Kuldip Nayar: Our conscience keeper

Kuldip Nayar, veteran Editor of several national dailies, columnist for some 80 publications in 14 languages, writer of 15 books on a variety of subjects, Prime Minister Lal Bahadur Shastri’s press advisor, India’s ambassador to the UK, member of the Upper House in late 90s, and initiator of several historical petitions against State excesses, from the Emergency to the demolition of the Babari Masjid, passed on at the age of 95. Traditionally he had what in Hindi we call a ‘Bharapoora Jivan’, a life lived well. But it was also a life lived dangerously. We in the media today, will greatly miss this giant who would not go gently into the night whenever freedom was in peril. Everything about him was large. His frame, his heart, his courage. He roared and challenged injustice with all his might again and again, making us feel proud to be members of the same profession.

Kuldip Nayar belonged to the generation of Indians who had graduated from college in the undivided India and believed alongside Gandhi that the Partition was a mistake. That India and Pakistan were but two children of the same mother and unless they sank their petty misgivings and turned into amicable neighbours, neither would live in peace. Wars, cross border killings and the ugly sparring at the UN, nothing shook this belief and in 2000 he started the Aman Dosti Yatra from Rajghat to Wagah border which ended by the participants lighting candles for peace at the Indo Pak border, each year on 14th August. It is entirely befitting that his last public appearance this year was on 12th August when he flagged off the Aman Dosti Yatra.

One can accuse various governments in the history of Indian republic of all kinds of things, but no one can say that they have ever hesitated to use the monopoly of might if their own power base felt threatened. At times like these Kuldip Nayar never failed those of us who wished to register our dismay and opposition to the whittling away of our civil rights. He petitioned against the Emergency, was jailed under MISA, but a few years later he petitioned again against the Babari demolition with Justice Setalvad. He protested against any threat to the media’s freedom. When some of us senior women journalists decided to form the Indian Women’s Press Club, he along with colleague’s BG Verghese and HK Dua, supported us firmly and never failed to attend our celebrations whenever he could.

Once while he was our High Commissioner in London on a visit to Delhi, I happened to greet him cheerfully. He growled, “And you had no time to come home and meet me when you were in London last month?” I growled back and told him such a sin was unthinkable for me. That I had not been in London since I called on him and his gracious wife in their home a year ago and partook of their typical large-hearted Punjabi hospitality. He smiled a tad sheepishly and said, “My mistake. Someone told me you had been sighted.” Then he warmly patted my head and said, “I had said to them, Mrinal would never do this to me. I am glad I was right.”

To those who got to know him and see him at work as a journalist, as an activist, in the last half a century, Kuldip Nayar remained one man who would say out loud what he thought of the governments on both sides of the Wagah border or the Lord Above, without being bothered about being tortured and/or threatened with death. Today when public debates and frank interchange of views across generations of media men and women are becoming more and more ephemeral, and a disgraceful xenophobia has been directed suddenly against those of another faith who are being registered as excludable foreigners, such frankness is rare. He became the voice for many a just causes and raised it to great effect as few would, against injustice.

Kuldip Nayar like Nikhil Chakraborty, Prem Bhatia, and BG Verghese, were one of the last of a breed of journalists who we considered our last resort for airing our angst. When we sought him out, he would always hear out his hyperventilating younger coworkers patiently with a twinkle in his eyes and when he was convinced, lost no time as he set about turning vicious sloganeering and bills threatening civil freedoms, on their head. He believed in a settlement of disputes by taking them straight to the courts, not sloganeering on the streets and how memorably he took the State to court. To its credit the judiciary never failed him. Together, both have ensured that disagreements are settled in courts, not on the streets, that the media, the women and the minorities live a life of equal rights and dignity, and all citizens of India retain the minimum conditions of civilisation.

Such courage, such grace, as Lakshman says about Ahilya in Ramayana, is to be bowed to.