The Gentle Rebel

The year has been a prolific one for journalists with several senior scribes coming out with autobiographies. Former editor of Outlook Vinod Mehta and former editor of The Statesman Nihal Singh set the ball rolling with their personal accounts of a profession that is always exciting and challenging. Singh of course, being far more straitlaced than Mehta, avoided a glitzy book release ceremony and when he did organise one, it was only for a few friends who all clearly knew him well. The books gave insights into the professional and to some extent the personal life of both these editors and took further the genre of journalistic writing that has a quality quite its own.

Well known journalist, former high commissioner and Rajya Sabha MP Kuldip Nayar has joined the list of editors with his autobiography Beyond the Lines. As he himself says, he had written 800 pages that had to be pruned through a Herculean effort on his and the publishers’ part to 400. And judging from what he has to say, there is another 800 pages of anecdotes about personalities that he has left out altogether as his wife, who has been his chief counsel through this exercise, cautioned him against offending sensibilities beyond a point.

Nayar’s book ran into trouble even before it was officially released. But that should have been predictable to all who know him, as he has a certain candour and naivety that is bound to influence anything he writes. He also has strong opinions that he disguises under an easy, almost casual, manner that he has never hesitated to share in private and public conversations. Hence, it was not a surprise to many of us who have worked with Nayar as junior reporters in The Statesman and The Indian Express to find that he had run foul of many of his colleagues in the writing of his autobiography. Significantly though, many of the stories that were floating around, attributed to the book, are certainly not there. It was clearly again the usual journalistic overkill, where facts and fiction merge, with little of the first.

There are references though  contributing to whispers of a law suit against Nayar, but again this has not happened. Indian Express editor Shekhar Gupta, who had worked against Kuldip Nayar in the Indian Express has got a taste of the old horse with, “Shekhar Gupta called me his guru but showed no respect when he stopped my fortnightly column. By then he had become all in all in the Express, circumstances having helped him to occupy (sic) the position of editor-in-chief. He also became abnormally affluent as well as arrogant. I liked him when he was a simple straightforward journalist at Chandigarh.”

Nayar does not mince his words in the book. At one point he writes of meeting Pranab Mukherjee during his early days in office and sitting on the floor, and then revisiting him during the days of Sanjay Gandhi and the Emergency and finding his house “exuding opulence.” He points towards the arrogance of journalists, quoting Aveek Sarkar, owner of The Telegraph as telling him that he was next to Jyoti Basu in importance; of Shekhar Gupta being “infatuated with himself”; of being “disappointed” with then Hindu editor N Ram and so on and so forth. Former Express editor and later MP Arun Shourie too has not been spared in the book for his “Jingoistic views” and for “landing like a paratrooper” into the Indian Express.

Nayar admits to having received a host of telephone calls from younger journalists applauding him for the book, even as the seniors looked askance, wondering what he had to say of them. The publisher pointed out at the book release that he had received calls from eminent persons asking whether there was a reference to them in the book,  that appeared to have acquitted the dimension of a ‘kiss and tell’ autobiography. At a media meeting in Delhi, one saw what has become the usual sight since the release of Beyond the Lines: Kuldip Nayar sitting totally unconcerned about the ripples he has created and holding forth with usual gusto, with senior journalists who have found not very complimentary mention in the book standing away visibly angry and irritated. He has clearly lost many friends in recent weeks. But interestingly, many more who have been reacting quite vocally against the book are not even mentioned. Clearly journalists have once again lived up to their reputation of not reading, but reacting.

The book is not particularly well written but definitely interesting when it is not dealing with pure history. The anecdotes sprinkled across are fascinating, and certainly refreshing as they bring to life information from the field and experience and not just research. Nayar has had the advantage of having being in many places at the right time and thus has brought in insights that are interesting for those following events of the time in not just India, but also Pakistan and Bangladesh. One does not have to agree with everything, as there are many factual errors, and premises based on insufficient facts, but even so, the book does entertain and inform and more importantly, remind the reader and the journalist of a values and a commitment gone by.

There has been an effort to give it a ‘dog eat dog’ hue but this is totally unjustified and unfair. Kuldip Nayar himself said that he has written what he believed and experienced and it should be taken in that light. Asked whether he would convert the 400 pages he has cut out of this book into another in the future he just laughed with a “let us see”. There are strong pointers in Beyond the Lines about what has gone wrong in the profession that should be taken on board. Paid news is just one of the problems albeit a major one, and Nayar does journalism a service by bringing out words like honesty, idealism and courage out of their moth eaten wraps. As he writes, “Good journalism is all about exposing injustice and highlighting heroes, regardless of the consequences.”

With his usual candour he regrets not being able to write as well as he would like to in English. “In my profession, what haunts me is that I do not write better. I should, after having spent over fifty years in journalism,” Nayar writes. He also points out how the political class in Delhi has fallen to the temptations of the corporate world and adds, “Probably what holds good for political leaders also holds good for journalists and others.” And establishing his book as a swan song, he writes of his generation, now fading away adding, “This is a journey from the horrible to the sublime. It does not end the quest.”