Tag: Book review

Beyond Biryani - A Book Review

Hyderabad Dished Out Many Marvels Beyond Biryani

By Mahendra Ved

If old records can help re-look present-day controversies, here is one. In 1980, India’s then Prime Minister Indira Gandhi witnessed the first ‘demo’ of an “electronic voting instrument” along with opposition party leaders. She operated it first as a voter and then as the presiding officer. She “tallied the results with the notes she took for over 40 minutes.” All wanted to ensure that nobody was ‘fooled’.

Made in response to the ‘challenge’ thrown in 1977 by Chief Election Commissioner S L Shakdher was this forerunner of the present-day electronic voting machine (EVM), the result of a painstaking effort by the public sector Electronic Corporation of India Limited. The ECIL was called “the national champion of electronics” by the scientific community in those times, a new book says.

Everyone present was keen to end electoral malpractices rampant in that era like “booth capturing” and frequent acrimonies over the counting process. After over four decades, however, the EVM is viewed with suspicion, especially by those who lose an election.

The voting machine is among the numerous success stories of India post-independence and the pushing of science and technology frontiers, of research laboratories, colleges and universities. An emerging nation was denied access to the latest technology and components for “political reasons,” Dr Dinesh C. Sharma, veteran science journalist and author, says. Albeit slow, it was backed by the few visionaries among the erstwhile princes, Jawaharlal Nehru who spent on knowledge-hungry men like C V Raman, Homi Bhabha, Vikram Sarabhai and many more.

Sharma focuses on one of the world’s most remarkable modern-day evolutions in Hyderabad, the city and the erstwhile state. Ironically, it had briefly opposed joining the Indian Union.  The first to be created for the Telugu-speaking people, Andhra Pradesh underwent further changes – more than any other Indian state (province) when economic disparities caused the separation of Telangana. This did not stop the journey of science and enterprise, though. The present-day change to the technology hub, from a feudal polity helmed by the Nizams, then assessed as the world’s richest, who spent their riches liberally to promote knowledge is itself a story worth telling.

Sharma tells his story spanning over four centuries under a delectably misleading title, Beyond Biryani. Used to great effect is the stereotype about the “City of Nawabs” and the “enticing aroma of the rice-and-meat dish”. Hyderabadi Biryani has crossed frontiers globally and was rated India’s most-ordered dish on online food delivery platforms last year.   

The science writer switches from the Biryani discourse with “The Making of a Globalised Hyderabad”, but not before linking the two:  “The pan-India popularity of Hyderabadi biryani is intertwined with the economic liberalisation and globalisation of the Indian economy.” For, the city of “Char Minar and Biryani”, gathering some of the best talent and enterprise during Nizam’s rule, has become a cosmopolitan city and is the hub of numerous science and institutions, both in the public and private sectors.

ALSO READ: Curious Chronicles of Freedom And Partition

Long before that happened, Sharma records, numerous exciting but less-known narratives had placed Hyderabad under the global gaze. Chloroform became the doctor’s ultimate medium for anaesthesia before surgery after being tested in a Hyderabad lab. Ronald Ross, a Briton, found his vaccine against malaria while working in Hyderabad.  

All this did not grow overnight. Hyderabad was responding to demands, like the locally grown Mahua flower becoming the source of cheaper industrial alcohol. The forward-looking Nizams were allies of the British and benefitted by making and providing much that went into the two World Wars. Post-independence, the large state gelled well with New Delhi, both ruled by the same Congress party.  The location on the relatively safe eastern flank of the peninsula, “north of South India and south of North India,” remains its USP from the security angle.

Sharma recounts how India met challenges during the 1962 Sino-Indian conflict and again, with Pakistan in 1965 and 1971. India became acutely conscious of the need for self-reliance in electronics. Nehru appointed a committee under Bhabha, with Sarabhai on it to make “a blueprint for planning an indigenous industry for electronics, computers, communications and components based on R&D, design, training and limited foreign inputs.” 

india was able to surmount the West-imposed restrictions after each conflict. From 1960-1980s, many units of the Defence Research and Development Organisation (DRDO) units dealing with missiles and other defence-related technology were located in and around Hyderabad, where training and industrial infrastructure existed. The departure of the multinational IBM provided yet another challenge-cum-opportunity.

At the turn of the century, Hyderabad triggered the “Telugu boom” pushing its people across the world. In the United States alone, their presence has grown from 320,000 in 2016 to 1.23 million this year. Telugu is the third-most spoken Indian language.

Sharma says: “From missiles and satellites to affordable HIV drugs and Covid-19 vaccines, Hyderabad delivers everything that today’s India is known for. These successes are a result of a long journey of building key institutions over the decades.”

Nara Chandrababu Naidu ‘happened’ to Hyderabad when much of India was in political turmoil and in the throes of economic reforms. He was the only chief minister at the turn of the century who understood high-tech and talked through PowerPoint presentations (PPP). To make this point, Sharma quotes Bihar’s Lalu Prasad who wondered what “IT-wayti” was all about. That Naidu was an ally of the central government helped immensely in reaching out to Indian and foreign entrepreneurs and technocrats. He is back in that position today, although heading a truncated Andhra Pradesh. This places him in a position of advantage.

Sharma records Naidu’s audacious efforts to get Microsoft chief Bill Gates to Hyderabad when he unveiled plans that build Cyerabad. He was sure other investors would follow, and they did. So did US President Bill Clinton.

Naidu is ambitious and wants to cover the distance with Bengaluru which has been ahead, and he may well achieve that. Taking the larger picture, Sharma says, the two cities have succeeded because they have the right ecosystem that is tech-friendly and conducive to enterprise where high-end technological innovations can be pursued. They have left behind socially and politically sensitive Ahmedabad and Vadodara and a congested Mumbai-Pune belt.  

The book’s blurb sums it all up: “Every time you key in a word to search on Google, launch a Microsoft product on your laptop or mobile phone, click on Amazon to buy a product, post a picture on Facebook, book an airline ticket on a travel website, use a map to navigate through the city traffic, take a taxi ride using Uber or Ola, make a financial transaction on an app, or through a leading bank, scan a QR code to make a micropayment through UPI, watch an animation film on your favourite OTT platform, pop a pill or vaccinate your child, you are most likely either using a technology developed partly or fully in Hyderabad, getting connected with a data centre, or a business processing office located there or using a medical product manufactured there.”

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India & China: Beyond Zero-Sum Game

By Mahendra Ved

In his book Beyond Binaries: The World of India and China Shastri Ramachandaran quotes a Chinese proverb: “Men trip not on mountains, they trip on molehills.” In the fraught relations between the two neighbours, many molehills are becoming mountains, higher than the Himalayas.

There is no clear answer as to why two ancient civilisations that coexisted peacefully for over two millennia have been adversaries since the last century with no signs of a thaw. The “power partnership” and the “Asian Century” vision that the world’s two most populous nations proclaimed in 2008 when Manmohan Singh met Wen Jiabao, stands jeopardised.

In relatively better times, the two had played down the long-standing border dispute and sometimes cooperated in international forums. It is rare now. India has placed the border dispute and recurring clashes and intrusions at the centre of its relationship.

In the last decade, India’s political leadership that has blamed, with some justification, Prime Minister Nehru for leading the country to the 1962 conflict have not allowed a fair debate on the thaw in relations in subsequent years under Indira, Rajiv, Vajpayee and Manmohan Singh. Nobody even mentions why and how Modi’s hug-diplomacy failed and his well-meant hosting and being hosted by Xi Jinping, ended up in violent clashes at Galwan.

Shastri writes that while India has been unable to forget its territory loss and military debacle of 1962, he found it rarely mentioned during his seven years’ stay in China. “India and Indians need to face up to the fact that we are not in China’s sights as much as we think,” he writes. But while China couldn’t care less or can pretend to do so, now that it is miles ahead of India in economic prowess, a democratic India faces the odium from within and from its Western allies.

While these equations constrain overall economic ties, bilateral trade is booming, ironically, in China’s favour, and is likely to get stronger. China’s share in India’s imports jumped from $70.3 billion in 2018-19 to $101 billion in 2023-24, making it the top source country for goods and services. Ramachandaran provides the sober context to appreciate how China will continue to play a significant role in India’s present and future.

But the two are now decidedly in opposite geopolitical camps since India is viewed as a ‘pivot’ against China in Asia. In retaliation, never a respecter of India’s natural and historical role in South Asia, China has made Pakistan its bulwark against India, befriending “an enemy’s enemy.” It uses its deep pockets to make forays in the region bilaterally and through the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI). While Bhutan remains under pressure after the Doklam episode, Sri Lanka, Nepal and the Maldives have seen political orders changing as per who is pro-India and who, pro-China. Overall, Beijing challenges India’s centuries-old cultural ties with people across South, Central and Southeast Asia.

ALSO READ: A Weakened Russia, A Resurgent China

Seeking to move beyond the black-and-white accounts that dominate the discourse on the Galwan clashes, Ramachandaran makes several interesting observations about the factors that may have contributed to China’s military provocation. It could be India’s deepening ties with the US, its role in the Quad, opposition to the BRI or its ambitions for supremacy in Asia; or all of these. “More than any or all of these, China’s provocative military attack could well have been to establish deterrence against India. This is a possible, and plausible, reason,” he argues.

On the other hand, India’s rising profile in the Indo-Pacific, including its strident calls for observance of maritime laws in the disputed South China Seas, has undoubtedly rankled the Chinese leadership.

India’s festering anger, fuelled further by China’s rapid strides across the globe, has bucked its ‘nationalist’ discourse that promises to get increasingly strident. Jeopardised, again, Shastri laments, are people-to-people contacts. These trends have exacerbated and led to the “manufacturing of mindsets”. Defying “an openly hostile” Indian media, and a part of the academia, Ramachandaran seeks to provide a counter-view that is cautiously optimistic, awaiting like many, for things to change. Some journalists have contributed to China and Sino-Indian studies, besides scholars, historians, generals and diplomats. But Ramachandaran is unique in that he has worked, on the ground, in both countries.

His collection of writings was executed between 2009 and 2016. As a good scribe, he ensures their relevance by drawing parallels. For one, he writes about how Modi launched his flagship Digital India programme on July 1, 2015, only a few weeks after visiting China’s hi-tech zone in Xi’an. He also writes extensively about how cooperation with China has played a significant part in the growth of digital inclusivity in India, an achievement the Modi government headlined during the G20 summit last year.

He notes that the India-China ties are viewed as disaster-prone when there are border clashes or when they confront/avoid each other in international forums. Nuances are often lost in the broad-stroke political rhetoric. While Chinese funding for Indian tech firms and NGOs is reported by the global media, the socio-economic relations between the two nations are often glossed over.

He notes that China succeeded in handling the 2008 global financial crisis far better than the Western countries. It experienced phenomenal growth in the first decade of this century. But he points out the flip side to this achievement — “appalling income disparities, rising unemployment, displacement of rural populations, pervasive corruption, criminality, massive environmental degradation, pockets of extreme poverty, social sickness, discontent of the have-nots and restive minorities in the Tibet and Xinjiang regions.”

Ramachandaran was one of the many ‘expats’ working in the Chinese media between 2008 and 2015. These foreigners who had lost jobs in the West and elsewhere, he says “kept an eye on each other” to report to the Chinese bosses. Interesting, but also risky.

He draws hitherto less-known comparisons between working for the China Daily, Global Times and other publications. Money and perks were more at the former where the official line was strictly followed than in the latter, where money was less but freedom was relatively more. He recalls writing, and being accepted on local issues and even being critical of the official line. To his surprise, he was told that he was “not critical enough”.

With the constant refrain of not letting the United States push or influence India’s China policy and that China must “create conditions for the neighbours to pursue reconciliation in their mutual interest”, Shastri presents a conflict resolution-oriented proposition. Indeed, with this book, he has created a counter-view to the prevalent India-China discourse that is set within the binaries of a zero-sum game.

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Chronicles of Freedom by TCA Raghavan

Curious Chronicles of Freedom

By Mahendra Ved

The most enduring theme that emerges from diplomat-turned-historian TCA Raghavan’s book on five erudite and committed freedom fighters of the last century is that Hindu-Muslim relations never got resolved. This led to India’s Partition and since then, even today, continues to circumscribe the relations, both within and among the nations that have emerged.

The principal characters within the Circles of Freedom – Asaf Ali and his wife Aruna, Syed Mahmud, Syud Hossain and Sarojini Naidu – battled to bridge the communal divide that carries a deep historical baggage. M K Gandhi admitted that it was the “problem of problems”. They worked hard and hoped to avoid the Partition, but failed. Also, their peers – Gandhi, the Nehrus (Motilal and Jawaharlal) Maulana Azad and many more – could not stop it. But eventually, everyone realised that there was no going back, whatever the outcome and the shape India’s freedom acquired.

There was no giving up even after Mohammed Ali Jinnah, who had closely worked with them for many years, parted ways to materialise his dream of a Muslim homeland. It also brings out the fact that the Jinnah-led movement for what became Pakistan was essentially elitist, with Nawabs, landlords and urban professionals, and never really touched the Muslim masses.

What worked, Raghavan records is the fact that when the Khilafat movement that brought the Hindus and the Muslims close lost popular appeal, the Muslim freedom fighters, including Jinnah, moved away. Congress that provided the umbrella, was the principal loser.

The Muslim League called ‘nationalist’ Muslim Congressmen ‘traitors’ and Azad came to be called a ‘Congress show-boy’. In this, the British provided more than a nudge by tilting towards a suited-booted Jinnah and against those led by the loin-cloth-clad Gandhi, “naked faqir” as derisively described by Winston Churchill, who hated India and Indians.

This book deals with “the predicament of a moderate Muslim in the national movement”. It was exacerbated with time and became one of the key factors in Hindu-Muslim ties as India hurtled towards Partition and beyond.

ALSO READ: A Diplomat’s Diary on Delhi-Dhaka Destiny

Raghavan essentially deals with the first half of the last century which saw India’s freedom movement, in between the two World Wars, becoming a mass struggle leading to independence. Along the way, it created a heap of history and those who helped shape it. The book seeks to salvage some of those otherwise lost under that heap, and largely lost to posterity.

He presents those who came from different parts of India, but certainly an elite English-speaking lot within the Congress party. Of the five, Sarojini Naidu, the poet and orator, was undoubtedly a front-ranker having worked with Gandhi, Nehru and Jinnah. Delhi lawyer Asaf Ali was a member of the Central Legislative Assembly. His marriage to Aruna, less than half his age – a marriage that was no infatuation, forms an important part of the Raghavan’s narrative in that Aruna, although a Gandhi-Nehru admirer, took to radical politics, hobnobbed with revolutionaries who did not subscribe to Gandhi’s prescription of non-violence.

He goes deep into Asaf-Aruna’s relationship. Their personal and political divergence forms a prominent and the most humane part of the book. He makes subtle but important interventions in places to emphasise why his characters acted the way they did. All this comes as a tight-paced narrative that is neither intrusive nor intimidating.

The book’s importance lies in providing the context of its Circle of Freedom. It is neither history – others have recorded it in great detail – nor a bunch of biographies strung together. All five worked along with a myriad of people in the freedom struggle. The narrative goes into what transpired during the imprisonment in Ahmednagar Fort during 1942-45, even as the World War raged outside, making for fascinating reading.

Raghavan’s well-researched study deals with characters who were India’s social elite – British-educated, but anti-British and committed to freedom. Their distinct and collective roles emerge through their correspondence, speeches, articles and books. Gandhi provided the change by involving the common masses. Its success at the Salt Satyagraha “which took the British by surprise” brought various factions within the Congress and those who had moved away, like C R Das and Ansari, to return, despite their reservations. This explains why Gandhi’s total emphasis on non-violence became the mainstream of India’s freedom movement.

Like others in the freedom movement, Raghavan’s players are exemplary humans but naturally, with flaws. Each had deep political preferences that often clashed even as they worked for freedom. Between Nehru and Azad on one side and Madan Mohan Malaviya and Govind Ballabh Pant, the foundation of the divide that has polarized India today was laid.

The course of the freedom movement also brought both camaraderie and a parting of ways. This was despite Asaf Ali finding Jinnah “a stickler for principles, transparently honourable and genial” and Sarojini was “already friends” with Jinnah and had an “enviably close friendship.”

The book refreshes our memory on how, post-Independence, Nehru found that many of his comrades, some equals and some seniors, like Jayaprakash Narayan (JP), C Rajagopalachari (Rajaji) and Ram Manohar Lohia parted ways with him. Already, Gandhi had been assassinated and Sardar Patel passed away. After Jinnah’s departure and his death within a few months, Nehru was virtually the lone titan who survived long years of ceaseless political activity, long periods of imprisonment and the trauma combined with the post-Partition violence, as he took up the difficult task of governance.

The independence and the partition changed the dynamics in India’s public life. Of the five principal actors, three exited the national scene soon. Nostalgic about the Nizam’s rule, Sarojini was at odds with the Sardar Patel-led operations in Hyderabad. Syud Hossain and Asaf Ali became ambassadors, feeling edged out and unable to find a place on return. She became the Governor of the most populous Uttar Pradesh. Syed Mahmud, a minister in the Nehru government for some years before retiring to Bihar, was unable to come to terms with the changed existence of the Muslim minority in free India. Aruna parted ways with Asaf and Congress, and formally joined the Communist Party. Her presence endures through her publications, Link and Patriot. The latter retains a modest presence in this digital era.

Perhaps unintentionally, the book brings out the contrast between those times and the present ones, between those who voluntarily gave up personal freedom and professional pursuits, even worldly comforts, to commit themselves to freedom that was nowhere in sight. They may or may not have been giants of their times, but would still shine against the present-day Lilliputians who dominate public life in India, Pakistan and elsewhere. This makes Raghavan’s scholarly effort truly worthwhile.

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A Diplomat's View on India Bangladesh Ties

A Diplomat’s View on Delhi-Dhaka Destiny

By Mahendra Ved

The birth of Bangladesh in 1971 was thanks to a combination of forces and circumstances that cannot be repeated. Its people wanted to protect and nurture their language and culture in a country separating them by 1400 km. India wanted to get even with a hostile neighbour created by the 1947 Partition. And, it was born because of — and despite — the Cold War politics that neither the perpetrators nor the victims want to talk about today.

Well into the new century, a different phase of the Cold War has ensued with the region’s geopolitics changing with China’s enlarged entry. India and Pakistan remain perennially hostile. And Bangladesh, once derided as an “international basket case” by its mightiest opponent Henry Kissinger, is South Asia’s best economy, soon to join the middle-income group, with human development indicators that are among the best in the region.

Pinak Ranjan Chakravarty, a former Indian High Commissioner and one of the most erudite scholars on Bangladesh, records this ‘Transformation, Emergence and the Evolution of India-Bangladesh Ties’ in his book with this title. Assessing the entire gamut of issues, he concludes: “India and Bangladesh are destined to cooperate given that their destinies will remain intertwined in the future.”

He underlines that like any two neighbours, India and Bangladesh have problems and issues that remain to be resolved. Even as they get resolved, they get impacted by the region’s changing geopolitics that impacts both, inevitably posing new, knotty challenges.

Not the least is the change in India’s position. Its concern in the last century was that neighbours did not sign security-related agreements with the West, especially the United States. It worked diplomatically for the Indian Ocean to become “a zone of peace”. The worry in the changed scenario is that they do not get too close to, and become dependent upon, China.

Indeed, the China factor looms large on the entire region just as it also confronts others across the globe. Chakravarty analyses at length how the India-Bangladesh“Shonali Adhyaha”, the golden phase in bilateral relations, can be impacted by it.

“If Bangladesh-China ties remain within the bandwidth of acceptability, then bilateral ties can be insulated from disruption. If it impinges on India’s security interests, then India will certainly use its leverage to counter it. There are enough indicators that both sides understand this sensitivity and so far, have navigated adroitly, avoiding crossing certain lines that could upset bilateral ties,” he writes.

The reality is that India finds itself encircled by China in the Indian Ocean region, with smaller neighbours playing the “China Card”. Developments in Nepal, the Maldives and Sri Lanka are recent examples. All except India and Bhutan have accepted China’s multi-billion Belt and Road Initiative (BRI). Eagerly welcoming money and infrastructure projects under BRI, they are now anxious about a “debt trap” and some have continued despite this risk.

Bangladesh is on BRI, but as Chakravarty points out, it fears that if it joins or cooperates with the Quad – Australia, India, Japan, and the United States – it might invite Chinese ire and inevitably, get caught into big-power rivalry. Playing one side against the other is not easy and could get more difficult in future given the ferocity of China’s confrontation with the US and its allies.

In a succinct comment on Bangladesh-China ties, he says: “Bangladesh thinks China is less intrusive than India.” This is inevitable when India and Bangladesh share borders, cultural links, and socio-economic commonalities and are mutually dependent.

ALSO READ: Bangladesh – Proving Kissinger Wrong And More

Having spent considerable time in Bangladesh, Chakravarty notes that the young, professional and business classes clamour for closer ties with China. But “the same people make frequent visits to India.”

A domestic political angle often played up pitches India which helped in the freedom movement as a villain. Those with Islamist leanings look to the West, including Pakistan, and China because of the latter’s adversarial relations with India. It’s befriending enemy’s enemy. Indeed, half a century down, the fact that their separation from Pakistan was opposed by the US, China and the Muslim world is becoming a distant memory for the young and is glossed over.

In a unique neighbourhood, India faces problems typical of a large country surrounded by small ones. The ‘friendliest’ Bangladesh, too, finds India’s location on its three sides constricting and generates fears and expectations. India is anxious, particularly when the smaller ones want to play the  “China card.” Like the Maldives that has sent back Indian soldiers and sailors. Or Si Lanka and Nepal where each government is either “pro-India” or “pro-China,” cancelling or dishing out projects.

India’s expectations of Bangladesh, while helping liberally (but without the Chinese deep pockets and the BRI), Chakravarty writes, “are mostly security and migration-related. The principal concerns are border management, terrorism, smuggling and human trafficking, Islamist terrorism and China’s growing engagement in different sectors of Bangladesh that could give China a strategic advantage in the region.”

Chakravarty delves into India’s assistance in the freedom movement with the hope of nurturing a secular, syncretic Muslim society where minorities feel safe. With Bangladesh’s syncretic Islam taking blows from the Islamists, he foresees the struggle between Islamist and secular forces dominating Bangladesh’s domestic politics “that will occasionally turn violent.” Its political impact may not remain confined to India’s east and north-east. The book notes that Hasina has battled the Islamists but also made concessions to some sections that control the madrassas where the rural youth get trained, hoping that radicalisation would not begin early in their lives.

Inevitably in the future, India will have to engage with the conflicting political legacies led by the two ageing women leaders now in their late seventies. Their succession may or may not emerge from the rival families Ailing Zia’s son Tareq is wanted by law and remains in exile. Hasina has yet to indicate any preference for a successor, either from within or outside her family.

The oft-posed question is about India putting all its eggs in Sheikh Hasina’s basket. Chakravarty contrasts that by Sheikh Hasina’s with the record of the two-term premier, Begum Khaleda Zia, when Islamists were part of her government and militants killed with impunity. The distrust is inbred and inevitable, on both sides. That leaves India with no option, as of now. Chakravarty underscores the ‘risk’ but sees no clear picture. “In the long term, India’s strategy should be to develop ties with parties across the political spectrum,” he opines.

Hasina once asked Chakravarty, then India’s envoy: “What did you get from Zia?” He told her that India had no high expectations from her. A decade hence, the ground situation remains the same. Only time can tell how the internal dynamics will work, and how they will impact India-Bangladesh relations.

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A Reporter’s Romance by Mahendra Ved

Stories, Memories, Conspiracies A Reporter’s Romance

By Amit Sengupta

The smell of newsprint. The quintessential smell of newsprint. For old-fashioned journalists who started working on a typewriter, the catchy cover of this book would be a quick trip down nostalgia lane. It will be soaked with the sweet and salty memories of the heady atmospherics of a bustling, noisy and chaotic newspaper office, with the newspaper in black & white arriving next morning as a testimony of their faith in their loved, addictive profession. This book, and this cover, tells us this story of the 5 Ws and 1 H, along with the byline, the typeface, the point size and leading, and the headline, half-hidden.

@75 As I Saw It: A Reporter Recounts, penned by seasoned journalist Mahendra Ved, is what it claims to be: a reporter’s notebook and close encounters fleshed out with anecdotes, stories, revelations, memories, journeys, conspiracies, murders, riots and violence, prime ministers and politicians, and film stars and celebrities. In this journey, now at 75 in year 2024, for a reporter, there is no QED. In this raw copy which must go to the copy desk, there is no full-stop in the end.

In a sharply cryptic blurb on the back cover, another seasoned Hindi journalist plays a spoof on himself. His reporter’s journey too is still on, after having traversed all over the world with miscellaneous prime ministers and for other assignments, and having reported from the ground across India, including from the dense forests of Chhattisgarh, living among the adivasis. Says Ramsharan Joshi: “Being @80, I see my contemporary, Mahendra Ved’s creative Avatar @ his 75 as a full bloom of professional accomplishment.”

The introductory chapter, ‘A Reporter’s Audacity’, tells a tale. When he started young, like most of us, there were certain core values and ethics of journalism which journalists had inherited from the profession. I presume many journalists, never ever compromised, till the end of their lives – despite being pushed to the wall. Besides, Ved is proud of his objectivity and neutrality.

He writes: “When I began, giving free publicity to any individual or institution in that ‘socialist’ era was a no. Dealing with private sector enterprise was like a touch-me-not. It was, indeed, one-sided. Now the private sector is the bread-giver, and (the) media is its best – and worst – example.”

He continues: “Field reporters are becoming invisible, and expendable. Ask any committed reporter, he/she will tell you that they have worked at the cost of their health, personal life, personal relationships, etc. Work is the only thing that keeps a reporter going…”

The contradictions have been sharp and jarring in contemporary times. He tells the story of one of his last experiences at The Times of India, Delhi — meeting a young TV reporter in a news briefing. He was “loudly asking questions on cue on cell-phone from his boss – loud enough to disturb the briefing”. The young fellow “accosted” Ved and said, “Sir, please tell me the news point of what he said.”

Ved was reminded of his younger days. He “obliged” him. “Back in the office, my editors watched this reporter’s ‘Breaking News’ on TV. They told me: ‘This is your lead’.”

Ved witnessed a great event in Indian space history. India was collaborating with the Soviet Union on space research. Sputnik, the first elementary satellite, happened in 1957. (Sputnik was the name of a revolutionary newspaper started by Lenin.) Yuri Gagarin was the first man to go to space, something “unthinkable” those days. “When the space hero visited, he took India by storm. He conquered the popular imagination of my generation.”

ALSO READ: How Tricky It Is For Reporters To Cover A War

Later, Ved happened to be in the same Control Room of Doordarshan with Prime Minister Indira Gandhi, one of two lucky journalists. The Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) had launched a joint mission with Soviet Interkosmos. Two Soviet astronauts and Squadron Leader Rakesh Sharma of the Indian Air Force spent seven days, 21 hours and 40 minutes aboard the Salyut orbital station. Air Chief Marshal Dilbagh Singh addressed the PM: “Madam, now you can speak to him.”

Rakesh Sharma was asked about his health, his food, if he had slept properly, and how it felt to be in space. He said, “Zaroorat se zyada hi khatey hain.” He also said that the crew practiced yoga. (Mrs Gandhi too was a trained yoga practitioner. )

“Wahan se Bharat kaisa dikhta hain,” She asked. He said, “Saare jahan se accha!”

“There was a hushed silence. Nobody clapped… The PM’s face lighted up… A lump rose in my throat…”

Rakesh Sharma was honoured with the Ashok Chakra. He also received the ‘Hero of the Soviet Union’ award.

Many of us, as reporters, saw at close range and documented the State-sponsored massacre of Sikh citizens in November 1984 in Delhi and elsewhere, after the assassination of Mrs Gandhi. The organized mass murders, loot and violence went on four days and the Indian State and its law enforcement agencies refused to move.

Ved remembers his Sikh neighbours in a locality where he lived in a rented house with his wife. When he left the place, neighbours came to say goodbye. “Among them was a Sikh family. Its patriarch, whom I only knew as ‘bauji’, insisted that we have our last meal together. That evening he repeatedly said: ‘We will not forget 1984’.”

During those turbulent days, Bauji and his three sons visited him regularly. They would spend the whole day in Ved’s house and then leave after dinner. “No queries were needed. Fear had made them seek refuge.”

“With the Press label on my scooter as the only protection, like any other reporter, I rode on prominent through-fares seeing burning taxis and taxi-stands, presumably, Sikh-owned, and fleeing men being shorn of their turbans. It was scary to see hundreds of stick-wielding men, shouting slogans in a riotous mood, thronging the VVIP security zone, as the policemen passively looked on…” The Delhi Police had let law and order slip out of their control.

Ved was posted in Dhaka when Sheikh Mujibur Rehman, the founding father of Bangladesh, and 27 of his family members, security chief and servants were murdered after an army coup. Mujib’s brother and brother-in-law, two sons and their wives, one of them pregnant, his third son, just about 10, were murdered. He remembers this radio announcement in the morning of August 15, 1975: “This is Major Dalim speaking. Under the robust leadership of Khndoker Mushtaq Ahmad, the armed forces have taken power. Sheikh Mujib and his government has been ousted. From now on, Martial Law has been declared…”

It was a grim day, but a “journalist cannot place himself/herself above the news”. While airports and communications came under army control, Ved was able to smuggle out two reports, one with his wife and another with a passenger who were flying to Calcutta.

Interestingly, Ved points to the invisible hand of a section of the CIA behind the assassination. He writes about two officials in the US embassy in Dhaka. “Both officers became known after the August 15 events. In many reports and analysis, Cherry was cited as the CIA station chief in Dhaka. That Sheila was seen dancing at a Dhaka hotel with Dalim and Cherry allegedly ‘helped’ the coup d’etat became known to the world..”

It is also well known that the US had backed and propped the army dictatorship in Pakistan. While Soviet Union backed India, and the freedom movement in Bangladesh, the Americans were unhappy with the massive victory of the Indian forces, the liberation of Bangladesh, and the surrender of thousands of Pakistani troops. The US establishment was a tacit observer of the genocide and mass rapes unleashed by the Pakistani army in Dhaka and elsewhere, soon after they had sensed their inevitable defeat.

Mahendra Ved’s book is loaded with anecdotes and revelations. A close reading would suggest deeper nuances and political ramifications. For journalists, old and young, this is a reporter’s diary which heightens the beauty of the profession, and shows us, how we, as journalists, have lost our way in contemporary India.

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