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With malice to some!

Photo: Shanker Chakravarty

Straight arrow Khushwant Singh minces no words

Trust Khushwant Singh to call one of India’s most revered writers in English, R.K. Narayan, “tedious”. Anyone who has enjoyed the exploits of Swami and friends, met Malgudi’s Talkative Man or laughed at the predicament of Atti la the cowardly dog might take umbrage, but when did that bother this amiable iconoclast? He explains that though he liked Narayan “very much as a man,” he found him “a strange mixture of outward humility and incredible arrogance.” Once, says Singh, they were both invited to an event where authors were to read out their work. “Narayan made the condition that his fee had to be one rupee higher than anyone else!”

While the 93-year-old Singh’s remarks are piquant as ever, his unapologetic stance unwavering, there does seem to be one issue he opts to clarify. At least, so it would seem from the title of his latest book, just published by Penguin Viking: “Why I Supported the Emergency — Essays and Profiles”.

The title is designed to bring the veteran journalist’s admirers and detractors alike swooping down on the book, especially now while the country is in the throes of the General Elections. It is, however, only one of the many essays in the collection, and Singh insists the title is “a sales ploy,” decided between the publisher and senior journalist Sheela Reddy, who has compiled and edited the work. Singh is known for his brevity all right, but in the five-and-a-half page piece, he leaves some questions hanging. On the one hand he writes of Sanjay Gandhi as “a lovable goonda.” On the other, he notes the “selective and eccentric” nature of the press censorship that was imposed, and mentions the names of members of the famous caucus that had control of the country — including Sanjay’s “kitchen cabinet comprising his wife and mother-in-law”, “the Rasputin figure of Dhirendra Brahmachari”, the “two pretty women, Ambika Soni and Rukhsana Sultana” and others.

“No, my position is very clear,” maintains Singh. “In every democracy there are rules for governance and for the opposition.” In the build-up to the Emergency, he insists, the accepted norms for protest had been breached. “You cannot stop the legislators from entering the legislature.”

Singh pauses to point out, “Remember I’m not the only one. Acharya Vinoba Bhave was one of those who supported the Emergency.” It was only when the power began to be misused — “Mrs. Gandhi herself setting the bad example” — that people changed their minds, he says, adding, “And I have said all that.”

In the essay he numbers the stories of forced sterilisations among “the wildest canards”. Just canards? Singh backs up his view. “After the elections I went back to Punjab and Badal who was back in power took me round,” he says. At a public meeting, Badal offered Singh a chance to address the crowd. “There were thousands. I asked how many were forcibly sterilised, and not a single hand went up,” he relates, adding that after he repeated the exercise in a couple of more meetings, Badal stopped inviting him along!

Another point he lists in favour of the Emergency is that trains and buses ran on time. Is that not like recommending the proverbial sledgehammer to crack walnuts? “It is very important! The country must run smoothly,” says Singh, “You can’t have schools and colleges closing.” On the whole, he feels, this country’s denizens need a rod over their head.

Speaking of the rod, the former editor of the Illustrated Weekly of India, the National Herald and Hindustan Times, has a verbal whack for today’s newspapers. With no love lost for “this mixture of Hindi-English-Urdu” and the surfeit of Bollywood, he declares, “They’re asinine. It’s the only word I can use.”

Want to send him hate mail? Bet you can’t surpass the letter from Canada addressed to “[Expletive] Khushwant Singh, India”. It was duly delivered, laughs Singh. “I thought it was the ultimate accolade!”

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