Journalists From India

"I am sorry Sonia Gandhi, but here I am, back on air. You carried out a little Italian mafia-style operation, remember?...Your Congress workers tailed my car after midnight yesterday. They identified me, then they blocked my car 300 metres from my house, they tried to break in. They threw bottles and liquid. They got caught. The visual evidence is all there. The FIR copies are there for you to read... You failed Sonia, like you always do. You are a failure. You failed at elections. You failed to cover-up your scams. You failed to prop-up your tin-pot dynasty. And do you remember Sonia that scary tale? That those who dare to take you on do not survive to tell the tale? Figuratively or otherwise? Even that does not scare anyone any more.... When there should be FIRs against you, Sonia, for your absolute lack of accountability and political ethics. So, who the hell do you think you are Sonia, you are nothing but a crumbling symbol of entitlement. And that too, without any popular base. So please throw your 10 Janpath circus tricks elsewhere. You failed in your attack on me last night."

"I don’t think that this arrest will either frighten or silence Arnab Goswami. It will enhance his appeal and make the Shiv Sena and Congress appear ridiculous."

"BJYM condemns #ArnabGoswami's arrest & this attack on freedom of press. Request every young Mumbaikar who value our constitutional freedoms to join BJYM protest against this fascist action."

"Whatever has been remaining of the credibility of the Editors' Guild of India has been destroyed by the abject silence on a series of fake news. It has become a self-serving organisation. I have been a member of the Editors' Guild for a long time. I, hereby, resign for absolute compromise of editorial ethics."

"You are furious Sonia that I.... exposed the state complicity in the killing of Hindu Sadhus in a state that you run. ... I am sorry Sonia, but who the hell you are? You have organised a ‘Lynchistan’ campaign in my country, every time an incident happens. Now you are angry when I ask you why you won’t apply the same logic, or some of that degree of outrage when Hindu monks are dragged and handed over, yes, handed over to over a 100-strong crazy mob ready to lynch them, and by whom Sonia? By your men in uniform.... Why are you so touchy and silent over the brutality inflicted over Hindu monks? What is your problem with Hinduism? Why do you talk about ‘Hindu terrorism and Hindu Taliban’? What do you gain by such terrible stereotypes? What are you hiding?"

"“I was following all the rules according to the law while I was sitting in protest over here. There was no crowd with me. We were just three people sitting here. I am not protesting against the police. This government is scared. How many voices can they (govt) suppress?… After Arnab Goswami gets bail from the High Court, I will return to the Assembly and will distribute sweets to all those ministers who were laughing after the arrest of Arnab.”"

"How can you false arrest someone just because you don't like him? Remember, Indians will fight back against this kind of draconian act. I condemn the forceful arrest of Journalist #ArnabGoswami This is fascist intolerance towards freedom of expression."

"My security guard held those people and their bike. They reach my building’s parking lot and I asked them (security guards) who were these people. They told me that they were Congress workers, Youth Congress workers, who had said that they have been sent to attack me and they said they were given instructions by ‘higher ups’ to attack me, to teach me a lesson. So, I just want to tell you Sonia Gandhi that you are the biggest coward in this country right now. You, Sonia Gandhi tried to carry out an attack on me when I was driving back from work... You know the questions I have asked you are absolutely appropriate... You have no guts to face me. I will hold you responsible for any consequence that will happen to me... If anything ever happens to me, it is Sonia Gandhi and Vadra family, who cannot take my questions, [who] are responsible."

"We condemn the attack on press freedom in #Maharashtra. This is not the way to treat the Press. This reminds us of the emergency days when the press was treated like this."

"Maharashtra government today entered the house of Arnab Goswami, assaulted him, and arrested him. I want to ask them, how many voices will they suppress? How many houses will they level? How many people will they strangle? Why be angry when someone calls you a penguin? You look like a penguin so people call you that."

"Congress leaders have been intimidating me and threatening me with physical violence. I am deeply grateful that the Supreme Court has noted the violence against me and my wife."

"Sonia Gandhi and Rahul Gandhi have openly attacked @narendramodi. Govt through motivated charges of attack on institutions yet they are completely silent when their own Govt in Maharashtra is blatantly suppressing freedom of Press. Textbook case of hypocrisy!"

"A Black Day for Indian demoracy. I strongly condemn the assault on senior journalist #ArnabGoswami by Mumbai police. Vendetta politics should be stopped and freedom of press should be maintained in Maharashtra by releasing Mr Goswami immediately."

"India didn’t forgive Indira Gandhi for the Emergency. India never forgave Rajiv Gandhi for his assault on press freedom. And now, India will again punish Sonia-Rahul Gandhi for their brazen and intimidating use of state power to get equal with journalists."

"If this had happened in a state run by BJP, and, instead of Hindus, and let me be very direct about it, they were from any minority community, would [actor] Nasseeruddin Shah, Aparna Sen, [historian] Ramchandra Guha, [editor] Siddharth Varadarajan, and the award vapsi gang, would they have gone berserk today?"

"“This incident is not just limited to the stifling of the freedom of the press, but it is an infringement of personal freedom and liberty granted to every citizen of the country. When the people who are meant to protect citizens become the very people that citizens need protection from, the collective might of democracy needs to enforce itself to demand fairness,” the country’s first nationalistic digital media association. “The police is well within its right to constitute action against any party it thinks has erred, however, the process of the law has to be followed. This incident only appears to be a zenith in the witch-hunt that was launched by the government against Republic TV over the past few weeks.” “We, as a group representing digital news orgs are especially dismayed that if such high-handedness can be displayed towards a legacy media, smaller digital outfits could simply be crushed by the might of the state to ensure that dissenting voices are muzzled. However, such attempts will be opposed and fought by IDMA, for the sake of the right of the media, its right to be free and fair, and for the citizen’s civil liberties,” the statement added."

"A little more than 24 hours ago, in moments that I will never forget, I came out after 8 days in custody in jail. I was in 2 jails - First the Alibag district jail and then in Taloja Central Jail. And today I want to tell you-- my dear viewers-- that the days in jail have been the most meaningful days of my life. And let me tell you why these have been the most meaningful days of my life: They have because the struggle in these past days was real, but I have realized that the opportunity to struggle for the truth is the greatest honor that I have ever received. That’s what’s made these days so meaningful,"

"Are we returning to an age of facism and dictatorship in the garb of democracy? Vendetta politics exceeding all limits.Absolutely no ground to arrest #ArnabGoswami.Minimum that the Maharashtra Govt can do to vindicate the freedom of press is to release him immediately."

"Congress and its allies have shamed democracy once again. Blatant misuse of state power against Republic TV & Arnab Goswami is an attack on individual freedom and the 4th pillar of democracy. It reminds us of the Emergency. This attack on free press must be and WILL BE OPPOSED."

"Those in the free press who don’t stand up today in support of Arnab, you are now tactically in support of fascism. You may not like him, you may not approve of him,you may despise his very existence but if you stay silent you support suppression. Who speaks if you are next ?"

"Perhaps the concept of shame applies to only women but not men. Maybe because she was a ‘prostitute’ she was able to write crude depictions of sex without shame. In that case, it surely must not suit the supposed learned men to depict conjugal pleasures in the same way?. (as a sarcastic retort to criticism of the original work and her 1910 edition containing sexual/erotic passages, believed to being unsuitable for women)"

"I cannot let this book go no matter how many times I read it...it is as adorable as Lord Krishna."

"As it is not only written by a woman but by a woman who was born into the same community as mine, I intend to edit and publish it in a proper form."

"Here is an illustrative example of how every word that Modi uttered following the Godhra incident was twisted and distorted by the well-oiled misinformation machinery set up by the Congress and the Left. One of the early charges against Modi was that when post-Godhra riots broke out, he justified and legitimised violence against Muslims thus proving his complicity. This mischief started with an incomplete statement telecast on Zee TV based on an interview conducted by Zee correspondent Sudhir Chaudhary. Modi’s exact words were: “Kriya pratikriya ki chain chal rahi hai. Hum chahte hain ki na kriya ho aur na pratikriya.” (A chain of action-reaction is going on. We want that there should be neither ‘action’ nor ‘reaction’). But Zee TV deliberately left out the second sentence and presented the mischievously clipped first half of the statement to build a case that Modi had justified the post-Godhra riots as a legitimate reaction of Hindus against the killings of karsevaks at Godhra.... When Chaudhary questioned the CM about the Gulberg Society massacre in which the former Congress MP, Ehsan Jafri, was killed along with more than 50 others, the chief minister in his reply referred to the reports that Jafri had first fired at the violent mob, which apparently infuriated the crowd further. Thereafter, the mob stormed the Gulberg Society and set it on fire. According to Chaudhary, Narendra Modi referred to Jafri’s firing as “action” and the massacre that followed as “reaction”.... However, he could not provide a satisfactory explanation why in the Zee TV telecast, the last line—“Hum chahte hai ki na kriya ho aur na pratikriya”—was deliberately omitted. ..."

"...Hindus too have begun to suffer, thanks to a new belligerence of the Muslims who have been under siege for ten weeks. The repeated recovery of huge caches of weapons from Muslim pockets forced some of the ministers to ask Modi about the steps the police was taking to flush out these armouries. What is adding to the knife-edge tension is the growing evidence that the violence has a deliberate pattern and there’s a motive to keep the flames from being doused. Violence seemed to have been brought under control by the second week of March until sporadic attacks on Hindus in Ahmedabad, Bharuch, and Modasa in the midst of the state school board examinations reignited the embers. But it escalated on Ram Navmi day when a police constable was killed in Ahmedabad’s Gomtipur area. The sudden spurt of violence followed a call given by local Muslim leaders to students from the community to boycott the rescheduled state school board examinations failed. Significantly, among those who were exhorting the students to boycott the exams were five local Congress leaders besides members of the radical Islamic movement, the Tableeghi Jamaat. Local BJP leaders point to other incidents to suggest there was a method in the mayhem. Hours after Defence Minister George Fernandes led a peace march in Ahmedabad violence broke out on the route he had taken. The area had not witnessed any riots in the recent past. Strangely, the rioting stopped a day before Sonia Gandhi’s peace rally in Ahmedabad on May 1. But, on May 5, a day before the Rajya Sabha debated the censure motion, and barely 24 hours after Gill took over his Gujarat assignment, violence erupted again. This time Muslim rioters attacked Bhilwas locality in the Shah Alam area. Says political analyst Vidyut Thakar, “A pattern is visible in the new round of violence. There is an impression that it has to do with the Modi-hatao campaign...”"

"During investigations, the SIT sent formal requisitions to Zee TV to make available a copy of the CD of the television interview of Narendra Modi conducted by Sudhir Chaudhary on March 1, 2002. Despite two reminders and a notice u/s 91 Cr.P.C. sent to Zee TV, the CD was not made available to the SIT. Sudhir Chaudhary said in his testimony to the SIT that the chief minister was of the view that he wanted neither action nor reaction. But this admission, coming years later, was not telecast and propagated the way the mischievous half-statement had been. What is worse, Sudhir Chaudhary continues to reiterate even today that Modi had justified the 2002 riots. ...Since the newspapers and TV channel that misquoted Modi refused to rectify their mistake, the mischievous misquote acquired a life of its own and has been continually used as part of a smear campaign even after the SIT established that there was deliberate distortion by the media in this matter. Even today, the website of Teesta Setalvad’s Communalism Combat carries the allegation."

"Later, years later, a famous editor who regularly took tea with Sonia and who became a close confidante of her daughter Priyanka had a story to tell. We were having coffee together in the coffee shop of the Oberoi in Mumbai and I, as always, looked up to the eighteenth floor and paid silent tribute to those who were lined up against a wall and shot dead by the Pakistani jihadi terrorist, Fazlullah, on 26/11. And I was thinking of those who were killed in this coffee shop that same horrible night, when the editor said something that brought me instantly back into the present moment. This was not long after Tarun Tejpal was jailed for the alleged attempted rape of a friend of his daughter’s in a lift in the Grand Hyatt Hotel in Goa. We were talking about how astounding it was that he had made so much money from a magazine that barely sold a few thousand copies. ‘The money didn’t come from journalism,’ the editor said. ‘I am sure not,’ I said. ‘Well, let’s just say that Tarun Tejpal had good reasons to be very, very close to 10 Janpath.’ In my head it was as if the pieces of a puzzle started to come together. I met Tarun through Vidia and Nadira Naipaul. Although he was always charming and friendly when we met, there was something about him that kept me from sharing their admiration of him. And I had always been sceptical whether his sting operations were sting operations or exercises in entrapment. His most famous sting operation was conducted in the third year of Vajpayee’s government, and it so discredited Vajpayee that it turned his government into a lame duck. The two people caught on hidden cameras accepting money from fake arms dealers were the BJP president, Bangaru Laxman, and Jaya Jaitley, who had long been the closest aide of George Fernandes. George had to resign as defence minister and the scandal never died. But because I saw it more as entrapment than journalism I began to follow other Tehelka exposés closely and noticed that they seemed always to expose Sonia Gandhi’s opponents."

"He does not seem to have understood the gravity of the offence. India's elite lauded the amendments to the IPC, widening the definition of rape, little realizing that they did not apply simply to lower-class men, but could affect them too. While there has been much clamour for the death penalty in cases of rape involving the lower classes, would the elite now like to apply this to themselves?"

"Rioting did not start in the morning of February 28. Hindus started with pelting of stones on Muslim houses in Naroda Patia area. Muslims also retaliated with stones. Between 10.30 and 11.00 a.m., an auto driver named Ranjeet Vanjara was parked near a masjid in Naroda Patiya. A group of Muslims dragged him into the gali near their masjid. On seeing this, Hindus began shouting for help. Police came within 20 minutes. When they went in the gali, they found the dead body of Vanzara outside the mosque. His eyes had been gouged. This inflamed the Hindus and they went on a rampage. This case has also been registered in court but no action has taken place over it. No one is giving this case its due attention because it is a case of Hindu killing. The second incident took place around 11 a.m. A Muslim owner of an Eicher truck was surrounded by a Hindu mob. In panic, he mowed down the crowd. One person was crushed to death. This too enraged the mob and they went on a rampage. In the third incident in Naroda Gam, a group of Muslims murdered a Hindu cyclist. Thus, the first three persons to be killed in mob violence on February 28 were Hindus. Therefore, the theory that the post-Godhra riots of 2002 were part of a well-crafted BJP conspiracy is all bunkum. Nor were they as one-sided as they came to be projected."

"I was a personal witness to the following incident. On 3 rd or 4 th of March, I entered Shah Alam dargah, which had been converted into a refugee camp. Baldeep Singh photographer was with me. On one side of the dargah there is a big room where one lady named Belim was briefing the press and giving highly exaggerated accounts of what had happened. She was crying hysterically in front of journalists. As soon as the media persons moved away, she instantly stopped howling. This made it obvious that it was all a play-act. On the other side of the partition, there was a squint-eyed man from Karnataka. A lady was sitting with him with a tape recorder tutoring this Muslim from Karnataka to say, “I am so angry at the riots that I am going to become a terrorist.” Teesta has a real perverse streak in her. She had started tutoring witnesses from the start as though she was just waiting for this riot to break out."

"Many things have changed in India since Narendra Modi first became prime minister. But one change that has gone almost unnoticed is that a process of real decolonisation has transpired. And because of this the old, colonised ruling class has been swept away. This is a very good thing. It should have happened long, long ago. As someone who belonged to that ruling class, I consider myself well qualified to explain why this process of decolonisation was overdue and how we failed India as its ruling class."

"The realms of high culture that in more civilised countries resonate with literature, music and art are occupied in India by Bollywood and trashy TV serials. Inevitable, since mass education is such a mess that most children leave school without learning to read a storybook. Reading is so out of fashion that most small towns in India have no bookshops, most villages have no libraries and, in our bigger cities, bookshops stock mostly books and magazines written in English. So when the RSS leaders turned up in Delhi last week to tell the Minister of Human Resource Development that they wanted changes in school education, they had a point. Unfortunately, because the RSS is led by doddering old bigots and provincial intellectuals, this ‘cultural’ organisation is in no position to give the HRD Minister worthwhile advice. The RSS leaders who met the minister reportedly confined their concerns to history books that they claim portray a ‘Western’ view of history. They demanded that these books be replaced by those written by historians with an Indian view of history. They have a point, but they make it badly. It is true that in the decades in which India was ruled imperiously by the Congress, the task of writing history textbooks was allotted to Leftist historians who chose to view India’s past through a distorted lens. The most celebrated of these historians, , has gone so far as to deny that Muslim invaders destroyed the temples of us idolatrous infidels. Undoubtedly, if she were writing about more recent history, she would deny that the Taliban blew up the Buddhas of Bamiyan — and would say that they fell to pieces of their own accord. In the interests of ‘secularism’, most Indian schools and colleges provide only limited courses for the study of ancient India, and Sanskrit literature. So the vast majority of Indian children grow up with a sense of being Indian that is restricted to a religious identity. When this gets infused with a toxic sort of nationalism, as happens in RSS educational institutions, the result is bigotry of a lethal kind."

"It is true that in the decades in which India was ruled imperiously by the Congress, the task of writing history textbooks was allotted to Leftist historians who chose to view India’s past through a distorted lens. The most celebrated of these historians, Romila Thapar, has gone so far as to deny that Muslim invaders destroyed the temples of us idolatrous infidels. Undoubtedly, if she were writing about more recent history, she would deny that the Taliban blew up the Buddhas of Bamiyan — and would say that they fell to pieces of their own accord."

"The 2014 general election marked the beginning of the end of India’s ruling elite. The election whose results came last week marked the end. As someone born and bred in this group of privileged Indians, I speak as an insider. So believe me when I tell you that we controlled everything. Politics, government, business, foreign policy, the police, the military and the media. All this was possible because we were to some degree all courtiers in the court of the Nehru-Gandhi dynasty since the British left. We knew that their ‘socialism’ and ‘secularism’ were as fake as their ‘idea of India’.... If they have spent the past five years targeting Modi, often wrongly, for what they perceive as attempts to crush democracy, it is possibly because they know how easily this can be done. The truth is that the traditional ruling elite believes in an idea of India in which there are privileges and not rights. This was always a bad idea. Now it is dead."

"Last week I went to see Arun Jaitley. He is one of the few politicians whom I respect. I have known him from the time I was a junior reporter and can say honestly that he is one of a handful of politicians who is not in politics for personal gain but for public service. He is in the process of moving out of the house in Lutyens’ Delhi that was allotted to him as a senior minister. While waiting to see him I noticed blank spaces on the walls where pictures have been taken down. His decision to surrender his government house as soon as he demitted office is remarkable in itself. I know millionaires and maharajahs who have to be physically evicted."

"It took this election campaign for ordinary Indians to notice what was going on. They noticed because Modi told voters that they were choosing between a ‘kaamdaar’ and a ‘naamdaar’. A working man and a prince. It did not help that the ‘naamdaar’ then mocked Modi and made fun of everything about him. Modi’s ‘hugplomacy’, ‘Gabbar Singh Tax’, demonetisation. Modi’s demonetisation, he said, was done to steal their money and give it to his rich friends. The country’s Chowkidar, he said too many times, was a ‘chor’. He forgot that he was demeaning not just a political opponent but the Prime Minister of India. Ordinary voters were appalled that the heir to India’s most powerful political dynasty should talk this way. He sounded arrogant, entitled and insulting and reminded them that there were too many political heirs in Indian politics"

"In 1989, Rajiv Gandhi lost the election because he was seen as corrupt by ordinary, rural Indians who made up ditties about the ‘son-in-law of Italy’. The Congress party has never explained why the best friends of Rajiv and his wife, Mr and Mrs Quattrocchi, were bribed in this deal. Nor has there been a credible explanation for why Rajiv did not make public the names of those bribed in this deal, even after Bofors officials came to Delhi and offered to give them.... whoever advised the Congress president (Rahul Gandhi) to continue charging Modi with corruption should have reminded him that the ghost of Bofors still lurks in the shadows of 10 Janpath."

"When I heard Aung San Suu Kyi's address to both houses of Britian's Parliament in Westminster hall last week, what impressed me was the clarity with which she spelt out her vision for her country. But, throughout her speech, something kept bothering me and by the time she finished, I discovered what it was. What bothered me was that I could not think of a single Indian leader who could make such a speech. The Indian political landscape today has become a desert in which only the stunted progeny of stunted political leaders bloom. We need our political parties to throw up real leaders and we need a political discourse in which real political problems are discussed. So can we stop fishing 'secularism' out of the dustbin of history and holding it up as a shining ideal? Its relevance faded a long time ago."

"Dynasty, a political tool in the hands of the ruling class, has become the catalyst for a new colonization of a country whose soul has already been deeply scarred by centuries of it."

"If this was indeed the plan it unraveled early that morning when a Belgian Indologist and Hindutva sympathizer called Koenraad Elst had to be sent home in disgrace because of his remark on Islam. It was not what he said about Islam that was wrong so much as the offensive manner in which he said it... A Muslim diplomat stood up halfway through Elst's speech and walked out. Ram Madhav, who was seated in the front row, intervened and the session was abruptly ended.... The next thing we knew was that Elst had been put back on a flight back to Belgium. The conference was intended to create a new idea of India but definitely not one in which there would be no room for Muslims."

"There was disappointment in Nehru’s leadership, but it never took away from the deep regard in which he was held for decades after he died. He was credited with bequeathing to India democracy and pluralism, and if anyone challenged the achievements of Nehruvian socialism, as V.S. Naipaul did in An Area of Darkness, he was reviled."

"This is why it has been so astonishingly easy for the Gandhi dynasty to turn India’s oldest political party into a family firm. And once dynastic succession became acceptable at the highest levels of political power, it became impossible to prevent dynastic democracy spreading like a slow poison into the very soul of India. It spread horizontally at higher levels of leadership in every political party and vertically down to the lowest levels of grassroots democracy. It has now become almost impossible to find a village council that is free of this debilitating disease. ... India’s ‘tryst with destiny’ could more appropriately have been called India’s tryst with dynasty."

"It was the first time an Indian prime minister had been so open about his religion and a tremor of fear went up the ‘secular’ spine of Lutyens’ Delhi. Friends who had never see the Ganga puja or Benares said that they loved the ceremony but they were worried about the message this would send to Muslims and Christians. So they readied their ammunition for the attack on Modi’s secular credentials that began within months of his becoming prime minister."

"“the word Hindutva is being used as a term of abuse […] it is used mostly in pejorative terms […] the debate appears no longer confined to the cloistered world of priests, or even the self-serving one of politics, it has expanded into a challenge to Hindu civilisation […] the wider attack on Indian civilisation that this pejorative use of the word Hindu represents. It bothers me that I went to school and college in this country without any idea of the enormous contribution of Hindu civilisation to the history of the world. It bothers me that even today our children, whether they go to state schools or expensive private ones, come out without any knowledge of their own culture or civilisation […] You cannot be proud of a heritage you know nothing about, and in the name of secularism, we have spent 50 years in total denial of the Hindu roots of this civilisation. We have done nothing to change a colonial system of mass education founded on the principle that Indian civilisation had nothing to offer […] our contempt for our culture and civilisation […] evidence of a country that continues to be colonised to the core? Our contempt for who we are gets picked up these days by the Western press […] racism [is] equated with Hindu Nationalism. For countries that gave us slavery and apartheid that really is rich, but who can blame them when we think so badly of ourselves. As for me I would like to state clearly that I believe that the Indic religions have made much less trouble for the world than the Semitic ones and that Hindu civilisation is something I am very proud of. If that is evidence of my being ‘communal’, then, so my inner voice tells me, so be it.”"

"Are there no limits to what Muslims can demand, and get away with, in the imagined cause of their religion? ... There is no reason why our political leaders should have to start kowtowing and running scared everytime a bunch of semi-literate mullahs gets up and starts making a noise. ... We have just seen Shiv-Sena government in Maharashtra buckle under Muslim pressure and suspend the release of Mani Rattnam’s Bombay. It is a film about inter-religious marriage and the triumph of peace over communal hatred. ... After seeing the film they came up with a list of objections so absurd that they should have been considered ludicrous in our secular land but they have been taken seriously. They object, we are told, to the last shot. The Muslim girl while eloping with her Hindu husband carried the Koran in her hand. This was bad, they said, because it seemed to imply that her marriage had Islamic sanction. ... Nor did they approve of the film’s first scene which shows a woman lifting her burqa off her face.... Offence was taken, we are told, because a Hindu family was shown being burned alive. A Muslim family is also shown being similarly murdered, because this also happened in the terrible riots of 1992, but our Muslim objectors are selective in their disapproval."

"The reason I quote this sycophantic comment is because it reflects perfectly the consensus in smoke-filled newspaper offices and in Delhi’s television studios. And Sonia, reserved to the point of being uneasy with conversation of any kind, used this to her advantage when it came to handling the media. She evolved a policy whereby she refused to talk to journalists except those who were carefully vetted as supportive and obedient. The kind that may have asked her questions about India’s stand on important international issues or big political and economic problems were never allowed near her. The media was most helpful in this exercise. In newsrooms and TV studios I seemed always to run into some editor or columnist who had just come from 10 Janpath. You could tell that they had almost before they said anything in her support. No sooner did they get that invitation to tea in 10 Janpath than hard-boiled reporters would acquire so changed an expression on their faces that jokes began to be made about how ‘one cup of tea with Sonia Gandhi could change the DNA of a journalist’."

"The English-language media is a powerful pillar in the structure that makes up that most privileged enclave called Lutyens’ Delhi. Like the bureaucrats who constitute a much more powerful pillar, most journalists had traditionally been from English-speaking, upper class India. They saw the Nehru-Gandhi dynasty as representing their class interests as much as it represented the colonized officials who inherited India from the British. The very idea of Modi was terrifying because what language would they interview him in? Would he give them interviews at all or choose Hindi journalists instead? Would the cosy relationship they had with power remain? Would their ‘idea of India’ remain intact?"

"If there is a single reason why Narendra Modi became the first prime minister in more than thirty years to get a full mandate from the people of India it was because he was the only one who understood how urgently people wanted change. The word he used most in his election speeches was the word for change in Hindi. And every time he said parivartan his audience would roar its approval. During the election campaign I came to understand that it was more important than anything else he could promise on a hot, stifling evening in Pappu’s chai shop in Benares."

"“When I go to the Vishwanath Mandir in Benares and listen to the most powerful, magical aarti I hear from the priests that the knowledge of it will probably die because the temple is now controlled by secular bureaucrats”."

"Now that the Chief Minister of Bihar has dragged 'succularism' into the political discourse, it is time to deconstruct it so that we can end this pointless debate once and for all. I have deliberately misspelt the word because when said in Hindi that is how it is usually pronounced. It is a hard word to write in devnagri and the Hindi and Urdu equivalents do not quite mean what secularism has come to mean in the Indian political context. It is a foreign word that evolved in a European context when the powers of the church and the state were separated. In India, since none of our religions were led by pontiffs who controlled armies, or had vast temporal powers, we had no need to make this separation. But, the word secularism is used in India more than almost any other country. Why? Well, because when we entered our current era of coalition governments, political parties of leftist disposition found it convenient to keep the BJP out of power by saying they would only ally with 'succular phorces'. The BJP became a pariah after the Babri Masjid came down and so whenever someone like Nitish Kumar wants to hurl abuse at the party he is in alliance with in Bihar, or one of its leaders, the 'secularism' debate gets revived."