During the last two years, several of India’s veteran editors have penned their memoirs. BG Verghese wrote First Draft: Witness to the Making of Modern India followed by S Nihal Singh’s Ink in My Veins, Vinod Mehta’s Lucknow Boy and Kuldip Nayar’s Beyond the Lines. Tavleen Singh has joined the gang with Durbar, which brings into sharp focus the contours of Indian politics during the 1980s, particularly when Rajiv Gandhi came to power, and her own journey as a journalist.
Durbar means a public reception held by a prince. Rajiv Gandhi being the prince, his friends were ‘durbaris’, including the author herself. Though part of this small and influential section of Delhi’s society, the journalist in Tavleen Singh wondered how these people could remain unaffected by the perilous state of the nation. Singh, who began her career in the mid-70s, a few months before the Emergency was imposed, comes down heavily on Rajiv following the assassination of Prime Minister Indira Gandhi in 1984. Despite being fortified by a huge mandate for change, the young leader chose for himself a group of advisors, friends and acolytes from the drawing rooms of Delhi, as inexperienced as him and just as unaware of the ground realities of a complex nation. That is the central theme in the book. “…an elected Prince (read Rajiv Gandhi) surrounded by people who could not have been more distant from India’s complexities, he ended up leaving as his political legacy only his Italian wife and their children,” Tavleen Singh writes in the author’s note. Such strong statements recur quite frequently.
But getting gossipy stories from the durbar wasn’t easy for Tavleen. She recalls how Romi Chopra, who counted himself as Rajiv’s close pal, objected when the author asked Rajiv what he thought of the excesses during the Emergency after Janata Government came to power in April 1977. He responded by saying how relieved he was that somebody had asked the question.
Tavleen reveals that the public durbar was initiated by Charan Singh to hear the woes of the aam aadmi. Later Mrs Gandhi too announced she would hold a morning durbar. After writing a piece comparing the three durbars, including the then PM Morarji Desai’s, and extolling Mrs Gandhi, Tavleen was summoned by Desai. Expecting to see a man instead of Tavleen, he gave the young journalist a mouthful for forgetting the Emergency excesses. When he fell silent and immersed himself into his files, a PMO official made gestures that it was time for her to leave.
Her proximity to the durbar not only fetched Tavleen stories but also assignments. Soon she began writing for Sunday magazine edited by MJ Akbar and was instrumental in getting Rajiv Gandhi’s first interview to Akbar. Later Akbar, then close to the first political family, joined the Congress and became an MP too. One wonders who shaped whose career? Was it Akbar who shaped Tavleen’s career or was it vice versa? The author claims to have got interviews with Rajiv and Sonia Gandhi and invitations for lunches and dinners for her editor!
Tavleen was an omnipresent journalist covering the action, whether it was Turkman Gate, the 1984 riots, troubles in Kashmir, Operation Blues Star and Black Thunder, the IPKF interventions in Sri Lanka, innumerable political meetings and elections, and even critical developments in Pakistan. Mind you, she did all this and more while sipping drinks and zipping from one party to another.
Thanks to Sonia Gandhi, Tavleen and her colleague Madhu Jain got to interview Amitabh Bachchan, Gandhi’s family friend. The book also reveals that Maneka Gandhi wanted to feed her pet the same biscuits that Sonia had obtained for her dog.
Durbar means a public reception held by a prince. Rajiv Gandhi being the prince, his friends were ‘durbaris’, including the author herself. Though part of this small and influential section of Delhi’s society, the journalist in Tavleen Singh wondered how these people could remain unaffected by the perilous state of the nation. Singh, who began her career in the mid-70s, a few months before the Emergency was imposed, comes down heavily on Rajiv following the assassination of Prime Minister Indira Gandhi in 1984. Despite being fortified by a huge mandate for change, the young leader chose for himself a group of advisors, friends and acolytes from the drawing rooms of Delhi, as inexperienced as him and just as unaware of the ground realities of a complex nation. That is the central theme in the book. “…an elected Prince (read Rajiv Gandhi) surrounded by people who could not have been more distant from India’s complexities, he ended up leaving as his political legacy only his Italian wife and their children,” Tavleen Singh writes in the author’s note. Such strong statements recur quite frequently.
But getting gossipy stories from the durbar wasn’t easy for Tavleen. She recalls how Romi Chopra, who counted himself as Rajiv’s close pal, objected when the author asked Rajiv what he thought of the excesses during the Emergency after Janata Government came to power in April 1977. He responded by saying how relieved he was that somebody had asked the question.
Tavleen reveals that the public durbar was initiated by Charan Singh to hear the woes of the aam aadmi. Later Mrs Gandhi too announced she would hold a morning durbar. After writing a piece comparing the three durbars, including the then PM Morarji Desai’s, and extolling Mrs Gandhi, Tavleen was summoned by Desai. Expecting to see a man instead of Tavleen, he gave the young journalist a mouthful for forgetting the Emergency excesses. When he fell silent and immersed himself into his files, a PMO official made gestures that it was time for her to leave.
Her proximity to the durbar not only fetched Tavleen stories but also assignments. Soon she began writing for Sunday magazine edited by MJ Akbar and was instrumental in getting Rajiv Gandhi’s first interview to Akbar. Later Akbar, then close to the first political family, joined the Congress and became an MP too. One wonders who shaped whose career? Was it Akbar who shaped Tavleen’s career or was it vice versa? The author claims to have got interviews with Rajiv and Sonia Gandhi and invitations for lunches and dinners for her editor!
Tavleen was an omnipresent journalist covering the action, whether it was Turkman Gate, the 1984 riots, troubles in Kashmir, Operation Blues Star and Black Thunder, the IPKF interventions in Sri Lanka, innumerable political meetings and elections, and even critical developments in Pakistan. Mind you, she did all this and more while sipping drinks and zipping from one party to another.
Thanks to Sonia Gandhi, Tavleen and her colleague Madhu Jain got to interview Amitabh Bachchan, Gandhi’s family friend. The book also reveals that Maneka Gandhi wanted to feed her pet the same biscuits that Sonia had obtained for her dog.
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