Remembering Kuldip Nayar: Of communal sting and editor’s spike
Rarely does a journalist become a household name standing tall astride extremes that seem irreconcilable to most of his contemporaries – and does so without conceding an inch on principles close to his heart. Without a doubt, Kuldip Nayar along with the irrepressible Khushwant Singh, was one of the two greatest journalist sons of Punjab and indeed of the country who touched the hearts of the common man, using just a pen to probe, caress and enlighten the darkest recesses of their countrymen’s souls. That both did this in a foreign language makes theirs an even greater achievement to marvel at.
Nayar dominated national imagination at a time when the media, especially the English language media, was an elitist luxury. Added to this was the disadvantage of the 19th-century technology still driving numbers in mainstream newspapers and magazines: No computers, no web, no advantages (and affordable disadvantages) of social media, nor the bedroom accessibility of the internet. The only truly popular tool of the media with the greatest reach then was All India Radio and that was controlled by an establishment which Nayar loved to hate.
SECULAR TO CORE
Nayar’s popular relevance was through the media but not confined to it. Through his crusading zeal against the attack on India’s democratic heritage during Indira Gandhi’s imposition of the internal Emergency, he became a catalyst that fired up the national imagination spanning the urban and the vast rural milieu of the country.
I was never a fan of Nayar’s or Khushwant’s style of writing but neither could I deny that their writings cast a spell on me, as on everyone else. Racy, gripping and with a touch of drama, their style ensured that once started, their writings grew on you and before you realised it, they were a part of the repertoire of your bad habits, difficult to afford but even more difficult to put aside.
What was true of Nayar’s style was even more true of the substance, which had propriety, sobriety and patience as the supporting pillars of their case for sane nationalism.
But at the core of all this were those adorable virtues sorely missing in most of us these days: Sincerity and concern for values. Nayar once told me that all his life he imagined himself battling two demons: Grave dangers to our nation from communalism, masquerading as jingoistic nationalism, on the one hand, and the leftovers of the imperial instinct for dictatorship on the other.
The communal threat always purred beneath the misleading surface calm. All that was needed for it to engulf the unsuspecting landscape in flames was a spark. “There are far too many people hiding that spark in their hands behind their backs for us to be complacent,” he once wrote to me post the events of 1984. There were, he felt, swarms of venomous reptiles lying low amid us, waiting to strike.
And for this reason, those committed to the idea of a multi-cultural secular India had to stay vigilant all the time or “the reptile would creep over us and sting us at will”.
Unfortunately, we are even more vulnerable to the reptilian sting today than we were during the ’60s and ’70s.
BEYOND BORDERS
Nayar’s passionate advocacy of friendly ties between India and Pakistan fell, for the most part, on deaf ears on both sides of the fence. He was as committed and bold a critic of mullahmilitary games in Pakistan as he was of those who painted Hinduism in narrow, fascist and jingoistic colours. This was a recipe for popularity with neither. But he was not born to be afraid of the intensity of the waves of hatred and always dared to swim against them.
It was the same swim at home. Nayar was vehemently opposed to Operation Bluestar and this annoyed many of his fans in the majority community. But he was just as vehemently opposed to the extremist fringe in Sikh politics. He supported Punjab’s demands but wanted these to be placed and considered within the national and the constitutional framework, the core of which, he believed, was federal democracy and secularism. This didn’t go down well with Sikh radicals. But his persistence and patience did not wear out till the end and won him love of the Sikh masses.
Nayar’s legacy needs not only to be preserved but also to be brought and kept on the centre-stage for India to thrive with heterogeneous vitals of the nation’s inner health intact.
HE WAS NOT BORN TO BE AFRAID OF THE INTENSITY OF THE WAVES OF HATRED AND ALWAYS DARED TO SWIM AGAINST THE TIDE