On the eve of Jawaharlal Nehrus 45th death anniversary I feel impelled to write about his celebrated press conferences,usually held once a month,that became a unique institution an exhilarating combination of information,education and entertainment,the like of which has never been seen after him. To be sure,Lal Bahadur Shastri tried to keep up his predecessors practice. But at his very first press conference the hack pack of those days treated him with such churlish familiarity that he gave up.
The scribes were more respectful to Indira Gandhi when she tried to revive her fathers tradition. But in her goongi gudiya phase she was inarticulate and lacked her papus encyclopedic knowledge. Once she caused roars of laughter by declaring that her main problem was inflation and rising prices. After 1971 she had become deft in handling the press but first the Nav Nirman in Gujarat and then the JP movement engulfed her. The Emergency put paid to the prime ministerial press conference.
Thereafter there has been no prime ministerial press conference,which should explain my nostalgia for the joyous experience,of which let me give just one glimpse. After the Soviet Sputnik went up,Laurence P. Atkinson,one of our most colourful colleagues,asked: Sir,not as Prime Minister of India,but as Jawaharlal Nehru… Here Nehru interrupted him: What is this distinction? Atkinson: Please,sir,dont spoil my question. He then repeated whether in his personal,not official,capacity Nehru would go to the moon for the sake of peace. The prime ministers reply for the sake of peace Jawaharlal Nehru would go to the moon or anywhere else in the universe was front-page news across the world.
Sadly,on two occasions there was a huge outburst of the famous Nehru temper. The first to draw the lightning was G. K. Reddy,then working for left-leaning tabloid Blitz and later a star of two major papers. By writing that the Chinese had every right to send their army into Tibet and insinuating that India was protesting at the behest of the British,he had infuriated the prime minister. This man,thundered Nehru,is either a fool or a knave or a combination of both. There was much more in the same vein. The Press Information Bureau served a notice on Reddy to vacate immediately the government accommodation allotted him.
Eight years later I was in the dock,and did Nehru give me a tongue-lashing! My minor consolation was that I had a co-sufferer,K. Subarayon of The Indian Express,much senior to me. He had published some of Nehrus sensitive remarks on the Nagas in his letter to chief ministers. The prime minister was angry and said so to Subarayon. With me he was livid. For I had caused him greater embarrassment by reproducing in The Statesman,for which I then worked,the first Law Commissions interim report telling the government that some appointments of high court judges had been made on considerations of political expediency or regional,communal or caste sentiment. I had taken care to write the explosive story only after Nehru had left for Japan on an official visit. But early next morning,Feroze Gandhi rang up to say that I was in deep trouble. Home Minister Govind Ballabh Pant had spoken to him very angrily about my irresponsibility.
Nehru held his press conference immediately after returning home,and fell on me like a ton of bricks. After his outburst had lasted a while I got up respectfully to ask whether what I had reported wasnt an accurate and fair summary of the Law Commissions report. Accurate it is,he retorted,but it should never have been published. In a few days you would see that the Law Commission will reverse its position. I was too scared to say that we would publish the commissions recantation whenever it came. Luckily,a senior colleague intervened to ask: prime minister,why are you pillorying the correspondent who has only done his job? Why dont you punish your ministers who leak secret documents?
That is being taken care of, replied the prime minister. But because some of you dont mind damaging national interest for the sake of a scoop I may have to take action under the Official Secrets Act. Almost instantly,the IB,not the PIB,went into action in its rude,crude and flat-footed manner.
Three days later,at the usual tea party after an investiture at Rashtrapati Bhavan,an official came and said that Panditji wanted to see Subarayon and me in the adjoining room. Only Home Secretary A. V. Pai and the Intelligence czar,B. N. Mullik,were with him. He put one hand on Subarayons shoulder and the other on mine. I lose my temper often but never my sense of proportion. I am sorry to learn that Intelligence wallas have behaved badly and harassed you. Ive called off the inquiry. (In Reddys case,too,he had acted fast to restore to him his cancelled accommodation.)
On May 22,1964,a questioner asked: Shouldnt you settle the succession issue in your lifetime? His reply: My lifetime is not ending that soon. The cheers that followed were loud and prolonged.
Had the great man tempted fate by his famous last words?
The writer is a Delhi-based political commentator
