Inder Malhotra passes away: Master of the ‘middle’, oracle of India’s n-trajectory

Malhotra was especially interested in the evolution of India’s nuclear policies and took credit for correctly anticipating a policy shift following China’s nuclear test in 1964. In part, this was based on his close monitoring of the late Homi Bhabha, who was at the time head of India’s Atomic Energy Commission. But he was also the first journalist to understand the significance of Prime Minister Lal Bahadur Shastri’s speech to Parliament in 1965, when he claimed India would remain committed to the peaceful uses of nuclear policy but would consider using nuclear explosions for blasting caves and tunnels. A series of five articles he wrote for The Statesman explained the significance of the largely hidden policy shift.

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Malhotra also authored a number of books, although he is best remembered for his personal and political biography of Indira Gandhi, first published in 1989. The authority with which he wrote about Indira was based in part on his enduring friendship with her husband and MP, the late Feroze Gandhi, to whom she was unhappily married for many years.

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Although Feroze himself died in 1960, Malhotra kept lengthy notes of their conversations and used them extensively for his book about the late prime minister. Indira herself was notoriously secretive about her personal life and understood that Malhotra was collecting material for a future biography, but she trusted him sufficiently not to freeze him out of her list of personal media contacts. He had ready access to her right until 1984, when she was gunned down in New Delhi by her personal bodyguards. In fact, relations between the Prime Minister and the journalist were so strong that Malhotra at one stage was sounded out by Indira’s coterie on whether he would be interested in becoming India’s High Commissioner in London.

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Malhotra was born in Chandigarh in 1930, and worked for Hindi newspapers before joining The Statesman in the mid 1950s. This was the newspaper that was renowned in its time for both the quality of its writing and the strength of its independent political analysis. Malhotra served under a series of British chief editors, including Evan Charlton who finally retired in 1966. But he was also associated with such other greats of Indian journalism as Prem Bhatia, Nihal Singh, Pran Chopra and Kuldip Nayar. When Prem Bhatia died in 2005, Malhotra agreed to serve as secretary of the Trust that was set up in his name to help promote good journalism by awarding annual media prizes.

In 2013, Malhotra himself was awarded the Ramnath Goenka Lifetime Achievement Award. A noted raconteur with a highly developed sense of humour, he enjoyed the occasional drink, good cuisine and the company of his fellow Punjabis within his wide range of personal and professional contacts. His friends remember him for the loyal support he was always willing to extend. He was married to Rekha Malhotra, a classical dancer with the Ram Gopal dance troupe, who pre-deceased him in 1987. The couple have one son, Anil, an accomplished painter based in Washington DC.