Karan Thapar’s revenge on Modi

Former Jammu and Kashmir Governor Satya Pal Malik (right) was recently interviewed by veteran journalist Karan Thapar. Pic/youtube

Weeks before Narendra Modi won a second term as the Gujarat Chief Minister in 2007, he memorably walked out of Karan Thapar's interview. After Modi became the Prime Minister in 2014, Bharatiya Janata Party leaders were asked to boycott Thapar's show, prompting India Today TV to not renew his contract in 2017. With no other TV channel willing to commission him, he went digital. From 2018, The Wire began to host The Interview with Karan Thapar.

Thapar was hounded even here. To The Hindu, he recently disclosed that The Interview had a sponsor for 16 months before being told that its sponsorship was considered an "unfriendly" gesture towards the government. The sponsor backed out.

The boycott of Thapar is Modi's revenge for the humiliation he thought he had undergone in 2007. To fathom Modi's perception, rewind to October of that year: as soon as Thapar touched down in Ahmedabad, he received a call from Modi, asking him to come a little before the interview for a tête-à-tête. "We bantered, laughed and joked," Thapar reminisces in Devil's Advocate: The Untold Story.

But the bonhomie did not dissuade Thapar from shooting a tough first question to Modi. Citing the Rajiv Gandhi Foundation's rating of Gujarat as the best-administered state and India Today twice ranking him as the best chief minister, Thapar asked: "And yet despite that, people still call you… a mass murderer… Do you have an image problem?"

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Modi claimed only two or three persons thought he had an image problem. Thapar countered that the Chief Justice of India, in April 2004, had compared him to a "modern-day Nero who looks the other side when helpless children and innocent women are burnt." But that was just an observation which the Chief Justice did not record in the judgment, Modi shot back.

Thapar pressed on, "Why can't you say that you regret the killings that happened?" Modi volleyed back, "What I have to say I have said at that time…" Thapar persisted, "But by not saying again… you are allowing an image that is contrary to the interest of Gujarat to continue. It's in your hands to change it."

By then, Modi had had enough: "Apni dosti bani rahe (Let our friendship be maintained) … I can't do this interview." After the aborted interview, Modi plied Thapar with tea, sweets and dhokla, over an hour of small talk.

When BJP leaders stopped coming to his show, Thapar, after futilely asking them for the reason of their boycott, contacted then Principal Secretary Nripendra Misra to fix an appointment with Modi. Thapar writes, in The Devil's Advocate, "He [Misra] said the prime minister felt I was prejudiced against him and it was unlikely that my attitude would change [because of a conversation]."

Months later, former diplomat Pavan Varma narrated his conversation with Prashant Kishor to Thapar. Coaching Modi for his 2014 prime ministerial bid, Kishor sought to guide him on how to tackle embarrassing questions, repeatedly replaying Thapar's interview as an exercise. It was in one such session, Varma told Thapar, "Modi said to Prashant that he will never forgive you [Thapar] and when he gets an opportunity, he will take revenge." Kishor also disclosed that the small talk post-interview was Modi's strategy of lulling Thapar into believing the combative exchange had not been taken amiss.

Thapar recently bagged an explosive interview with former sJammu and Kashmir Governor Satya Pal Malik, who ripped apart the persona Modi has cultivated over the years - that his knowledge befits him to play the role of Vishwaguru; that he detests corruption; that Pakistan cannot penetrate his security-intelligence arrangement to wound India, a myth the 2019 Pulwama attack busted. No wonder, Malik's assertion was headlined even by national newspapers, otherwise circumspect about featuring anti-Modi stories, especially those broken by their competitors.

Look upon the Malik interview as Thapar's revenge on Modi. Their tit-for-tat has lessons for us.

Lesson No. 1: Modi's hounding of his critics drives them to try putting him in the dock. Would Thapar have been so obsessive about critiquing the BJP rule had Modi chosen to let bygones be bygones?

Lesson No. 2: Outside the legacy media, journalists have the freedom to combine journalism with integrity. Thapar is an apt example. His interviews for The Wire have a far greater depth than those he would conduct before 2017.

Lesson No. 3: Legacy media is no longer a beacon of free speech and fearless journalism. Hear what India Today Group's proprietor Aroon Purie said to Thapar as a justification for not renewing his contract:

"BJP will not come if you are there. We will be boycotted." India Today's hiring of anchor Sudhir Chaudhary, however, is a metaphor for the Group pleasing, not just appeasing, the BJP, of propagating its ideological line.

Lesson No. 4: The past cannot be tailored to the whims of the ruling party. The 1984 anti-Sikh riots haunted the Congress despite its efforts to suppress the truth about its involvement in mass murder. The 2002 Gujarat riots haunt Modi, most recently through the BBC documentary on him. Bow to the idea of Immanent Justice, which says the moral quality of a person's actions leads to deserved outcomes even if not causally linked.

The writer is a senior journalist.
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