

  Bhutto, Shahnawaz

  Bhutto, Zulfikar Ali

  Birt, John

  Bragg, Melvyn

  British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC)

  Panorama

  Butt, Maqbool

  Callaghan, James

  Cambridge Union Society

  Capability Brown

  Carlton Television

  Chancellor, Alexander

  Channel News Asia

  The Chat Show

  Chishti, Seema

  Clooney, Amal

  Clooney, George

  CNN-News18

  Corri, Adrienne

  Court Martial

  Day, Sir Robin

  Deepak

  Dev, Kapil

  Devi, Dharmo. see Abo

&nbs
p; Devi, Maharani Tara

  Devil’s Advocate interview

  Dhar, Raja Vikram

  Dhavan, Rajeev

  Dhavan, Shanti Swaroop

  Doon School

  Doordarshan

  Douglas-Home, Charles, (Charlie)

  Douglas-Home, Sir Alec

  Doval, Ajit

  Dravid, Rahul

  Drayson, Mr

  Dubey, Suman

  Dutt, Barkha

  Ershad, General Hussain Muhammad

  Eyewitness, 85

  Face to Face interviews

  Fahmy, Mohamed Fadel

  Fernandes, George

  Filmer-Sankey, Patrick

  Frost, David

  Gandhi, Indira

  Gandhi, Maneka

  Gandhi, Rajiv

  Gandhi, Sanjay

  Gandhi, Sonia

  Ganguly, Sourav

  Gilfedder, Father Terry

  Godhra killings

  Gujarat killings of 2002

  HARDtalk India

  Haroon, Hameed

  Harris, Robert

  Hasina, Sheikh

  Hindustan Times

  Hindustan Times Group

  Hindustan Times Leadership Summit

  Home TV

  Huffington, Arianna

  Ibrahim, Dawood

  Igoh, Charles

  India Today Conclave

  Infotainment Television Private Limited

  Irwin

  Ismayilova, Khadija

  Jafri, Ehsan

  Jain, Nishtha

  Jain, Savyasaachi (Saachi)

  Jaitley, Arun

  Jaitly, Jaya

  James, Clive

  Javadekar, Prakash

  Jay, Peter

  Jayalalithaa, J.

  Jessica Lal killing

  Jethmalani, Ram

  Jinnah, Muhammad Ali

  Junejo, Muhammad Khan

  Kalra, Sunil

  Kaluchak terror attack

  Kandahar hijack

  Kaplan, Robert

  Karunanidhi, M.

  Kasuri, Khurshid

  Kaul, Mrs

  Kaun Banega Crorepati

  Keynes, John Maynard

  Khan, Field Marshal Ayub

  Kiran

  Kishor, Prashant

  Kulkarni, Sudheendra

  Kumar, Santosh

  Kumaramangalam, Mohan

  Kyi, Aung San Suu

  Freedom from Fear

  Laden, Osama bin

  Lee Ka Shek’s Hong Kong-based television channel

  Lib-Lab Pact of 1977-78

  Line of Fire

  London Weekend Television (LWT)

  Eastern Eye

  The 6 o’clock Show

  The South Bank Show

  Weekend World

  Walden

  Mascarenhas, Mark

  May, Theresa

  Meneses, Gita

  Meneses, Nisha

  Meneses, Tony

  Menuhin, Yehudi

  Mercer, Edward

  Mishra, Brajesh

  Misra, Nripendra

  Mitra, Chandan

  Modi, Narendra

  Morar, Narendra

  Mukherjee, Pranab

  Murari, Bob

  Musharraf, General Pervez

  Naidu, M. Venkaiah

  Namboodiripad, E. M. S.

  Nasheed, Mohamed

  National Democratic Alliance (NDA)

  Nehru, Jawaharlal

  Newstrack, 84

  Norman, Dorothy

  Obama, Barack

  Outlook

  Oxford Union

  Padgaonkar, Dileep

  Pakistan Peoples Party (PPP)

  Pal, Satyabrata

  Pant, Vishal

  Parkinson, Michael

  Pasayat, Justice Arijit

  Patnaik, Naveen

  Pembroke College

  The Pioneer

  Porter, Philip

  Posner, Michael

  Prasad, Ravi Shankar

  Premila

  Press Trust of India (PTI)

  Qazi, Ashraf Jehangir

  Qureshi, Moeenuddin Ahmad

  Rajiv Gandhi Foundation

  Raju, Justice Doraiswamy

  Rakha, Allah

  Rao, P.V. Narasimha

  Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS)

  Razdan, M.K.

  Rice, Condoleezza

  Rohingya terrorism

  SAB TV

  Saeed, Hafiz Muhammad

  Sahay, Anand

  Sahgal, Nayantara

  Salaria, Havaldarni Khazan Singh. see Abo

  Sanghvi, Vir

  Santana, Manuel

  Sardesai, Rajdeep

  Saroop, Vaneeta

  Screwvala, Ronnie

  Sen, Pradyot

  Setalvad, Teesta

  Seth, Vikram

  Shagari, Shehu

  Shah, Amit

  Shankar, Kalyani

  Shankar, Ravi

  Sharif, Nawas

  Sharma, Manu

  Shekhar, Chandra

  Shobha

  Sikh massacre

  Simeon, Col. Eric

  Singh, Amar

  Singh, Analjit (Manu)

  Singh, Chander

  Singh, Dr Manmohan

  Singh, Jaswant

  Singh, Karan

  Singh, Rajnath

  Singh, Umed

  Singh, V.P.

  Sitharaman, Nirmala

  Sri Adhikari Brothers Television Production House

  St Antony’s

  St John-Stevas, Norman

  Stephan, Brian

  Stevens, Karin

  Stowe School

  Sunday Sentiments column

  Sun TV

  Tagore, Sharmila

  Tamil Tiger terrorist bomb attack

  Tehelka

  Tendulkar, Sachin

  Thapar, Karan

  Cambridge years

  early upbringing

  interviews for LWT

  interviews for The Times

  job at The Times

  at London Weekend Television (LWT)

  marriage

  Oxford years

  role in Nigeria–Libya diplomatic relations

  schooling

  work with Ministry of Information and Broadcasting, and Doordarshan

  Thatcher, Margaret

  Thorpe, Jeremy

  The Times

  Trump, Donald

  Upadhyay, Ashok

  UTV

  Vajpayee, Atal Bihari

  Varma, Pavan

  Walden, Brian

  We The People

  Zahira Habibulla H. Sheikh v. State of Gujarat case

  Zardari, Asif

  Zia-ul-Haq, General

  About the Book

  Some time in the late summer of 1976, Sanjay Gandhi asked if I wanted to go flying with him…

  After first attempting to teach Karan Thapar to fly (not very successfully), Sanjay Gandhi took the controls and performed a series of aerobatics, not particularly dangerous but nonetheless thrilling. Once they were further away from Delhi, he became even more daring. Suddenly, he decided to scare the farmers working in the fields below by aiming the aircraft straight at them. As he dived down, they scattered and ran, fearing for their lives. At the last moment, Sanjay pulled up dramatically and waved at the bewildered farmers, clearly chuffed with the whole performance. The manoeuvre required nerves of steel and tremendous self-confidence, both of which Sanjay possessed in plenty.

  In Devil’s Advocate, Karan dives deep into his life to come up with many such moments. Included here are stories of warm and lasting friendships, as with Benazir Bhutto, whom he met while he was an undergraduate. He also talks about his long association with Aung San Suu Kyi and Rajiv Gandhi. However, not all friendships endured—for example, with L.K. Advani, with whom he shared a close bond until an unfortunate disagreement over an interview caused a falling-out.

  The tension generated during an interview has spilled over
off-screen multiple times, and Karan discusses these occasions in detail. For instance, when Amitabh Bachchan lost his cool during a post-interview lunch or when Kapil Dev cried like a baby. And there’s the untold story of two of his most controversial interviews—with J. Jayalalithaa and Narendra Modi. While Jayalalithaa laughed it off later, the after-effects of Modi’s infamous walkout have grown worse with time.

  Riveting and fast-paced, Devil’s Advocate is as no-holds-barred as any of Karan Thapar’s interviews.

  About the Author

  K

  aran Thapar worked for ten years in television in the UK, where he trained as a correspondent, producer, editor and presenter with London Weekend Television and worked on programmes as varied as Weekend World, The World This Week, The Business Programme, The Walden Interview and Eastern Eye. Prior to that, he worked as a foreign correspondent with The Times, London. After his return to India in 1991, he presented well-known programmes such as Eyewitness (Doordarshan), HARDtalk India (BBC), Devil’s Advocate (CNN-IBN) and To The Point (India Today). He helped establish and headed HT Vision Ltd as executive producer, was director of programmes at Home TV and president, news and current affairs, at UTV. Presently, he is the President of Infotainment Television (ITV) and writes a weekly column, ‘Sunday Sentiments’, for the Hindustan Times and a fortnightly column, ‘As I See It’, for Business Standard.

  In 2006 a collection of his columns in the Hindustan Times was published in a book called Sunday Sentiments (Wisdom Tree) and a compilation of his interviews for the BBC was published by Penguin Books India as a book called Face to Face India. In 2009 a second collection of his columns, More Salt than Pepper, was published by HarperCollins India. A third, called As I Like It, was published in 2018 (Wisdom Tree).

  Karan Thapar has won several awards such as the Asian Television Award for Best Current Affairs Presenter (five-time winner), the Ramnath Goenka Broadcast Journalist of the Year Award (2009), the Indian News Broadcasting Award for the Best Current Affairs Presenter (2009 and 2010), the International Press Institute – India Award for Excellence in Journalism (2013) and the G. K. Reddy Award (2018).

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