Optimist, defender of civil liberties, Kuldip Nayar passes away at 95
NAYAR’S LIFE, LIKE MANY OTHERS, WAS SHAPED BY PARTITION OF INDIA AND THE CREATION OF PAKISTAN
Nayar writes in his autobiography that Desai blamed the story for ruining his chances, which was written as a “favour” to Shastri. Shastri offered Nayar the post of information officer. He however did not take it but “unofficially” looked after his publicity.
Nayar’s fierce resistance of the Emergency, for which he was jailed in 1975, and his almost deluded vision that India and Pakistan could end all disputes to become chums will define his legacy.
“Tyrants sprouted at all levels,” he wrote of the Emergency, a 21-month period from 1975 to 1977 when Indira Gandhi suspended the Constitution and, with it, normal democratic rights. Much of the nation’s boisterous press clamped up. Nayar gathered journalists on June 28, 1975 to pass a resolution denouncing the Emergency. He wrote a protest letter to Indira Gandhi, stating “a free society is founded on free information”. Nayar also broke the story about Indira Gandhi’s decision to go in for elections in 1977.
Nayar also became India’s High Commissioner to United Kingdom in 1990 and was nominated to Rajya Sabha in 1997.
Nayar’s death led to condolence messages from across the spectrum. “His strong stand against the Emergency, public service and commitment to a better India will always be remembered,” Prime Minister Narendra Modi tweeted.
“Nayar always vigorously supported democratic rights and civil liberties,” said CPM general secretary Sitaram Yechury. BJP president Amit Shah recalled he had met Nayar on June 9 as part of his party’s ‘Sampark for Samarthan’ (outreach for support) campaign.
Nayar’s life, like millions others, was shaped by the events of Partition of India and the creation of Pakistan, where he was born in Sialkot in 1923. He believed in the indispensability of dialogue with the neighbouring country. Every year on August 14, which was Nayar’s birthday and Pakistan’s Independence Day, he would travel to the Wagah border with Pakistan to light candles, hoping for friendlier relations.
“He is not the only one. Many of his generation believed that borders may dissolve. Nayar dreamt of a softer border through which people could travel freely.
He was very much against the Radcliffe line,” said Meera Dewan, the filmmaker who created the documentary, In His Inner Voice: Kuldip Nayar.
Nayar wasn’t a blinkered optimist when it came to Pakistan. His recent column, which he wrote for The Daily Star of Bangladesh, was on Imran Khan’s win in Pakistan’s recent general election. In it, Nayar slams both Khan and the army: “The army in Pakistan seems to have devised a way where a particular person is elected even without a valid cause. Imran Khan is a product of such phenomena.”