by Meena Menon
Pakistani leaders have, however, been quite open with the Indian press. Tribune editor, Raj Chengappa, has interviewed Nawaz Sharif in exile and had flown into Rawalpindi to meet Prime Minister Shaukat Aziz and then General Musharraf. In 1972, Dilip Mukerjee from the Times of India visited Pakistan after he was granted an interview with President Zulfikar Ali Bhutto. In his book, Mukerjee quotes from that interview which seemed to be a frank chat on the events after the Bangladesh war of 1971. Bhutto admits that he was having trouble with Yahya Khan and his services chiefs were of no help, which eventually led to him replacing them.2 The veteran Kuldip Nayar, too, has bagged interviews with Bhutto, Sharif, Benazir and others, and has visited Pakistan repeatedly and written several books. Nayar went to Pakistan after the war in 1971, and he wrote, ‘When I entered Pakistan, as an Indian, I felt as though I had walked into the lion’s den. But there was no hostility, though curiosity greeted me wherever I went.’3 Nayar goes on to say, ‘The two things uppermost in the people’s minds were the POWs [the 90,000 prisoners of war in India after the Bangladesh war] and Bhutto,’ said Nayar. Towards India, the attitude of the ‘average’ Pakistani was one of hostility, he wrote. A typical remark thrown at him was that India was out to destroy Pakistan.4 However, writer Shobhaa De told me in an interview during the Islamabad Literature Festival that there was no hostility, only hospitality!
Many enduring friendships exist across the border, and a famous example is that between politician and architect Piloo Mody and Zulfikar Ali Bhutto. ‘That our friendship has lasted through innumerable quarrels, the partition of the country and four wars, to some extent demonstrates the universality of human nature and the relative insignificance of governments, nations and even nationalism.’5 The small band of peaceniks believes it can overcome in an atmosphere full of spitfire and suspicion. But not too many Indian leaders have given interviews to the Pakistani journalists and so Indian journalists must be denied. It is after all a tit-for-tat game and we must stoop as low as we can. My editor and colleagues had told me not to bother with interviews since they were rarely granted.
I had to deal with some strange characters who pretended to know you and wanted to take you around. After I made some inquiries about one particular pest, I realized no one knew him and he had no credentials as a journalist. He wanted for some reason to take me to the eating joints near the Quaid-i-Azam University (QAU) which sounded a little shady to me. He once stalked me at a press meeting and stood next to me waiting for an introduction to the people I was with. I didn’t bother and he glowered at me. He was a big, beefy man and my friends thought he was going to get violent. The other nuisance was callers wanting to know your name and a lot of other things. I used to save these numbers as Creep 1, 2, and so on, and some were persistent till it got to a point where I had to ask an official to intervene and get the numbers blocked. There was one particular man who was insistent and I had to explain to him on email that I really was not interested in his unflattering attention. My phone had a useful mechanism to reject certain numbers, but the calls were unending. I once told them that this was a police station but they got back and said they knew it wasn’t. I then had to hastily disconnect many calls or not take them. It got to a point where it became harassment.
Still, being a woman was the least of my problems while living there. I didn’t come across men ogling at me or pawing me (though journalist Kim Barker had some terrible experiences) or people humming songs and making vulgar noises behind me. Moreover, my house was in a relatively safe place. Even though Bollywood masala was hugely popular, fortunately, it didn’t penetrate to baser levels of mimicking most Indian filmi heroes who have exalted harassment and sexism into a fine art. That is not to say that sexism or violence against women doesn’t exist. Pakistan is as feudal and patriarchal as India, and many horrifying cases of violence are reported regularly. Every day, the Express Tribune newspaper would have a crime graph, with locations on the city map and I would anxiously pore over it for cases of robberies and rape. While rapes were few, at least the reported ones in the capital, a large number of robberies took place. One journalist I met in Parliament told me that often the robbers would eat up everything in the house.
The fact that I was an Indian worked against me at one level, though equally and happily, it was also the reason most people went out of their way to help me. The line between me as a journalist and the fact that I was an Indian often tended to blur. Everything was seen and weighed according to whether it was anti-Pakistan, and it had to be, coming from an Indian. So if I interviewed Mama Qadeer Baloch, I must certainly be working against Pakistani interests. When I posted pictures of Islamabad’s slums on Facebook, someone took umbrage that I was posting such pictures since I was from India, also a poor country. In fact, in that sanitized city of Islamabad, the slums were the one thing that stuck out for being close to any reality. Everything had to be black and white. My colleague’s warning that whatever you do, you will be taken for a RAW agent, came home to me. I was relieved to read Pakistani journalist Raza Rumi’s evocative book6 on New Delhi and he, too, had the same ‘unhealthy’ curiosity about slums and visiting Dalit bastis in the capital.
The Aam Aadmi Party effect
I found that two politicians fascinated Pakistanis. One was Narendra Modi who seems to have quickly replaced Vajpayee in popular memory, and the other was Arvind Kejriwal who had won the Delhi assembly elections then. First it was Arslan-ul-Mulk from Gujranwala whose Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) was registered with the Election Commission of Pakistan (ECP) and then a former foreign services officer and lawyer, thirty-four-year-old Adnan Randhawa had applied to the ECP for registering his Aam Aadmi of Pakistan Party (AAPP).
He was formerly deputy secretary in charge of central information of the PTI led by Imran Khan, a party which has often been likened to the AAP in India. Yet, Randhawa had become disillusioned with the way things were going and the turning point came on 3 March 2014 when he saw the district court being fired at and bombed from his office overlooking the complex. He expected a strong statement from his party which was not forthcoming and it was still harping on a rapprochement with the terrorists. That’s when he decided enough was enough and quit his party. He found it difficult to defend his party’s stand on terrorism and he felt an out-of-the-box solution was needed.
A diplomat-turned-political worker, he was posted in China for two years before becoming a protocol officer in Pakistan. Like Kejriwal, he too wants to appeal to the educated middle class and end the corruption of the ruling elite. He has studied the AAP phenomenon in India and felt that it had given a voice to the voiceless, and winning the Delhi assembly, a major power centre, was remarkable. Kejriwal symbolized honesty and credibility, and that’s what he wanted to emulate in Pakistan. His new party was to bear a resemblance to both the AAP in India and the PTI. He hoped to draw from workers of the PTI who were not status quoists and were sincere. I don’t know what became of his venture.
Finding my feet
Before I knew it, I was writing on events around me which had formed a leitmotif of sorts during my stay. One of them was the tension on the LoC, the others were drone strikes, release of Afghan militants, talks with the Taliban, hostility between India and Pakistan, and the unending bombings and attacks on minorities. A few issues would shadow the coverage, and Kashmir was not the only one. Lashkar-e-Taiba founder Hafiz Saeed, a much-wanted man in India, would pop up like a bad penny every now and then; there was the uncertainty of talks or no talks between India and Pakistan, and the focus on army–civilian relations. The eight-point composite dialogue between India and Pakistan was stalled after the 26/11 terror attack. The change of guard in the army, too, was an important event, with Sharif opting for an officer junior to two others in rank despite his public statements that seniority would be the criterion. That was not the first time he was doing that; there was another famous exception he lived to regret. The incumbent chief of army staff, General Ashfaq Kayani, was not given another extens
ion and the new chief, General Raheel Sharif, was reported to be very close to the prime minister. He was the former ISPR head Major General Athar Abbas’s batchmate, and I spoke to the latter for my story. Pakistan also had a new President; when Asif Zardari’s term expired, I had to write a small piece on his exit and suddenly Mr Ten Per cent, as he was disparagingly known for his corrupt deals, became the great unifier. The talks with the Tehrik-i-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) which meandered aimlessly, the MFN status not given to India in toto, attacks on the media, drone strikes, and the high treason trial dominated the news. Once the high treason trial began, General Pervez Musharraf occupied most of my time, and we had to be in court by 9.30 a.m. or earlier. I did squeeze in some other stories—on polio, textbooks, and on the left parties regrouping. Sharif was hell-bent on the treason trial which was to backfire on him soon. The trial was mired in legal proprieties and even assuming it was a historic decision to prosecute a former dictator, there was a sense of foreboding, and soon everywhere retired generals held meetings to support General Musharraf. It was not easy to take on the army in Pakistan, and Sharif was to be taught a lesson soon. I was not there to see the huge protests launched by Imran Khan’s PTI and Tahir-ul-Qadri, a cleric, and the Blue and Red areas, a high-security zone, with restricted entry, were jammed for weeks with these anti-Sharif protests.
I was also offered an interview with Dawood Ibrahim, quite by chance, but nothing came of it. Evidence given by Yakub Memon, who was hanged in 2015 for his involvement in the serial bomb blasts of March 1993 in Mumbai, points to Dawood Ibrahim and Yaqub’s older brother Tiger Memon living in Pakistan, which had given them refuge. Pakistan has repeatedly denied that Dawood or Tiger Memon are in residence and there would be surges of evidence surfacing in the media in the form of taped conversations and Dawood’s addresses in Pakistan. So far, he has been untraceable, though the Indian government firmly believes he is a guest in Pakistan. At a party I attended in Islamabad, I met a man who asked me if I wanted an interview with Dawood Ibrahim. I said yes, thinking it was a joke. Later when I mentioned this to some friends, they said Islamabad was full of people ready to get you an interview with Dawood.
The main stories coming out of Pakistan were usually about terror, bomb blasts and the 26/11 case, and before coming to Islamabad I used to read the updates on the case by the Press Trust of India’s Rezaul Hasan Laskar who was posted there from 2007 till 2013. For an Indian journalist stuck in Islamabad with little hope of travelling anywhere else, I had to be innovative, and learn to make do with the limited possibilities in the capital. My editor had told me glibly that I would get to know everyone there was to know within three months. There was plenty to do, I found, the least of which was meeting people. I aimed at meeting at least one new person a day, a maxim from one of my friends, and things seemed to be going well. There were many resources at my disposal; people even came up with suggestions which were constructive, and my journalist colleagues and contacts from my predecessors’ time were very helpful and obliging with information. So when one TV journalist I knew was questioned by the ISI or whoever, after he had coffee with me and another reporter, it became a joke. They asked him if I wanted to know anything about the defence installations or the army. He told them that even if I wanted that information, he was the last person I would have asked. There is a persisting undercurrent in their notion about Indian journalists—we are seemingly always on the lookout for classified information which we can pass on to our ‘handlers’ in New Delhi. When officials in the Indian high commission had once asked me to tell them what I was filing on a daily basis and even send the copy to them, I had refused to do so. All they had to do was read the newspaper, and all my stories were usually used first online almost immediately, and in the newspaper the next day. There was nothing hidden about my reports or activities, contrary to the suspicions voiced in the Pakistani media after the visa was not extended. Some of the Indian officials were helpful with stories and confirmed or denied matters, especially in connection with Indian fisherfolk or prisoners, and all of them were friendly and extremely hospitable, always hosting us for lunch or dinner. That didn’t mean I was spying for them.
Apart from meeting people, covering day-to-day political events involved going to the National Assembly or Senate, attending press conferences, the weekly foreign office briefing, the Supreme Court, or the special court once the Musharraf trial started. Political parties, too, had press conferences, like the PMLN or the PTI, the Jamaat-e-Islami, the Jamiat Ulema-e-Hind, and the Pakistan Muslim League (Quaid) (PML[Q]). There was an openness about certain things—I attended special committee meetings of Parliament. I grew to like the Parliament canteen and the open terrace outside where it was a pleasure to sit in the evenings. The food was good and the kebabs and fish were particular favourites. It was a place where I could meet journalists and many parliamentarians who were very friendly even if they made anti-India statements on granting MFN and other issues in the House. The Parliament library was well stocked with shelf after shelf of all the records of Indian parliamentary proceedings since Independence, which the friendly librarian proudly showed me.
Islamabad was a seminar city and every day there were several events, some of which were interesting and yielded stories and useful contacts. Some, of course, were deathly boring but I attended most of them in the hope of getting story ideas and meeting new people. The Sustainable Development Policy Institute, the Jinnah Institute, the Institute of Strategic Studies, the many UN organizations and government departments, too, had events open to the press. Ministers and their office staff were usually helpful and happy to meet and talked frankly about issues. The ministry of interior had many press conferences at the lavish Punjab House on top of a hill which reminded me of one of the royal outhouses in Versailles with its opulent archways and lush lawns, and fountains. Below elaborate chandeliers and in elegant interiors, with intricate floral screens and lace-covered chairs, the minister would hold forth on inelegant subjects. From Punjab House you could see the whole city stretching out in front of you, glowing dully in the dusk. Compared to the ‘houses’ of other provinces, this was the most lavish, and the winding road to the top was lined with gorgeous blue-purple jacaranda. The interior minister, Chaudhry Nisar Ali Khan, was not a man of few words and his preamble could easily take an hour. He was a bit theatrical and much to our despair, he would always call a press meet on Sunday at 6 p.m., making everyone groan. Despite his long-winded speeches, he would say something important which had to be filed and there would be a scramble to get home. I would usually start typing the story on my phone while listening to the recording so that I didn’t miss the deadline. Especially memorable was the press conference after TTP leader Hakimullah Mehsud had been killed. Chaudhry Nisar thundered against the US for the drone attack that killed Mehsud just before he was to join the peace talks. Short of wringing his hands, he did everything to demonstrate his despair—but in any case, the peace process had been torpedoed from the start. In fact, a senior and extremely well-read politician had a quiz for some of us at that time—which Shakespearian character did Chaudhry Nisar resemble? Despite being an English literature student, I couldn’t guess the answer and we gave up. It was Lady Macbeth—I am not sure it was appropriate but it seemed amusing at that time. Chaudhry Nisar would sometimes choose the same person to ask the first question, but was forthcoming with all of us at times. I had even sent him questions for an interview, but predictably it didn’t happen. At the press conference, there were these men who were very familiar with you, journalists whose visiting cards boasted of civilian honours, but were believed to be linked to the ISI. They would ask you provocative questions which you as a rule didn’t answer.
Other than on the cricket field, the only time I saw Imran Khan up close was after Benazir Bhutto had been killed in December 2007. He was in Mumbai and held a press conference at the late socialite Parmeshwar Godrej’s house on the beachfront in Juhu. When we got there, a huge press corps was waiting out
side the closed gates of the Godrej bungalow, the security of which was unused to press conferences. We had to give our names and wait outside till we were called one or two at a time, leading to rising tempers and slanging matches. When we were let inside, through the glass doors we could see Godrej leaning towards Khan, giving the final touches to his appearance before he came out to speak to us. The conference was packed and everyone had questions which he patiently answered. The first thing he would do, he said, after going back would be to meet Sanam, Bhutto’s sister, now the only surviving member of the ill-fated clan. Like most people he, too, was shocked by the turn of events and the political upheaval this portended for his country.
In Islamabad, too, he had full attendance, and the pressers were usually on the lawns of his party office. He would be flanked by Shireen Mazari, a feisty parliamentarian perceived to be anti-Indian; she was knowledgeable though on nuclear energy and bilateral issues. Or there would be former Pakistan Foreign Minister Shah Mahmood Qureishi, and sometimes Asad Umar, a young parliamentarian. Only once did I go up to his office at Bani Gala up a long road which stopped at a cliff’s edge. It was quite a view from there, but I never got to see his mansion with the millennium swimming pool, though he did say yes to an interview when I had asked him. A TV journalist said till he actually sits in front of you, don’t believe him, and that’s exactly what had happened. The first time I saw Khan in Islamabad, the cricketing hero for millions and for yours truly, was at the Supreme Court where he was being hauled up for contempt in August 2013. It was strange to call him ‘Mr Khan’ when for years everyone in India simply called him ‘Imran’. He drove up in an SUV and a small band of PTI supporters waving party flags greeted him. The Supreme Court, despite issuing a notice to him, didn’t press the contempt charges, but pulled him up for lack of remorse in making offensive remarks against the judiciary. In a press conference in July 2013, Khan said he had used the word ‘sharmnaak’ (shameful) to describe the conduct of the four returning officers in constituencies which had bogus voting, and he had filed a petition about this in the apex court. Khan offered no apology but said he never meant any offence to the judiciary or the judges, and that his remark was misconstrued. There was much argument on what sharmnaak actually meant and the court was not satisfied with Khan’s reply that he was campaigning for an independent judiciary. The court was offended by such a comment coming from the frontline leadership of a political party. Pakistan, it said, was passing through a phase where the majority of the institutions had collapsed—there were sixteen judges hearing 19,000 cases. It also said that if Imran did not mean what he said, then there should be some indication of remorse in the detailed reply he had submitted, which was absent.
