Devil's Advocate
Page 20
‘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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