In her new book Durbar, Tavleen Singh reveals how a family?s gain was a nation?s loss
Durbar
Tavleen Singh
Hachette India
Rs. 599
Pg 324
A recurring theme in veteran journalist Tavleen Singh?s exceedingly readable Durbar is that the country has been let down by its rulers. Insulated from the harsh realities of the country by a cocoon of privilege, most politicians are out of touch with the real political, social and cultural problems of India, she argues. Singh traces the root cause of this phenomenon to dynastic politics, which has installed a ruling class which looks to the West as a role model and is unfamiliar with India?s rich heritage. Rajiv Gandhi, for instance, despite his speeches against power brokers in the party, was influenced largely by his advisers into taking the wrong decisions. The precedent for dynastic politics was set by the Gandhis and has since been emulated by other parties and politicians.
Singh gives us a peep into the darbari politics of the Gandhis in the ?70s and ?80s. She herself was part of the exclusive social circle in which Rajiv and Sonia once moved. The Gandhi coterie included Arun and Nina Singh, Suman and Manju Dubey, Romi Chopra, Ottavio and Maria Quattrocchi, Satish and Sterre Sharma and Mohan and Nimal Thadani. With her eye for detail and an incisive touch, Singh provides us some juicy nuggets. You get to know how the politically privileged conduct themselves in private. Politics was never discussed with the Gandhis during the Emergency. There is a riveting account of a dinner party conversation between Naveen Patnaik, now chief minister of Orissa, and Sonia Gandhi. Patnaik was not sure whether it was proper for him to mingle with Rajiv and Sonia since Indira Gandhi had put his father Biju Patnaik in jail, but he finally decided that etiquette demanded he go across and say hello. Admiring Sonia?s dress, he asked if it was a Valentino. Sonia replied that it was stitched by her local darzi.
At another party, Singh encountered Rukhsana Sultana, Sanjay?s infamous Emergency aide, dressed in chiffon and pearls and sporting elegant dark glasses. She boasted of her social work in the slums of old Delhi, introducing Muslim women to modern ideas like family planning. She claimed she was a role model for these women. A few weeks later, there were riots in the Walled City because of Sultana?s forcible sterilisation programme and Singh, herself, was nearly attacked by a mob since her sunglasses caused some people to mistake her for Rukhsana.
Despite her past proximity to Sonia, Singh fails to explain the Sonia enigma. Rajiv?s wife once swore she hated politics so fervently that she would rather see her children begging on the streets than joining politics. Sonia, according to Singh, was a good cook, a generous friend and a connoisseur of beautiful things. She had an impressive collection of shahtoosh shawls and once sent a Russian sable coat to Europe to be re-cut by Fendi. Sonia, however, seemed remarkably indifferent to social causes and to India in general. She was a major influence on her husband and weeded out people whom she considered undesirable from his social circle. She went out of her way to befriend Singh and sometimes bought clothes for her little son Aatish, when the writer was temporarily in somewhat straitened circumstances after separating from her Pakistani partner. But when Singh wrote a profile in India Today, which was not entirely flattering?she blames a colleague on the editorial desk for adding some vitriol to a piece which the editor, Aroon Purie, felt was too bland?Sonia never forgave her and cut her dead at every subsequent encounter.
Singh?s gutsy conduct and determination come through in her recollections of covering trouble spots, particularly Punjab. She had the temerity to ask Bhindranwale if he had been funded by the Congress, after which the interview was hastily terminated. She was under a very real threat from Bhindranwale?s goons after he publicly criticised her writings. She managed to sneak into curfew-bound Amritsar after Operation Bluestar by sheer bluff and bluster, waving a letter from her father to Lt General K S Brar.
Singh emphasises that though she might have come from the same privileged class as those who ruled India, her career in journalism has taught her to make up for deficiencies in her early education. For instance, she has re-learnt Hindi, Urdu and Punjabi. But Singh cannot completely shed her upper-class instincts. There are occasional digs at middle-class mores, from commenting derisively on the Janata lot of politicians slurping their tea and picking their noses to the terylene shirts and badly cut trousers worn by clerks. She recounts with horror, and in detail, the shabby state of the toilets she was compelled to use during her election tours. Singh?s self-righteous streak that she knows best, comes through very clearly. There are no shades of grey in her positions, she sees issues in clear-cut, black and white terms.