My father and freedom of the press

November 30, 2008

I begin my blog with a write-up on my dad. I wrote this in February 2001, eight months after his death. I began my career as a journalist with him and I owe him a great deal not just as a daughter but also as a professional. Whatever I am able to manage today as the head, corporate communication of a software company is due to the work discipline, honesty and integrity that he inculcated in me.

"We lost him eight months back. He went quietly, accepting death as if he had finished his task as a father and ofcourse written his weekly column, earlier during the day. Fearless in death as he was with spoken and written words.
My earliest memories of him are as a three-year-old running for his slippers, and his copy of Daily Express, London, with dog kitty shrieking wildly behind me, when he entered home. From that age I knew what made him happy.
He would sit in the living room with a pile of newspapers and magazines, a tall wooden lamp behind his armchair and with his transistor, switching from BBC news channels to all India radio news bulletins. I remember calls from the telegraph office, often in the middle of cold winter nights, and his portable typewriter rattling away in quick response.

Indo-China War
During the Indo-China war, while I lay with serious burn injuries in a nursing home, he was busy meeting deadlines, spending a major part of the day and night in the press room and telegraph office. My mother appalled by his behaviour would reprimand him, “What kind of a man are you. Your little daughter is fighting for life and you are away working.” His only answer was, “I have a job to do. I can not let down my editor in this time of crisis. My daughter is in safe hands.” That was his level of professionalism.
He was extremely critical of the way the war was fought. “We were ill-prepared. We had rusted guns and weapons and we sent our army on a suicide mission to fight in the cold, in unfamiliar areas. Nehruji’s Gandhian ideology was too simplistic. Any one can say bhai-bhai and attack quietly.”
In the same breadth he often said, “The Nehruvian era was different. The world saw India differently. We were an important country. We had total freedom of press. We could be critical and write the way we wanted to. Madame Gandhi depends too much on her coterie and cannot tolerate criticism. She lacks Nehruji’s wisdom.”
To his media friends who pointed out that he was too critical in his columns, his answer was, “My job is not to do propaganda for the ruling party but to analyse government policies. No one can tell me what I should write.”

Emergency in India
Fearless as ever in his thoughts and writing, he was shocked when emergency was clamped and severe restrictions were put on the freedom of press. For the first time in his 30-year-old career he felt restricted and helpless by the system. It was a living nightmare for him.
However he always said, “This the biggest mistake Madame Gandhi has made. India is the world’s largest democracy, no one can get away by curbing the press. The people of this country will never forgive her.”
His prophecy came true. Mrs. Gandhi lost badly in the elections after the emergency was lifted, the Congress split, and the party never really got back together.

Indo-Kashmir relations
Kashmir was an important issue for him. He went to Kashmir twice as a guest of the Chief Minister, Sheikh Abdullah. He felt Pakistan had a single point agenda, that was to grab Kashmir, and elections were won because of their hate-India campaign. “They only talk about jihad. They are least bothered about their increasing poverty, and their economy is in shambles.”
The Kargil war did not surprise him, “We are in a precarious situation because we have a poor neighbor, governed by trigger-happy generals and Muslim fanatics, who even claim to have nuclear weapons. We have to think beyond ‘Bus Yatras’ and take a re-look at our foreign and defense policies. To defend ourselves, we have to upgrade our defense equipment and buy more sophisticated arms. We can not let down our defense forces.”

Indian politics
Disappointed by the changing Indian political system in the last couple of years, his favourite punch line was, “How does Mr Vajpayee expect a 13-legged party to come to a consensus, when right hand does not know what the left hand is upto. They are all busy with petty politics and bickering within the party. Our opposition is weak, led by a stone-faced Italian goddess, who knows little about the Indian psyche and the social fabric of this country. They lack the political will to deliver.

Indian Economy
“Even a country like China has managed to keep their population in check and attracted such large FDIs. MNCs are scared to come to India, there is so much political and economic instability layered with bureaucratic red-tapism. The license Raj is over but the bureaucrats are not ready to give up their powers.”
In the last fifty-five years, as a media person, he had seen and written with same fervor about the pre-independence era, the free India with all its problems - the liberalization phase, the nuclear strategies, the IT revolution, the changing political system, and India moving into the 21st century.

Terror and war
Had he been there to witness the recent terrorist attacks and war in Afghanisthan, he would have said in his typical way,“ These Pakistanis needed to be taught a lesson. Musharaff thinks he is a clever man but you cannot fool the Americans.”
He could have churned out hundreds and hundreds of words, an unfatigued mind, but he had to meet another dead-line, however not with his newspaper this time."


Today,I wonder what my dad's reaction would have been! Once again the country faces a huge challenge. Could we have averted the tragedy in Mumbai? When will our politicians stop bickering over petty issues. Or have they become so callous that it makes no difference to them. It is a strange feeling of helplessness as we watch terror, poor administration, rising corruption and lack of political will to deliver.