Khushwant Singh would not have had to return his Padma Shri in 1984 to protest Operation Bluestar, the Indian Army's storming of the Golden Temple in Amritsar, had he refused to accept the honour in 1974. He had the opportunity to be outraged enough to return it the very next year, but the celebrated writer never regretted his decision to champion the Emergency of 1975.
When he sought protection from anti-Sikh mobs in the Swedish embassy after Indira Gandhi's assassination months after Operation Bluestar, Singh said he felt like a Jew in a Nazi camp. Did he ever wonder how the people put in jail or forcibly sterilised by Indira Gandhi's government had felt in 1975-'77, given his support for those measures?
Though he gave up his Padma Shri, he did not give up his Rajya Sabha membership when the '84 anti-Sikh riots occurred, staying on to complete his term till '86. Then, in 2007, he had no compunctions about accepting the Padma Bhushan from a Congress government. Had Manmohan Singh's government brought the butchers of '84 to justice?
Enough of the humbug about Khushwant Singh. He himself did not believe in saying nice things about dead people. Regardless of what he would like obituary writers to say about him, it is important to take a hard look at the politics of an influential public figure of independent India. It is difficult to not come to the conclusion that Singh was a first-rate darbari. He was the good Delhi liberal whose political worldview, journalistic need for access, lust for power and attention, all fused together in a dangerous liaison with the Congress party. And then at some point, as is typical, he fell out with the Gandhi family.
Khushwant Singh was Goebbels to Sanjay Gandhi’s, Indira Gandhi's powerful son whose oscillating mood became the law of the land. The Emergency was independent India's darkest hour. India became a crackpot dictatorship. The press was censored. It was the moment when it really mattered if you were on the right side. LK Advani famously said that the Indian press crawled when it was asked to bend. But some didn't even bend. Kuldip Nayar, for instance, chose to go to jail instead. History remembers those who showed courage, such as the Indian Express. What did Khushwant Singh do with the popular magazine he edited, The Illustrated Weekly of India? He made it a cheerleader for Sanjay Gandhi.
In a widely-read essay, historian Ramachandra Guha did the world a service by digging out old issues of the Weekly. It was the largest circulated English news magazine in all of Asia, except Japan. In this influential publication, Singh wrote such headlines: "The Man who Gets Things Done", "Sanjay, Maneka Conquer Maharashtra" and "Indian of the Year '76". An interview with Sanjay Gandhi said: "Slander was the order of the day in the Indian Press...Censorship was the only way to put an end to this". A profile described the prime minister's son as a man with "dark, fiercely intense and honest eyes". (Guha republished the essay because, he said, Narendra Modi reminds him of Sanjay Gandhi.)
Obituary writers who count Khushwant Singh's championing of Sanjay Gandhi as just one chapter in a long life are being unfair to India. Khushwant Singh could see things going from bad to ugly but defended Sanjay Gandhi even in the 1977 election campaign: "Since Sanjay is one of the main issues over which the elections will be fought,” he wrote in the Weekly, "it is best to clear the cobwebs of prejudice created by wholly unsubstantiated gossip of his style of functioning and ask ourselves honestly: do we or do we not need Sanjay Gandhi?"
Guha explains Khushwant Singh's championing of Sanjay Gandhi: "...in fairness to Khushwant, it must be said that sycophancy comes easily to Indians". In the hall of Emergency shame, the Indian Supreme Court finds place of pride. The Supreme Court had effectively upheld the Emergency by ruling that citizens did not have the right to approach the courts to challenge detention by the government. (The name of the sole dissenting judge is remembered widely today, Hans Raj Khanna.) Thirty five years later, the court regretted that moment. Khushwant Singh had ample time to do the same, but instead he kept justifying his sycophancy with the humbug of national interest: population control, clearing slums, saving India from Jayaprakash Narayan's threat of "Total Revolution". Till the very end, Singh made Sanjay Gandhi look better than he was, calling him a "loveable goonda". Read this marvel of intellectual dishonesty by Singh, an article titled "Why I Supported the Emergency", published as recently as 2000.
In another example of his political myopia, Singh was unable to see what the Hindu right was up to in 1989. That year, Lal Krishna Advani contested and won the New Delhi seat. Khushwant Singh was the first proposer on Advani's nomination papers. But he was soon horrified to see Advani lead the demolition of the Babri Masjid and the violence that followed. He never forgave Advani for that, and Advani kept trying to win over Singh till as recently as February. But how could Singh fail to understand Advani's politics before December 6 , 1992? In his remarkably forthright obituary of Singh, Vir Sanghvi says the problem with Khushwant Singh was that he was marred by a bad political instinct.
It should also not be forgotten that Singh played a role in the 1988 banning of Satanic Verses, an instance that has long been used by the Bharatiya Janata Party as an example of how the Congress has appeased India’s Muslims. As a consulting editor to Penguin India, Singh read an advance copy of Salman Rushdie’s novel and said some portions might offend Muslims. David Davidar, then the Penguin India editor, claims that despite Singh's advice, he intended to publish the book. But India Today magazine's sensationalist and irresponsible highlighting of controversial bits led prime minister Rajiv Gandhi to ban the import of the book. As a result, Penguin India decided against publishing an Indian edition. We may never know the full extent of Singh's contribution to the Indian state taking offence on behalf of Islam.
The same year, Singh wrote in the Hindustan Times to clarify that he was only doing his job as an advisor to Penguin India and did not support censorship of any kind. He could have ended it there, but went on to smugly say how the ban and the ensuing fatwa helped the sales of the book and helped Rushdie, and not a word about the fact that Rushdie's life was under threat. He unapologetically repeated similar snide remarks about how the Satanic Verses controversy was great for Rushdie's career, as though he had asked for it.
It is understandable that people who knew Singh would have things to say in obituaries. So many of these tributes have been about how Singh helped the writers of the pieces, how generous and encouraging he was. The truth is that as the darbari lost out politically, Singh formed a Delhi Darbar of another kind. Flattery was his weakness. If you flattered him, he could get you a book contract or give you a blurb and a plug in his column. His book reviews would not be about the book but some interesting bits about the subject, ending with a recommendation that you read the book, having made it obvious that he did not care to read it himself. He did not let such conflict of interest as personal friendship stand in the way of saying glowing things about books, in the process encouraging a lot of bad writers.
Singh once said that no article by him had ever been rejected. Perhaps he didn't realise it was his brand name and not what he wrote that was the reason. His brand value in journalism drew largely from his editorship of the Illustrated Weekly of India, whose circulation grew by leaps and bounds when he took over. Looking into the archives, Amardeep Singh found that Singh's achievement was to turn the Illustrated Weekly from a staid Anglophile publication into a lively one that took American magazines as its reference point. One could argue that such a transformation was inevitable with time, and Singh did more damage to Indian journalism by being a powerful editor who sat in the lap of venal power. Sacked by the Times of India group, which owned the Weekly, after Indira Gandhi lost the elections after the Emergency, Singh waited in the cold until Gandhi returned to power in 1980 and got KK Birla to make him editor of the Hindustan Times. Should an editor whose jobs depended on whether his favourite politician was in power be considered an icon of Indian journalism?
Yet there was one redeeming aspect to his politics. Despite his lapse in backing Advani in the 1989 Delhi election, Singh stood true to his belief in secularism and minority rights. He could easily have given intellectual cover to the BJP, like MJ Akbar is happy to do today. A protege of Khushwant Singh, Akbar is another doyen of Indian journalism. He contested Lok Sabha elections twice on Congress tickets. He won the first time in 1989, and happily worked with a Rajiv Gandhi government. At some point Akbar fell out with the Gandhi family. In 2002, he wrote articles comparing Narendra Modi to Hitler and suggesting that Modi should be given Pakistan's highest civilian honour, because the 2002 violence in Gujarat helps Pakistan. Disregarding his old views, Akbar has joined the BJP and is singing paeans to Narendra Modi, just before Modi is taking a serious shot at prime ministership.
How the standards of darbaris have fallen since the days of Khushwant Singh.
When he sought protection from anti-Sikh mobs in the Swedish embassy after Indira Gandhi's assassination months after Operation Bluestar, Singh said he felt like a Jew in a Nazi camp. Did he ever wonder how the people put in jail or forcibly sterilised by Indira Gandhi's government had felt in 1975-'77, given his support for those measures?
Though he gave up his Padma Shri, he did not give up his Rajya Sabha membership when the '84 anti-Sikh riots occurred, staying on to complete his term till '86. Then, in 2007, he had no compunctions about accepting the Padma Bhushan from a Congress government. Had Manmohan Singh's government brought the butchers of '84 to justice?
Enough of the humbug about Khushwant Singh. He himself did not believe in saying nice things about dead people. Regardless of what he would like obituary writers to say about him, it is important to take a hard look at the politics of an influential public figure of independent India. It is difficult to not come to the conclusion that Singh was a first-rate darbari. He was the good Delhi liberal whose political worldview, journalistic need for access, lust for power and attention, all fused together in a dangerous liaison with the Congress party. And then at some point, as is typical, he fell out with the Gandhi family.
Khushwant Singh was Goebbels to Sanjay Gandhi’s, Indira Gandhi's powerful son whose oscillating mood became the law of the land. The Emergency was independent India's darkest hour. India became a crackpot dictatorship. The press was censored. It was the moment when it really mattered if you were on the right side. LK Advani famously said that the Indian press crawled when it was asked to bend. But some didn't even bend. Kuldip Nayar, for instance, chose to go to jail instead. History remembers those who showed courage, such as the Indian Express. What did Khushwant Singh do with the popular magazine he edited, The Illustrated Weekly of India? He made it a cheerleader for Sanjay Gandhi.
In a widely-read essay, historian Ramachandra Guha did the world a service by digging out old issues of the Weekly. It was the largest circulated English news magazine in all of Asia, except Japan. In this influential publication, Singh wrote such headlines: "The Man who Gets Things Done", "Sanjay, Maneka Conquer Maharashtra" and "Indian of the Year '76". An interview with Sanjay Gandhi said: "Slander was the order of the day in the Indian Press...Censorship was the only way to put an end to this". A profile described the prime minister's son as a man with "dark, fiercely intense and honest eyes". (Guha republished the essay because, he said, Narendra Modi reminds him of Sanjay Gandhi.)
Obituary writers who count Khushwant Singh's championing of Sanjay Gandhi as just one chapter in a long life are being unfair to India. Khushwant Singh could see things going from bad to ugly but defended Sanjay Gandhi even in the 1977 election campaign: "Since Sanjay is one of the main issues over which the elections will be fought,” he wrote in the Weekly, "it is best to clear the cobwebs of prejudice created by wholly unsubstantiated gossip of his style of functioning and ask ourselves honestly: do we or do we not need Sanjay Gandhi?"
Guha explains Khushwant Singh's championing of Sanjay Gandhi: "...in fairness to Khushwant, it must be said that sycophancy comes easily to Indians". In the hall of Emergency shame, the Indian Supreme Court finds place of pride. The Supreme Court had effectively upheld the Emergency by ruling that citizens did not have the right to approach the courts to challenge detention by the government. (The name of the sole dissenting judge is remembered widely today, Hans Raj Khanna.) Thirty five years later, the court regretted that moment. Khushwant Singh had ample time to do the same, but instead he kept justifying his sycophancy with the humbug of national interest: population control, clearing slums, saving India from Jayaprakash Narayan's threat of "Total Revolution". Till the very end, Singh made Sanjay Gandhi look better than he was, calling him a "loveable goonda". Read this marvel of intellectual dishonesty by Singh, an article titled "Why I Supported the Emergency", published as recently as 2000.
In another example of his political myopia, Singh was unable to see what the Hindu right was up to in 1989. That year, Lal Krishna Advani contested and won the New Delhi seat. Khushwant Singh was the first proposer on Advani's nomination papers. But he was soon horrified to see Advani lead the demolition of the Babri Masjid and the violence that followed. He never forgave Advani for that, and Advani kept trying to win over Singh till as recently as February. But how could Singh fail to understand Advani's politics before December 6 , 1992? In his remarkably forthright obituary of Singh, Vir Sanghvi says the problem with Khushwant Singh was that he was marred by a bad political instinct.
It should also not be forgotten that Singh played a role in the 1988 banning of Satanic Verses, an instance that has long been used by the Bharatiya Janata Party as an example of how the Congress has appeased India’s Muslims. As a consulting editor to Penguin India, Singh read an advance copy of Salman Rushdie’s novel and said some portions might offend Muslims. David Davidar, then the Penguin India editor, claims that despite Singh's advice, he intended to publish the book. But India Today magazine's sensationalist and irresponsible highlighting of controversial bits led prime minister Rajiv Gandhi to ban the import of the book. As a result, Penguin India decided against publishing an Indian edition. We may never know the full extent of Singh's contribution to the Indian state taking offence on behalf of Islam.
The same year, Singh wrote in the Hindustan Times to clarify that he was only doing his job as an advisor to Penguin India and did not support censorship of any kind. He could have ended it there, but went on to smugly say how the ban and the ensuing fatwa helped the sales of the book and helped Rushdie, and not a word about the fact that Rushdie's life was under threat. He unapologetically repeated similar snide remarks about how the Satanic Verses controversy was great for Rushdie's career, as though he had asked for it.
It is understandable that people who knew Singh would have things to say in obituaries. So many of these tributes have been about how Singh helped the writers of the pieces, how generous and encouraging he was. The truth is that as the darbari lost out politically, Singh formed a Delhi Darbar of another kind. Flattery was his weakness. If you flattered him, he could get you a book contract or give you a blurb and a plug in his column. His book reviews would not be about the book but some interesting bits about the subject, ending with a recommendation that you read the book, having made it obvious that he did not care to read it himself. He did not let such conflict of interest as personal friendship stand in the way of saying glowing things about books, in the process encouraging a lot of bad writers.
Singh once said that no article by him had ever been rejected. Perhaps he didn't realise it was his brand name and not what he wrote that was the reason. His brand value in journalism drew largely from his editorship of the Illustrated Weekly of India, whose circulation grew by leaps and bounds when he took over. Looking into the archives, Amardeep Singh found that Singh's achievement was to turn the Illustrated Weekly from a staid Anglophile publication into a lively one that took American magazines as its reference point. One could argue that such a transformation was inevitable with time, and Singh did more damage to Indian journalism by being a powerful editor who sat in the lap of venal power. Sacked by the Times of India group, which owned the Weekly, after Indira Gandhi lost the elections after the Emergency, Singh waited in the cold until Gandhi returned to power in 1980 and got KK Birla to make him editor of the Hindustan Times. Should an editor whose jobs depended on whether his favourite politician was in power be considered an icon of Indian journalism?
Yet there was one redeeming aspect to his politics. Despite his lapse in backing Advani in the 1989 Delhi election, Singh stood true to his belief in secularism and minority rights. He could easily have given intellectual cover to the BJP, like MJ Akbar is happy to do today. A protege of Khushwant Singh, Akbar is another doyen of Indian journalism. He contested Lok Sabha elections twice on Congress tickets. He won the first time in 1989, and happily worked with a Rajiv Gandhi government. At some point Akbar fell out with the Gandhi family. In 2002, he wrote articles comparing Narendra Modi to Hitler and suggesting that Modi should be given Pakistan's highest civilian honour, because the 2002 violence in Gujarat helps Pakistan. Disregarding his old views, Akbar has joined the BJP and is singing paeans to Narendra Modi, just before Modi is taking a serious shot at prime ministership.
How the standards of darbaris have fallen since the days of Khushwant Singh.
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