Kuldip Nayar: A scoopster-newshound and activist

Kuldip Nayar was the press officer to Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru, when, as a young reporter in the UNI, I first met him. It was of all places, in Agra, where Nehru was addressing a huge rally. A senior journalist introduced us. A little after Nehru died, Nayar joined the UNI as general manager. We have been in close touch ever since.

While with The Statesman, Kuldip developed contacts with the London Times, and he was their newshound for a long time.

He joined the Indian Express a little before the Emergency. He was in-charge of the Express News Service, the team of news reporters. I was the chief political correspondent. Kuldip was quintessentially a great chaser of news. He had a great capacity to chase news, and had an enviable network of contacts, gained from his days in the PIB, working with Prime Minister  Jawahalal Nehru, then Lal Bahadur Shastri, Govind Ballab Pant, besides those he met otherwise. He was always in search of a scoop, sniffing for news. S. Mulgaonkar was the editor-in-chief. 

Kuldip and I became fond of each other, in what became a partnership at the Express.  He encouraged others to break news, and I was one of them. He got the scoops, and I had to work much harder to break stories.

In the UNI, his first assignment was to travel with Prime Minister Lal Bahadur Shastri to Tashkent. An officer knocked at Kuldip's door and told him that Shastri had died. He immediately called the UNI. The chief sub, the late Sundar Dhingra, took the call. Kuldip said, “I am Kuldip Nayar speaking from Tashkent. Here is the flash. Shastri is dead.” Dhingra  simply replied, “Don't waste my time. I am just finishing the Tashkent declaration copy,” and banged the phone. Kuldip called again, and told him the story. He broke the news, and I was woken up early in the morning to follow up the political developments thereafter!

Kuldip first became famous on account of his book, Between the Lines. It was not a compilation of his column, which stayed till he died. He was the first Indian journalist to be syndicated like that, small and big newspapers, in many languages, lapped up his columns. More than comments, which were there, there was news that others missed—because he was a natural newshound.  

The book on current affairs was also the first of its kind; that genre was not common in India then. He described the succession after the passing of Jawaharlal Nehru, and while Nehru's body was still lying in state, he broke news that Morarji Desai had thrown his hat in the ring to succeed Nehru. Kuldip only broke news, but it possibly helped Shastri. Kuldip, however, was always an independent journalist.

When the Emergency was clamped, and the press silenced and democracy suspended, Kuldip Nayar fought it and went to jail. But out of jail, he went beyond journalism, working for opposition unity. But when the Janata Party began falling apart, he was again breaking news before anyone else, reporting scoops.

A very good team leader, Kuldip Nayar over the years developed an interest beyond journalism. He was a refugee who crossed over, lived in Jalandhar for sometime and then came to Delhi, where he started out as an Urdu journalist. The Partition trauma was something that he never forgot. He took special interest in the improvement of Indo-Pak relations and was an avid supporter of any effort that may contribute to that. He had many friends in Pakistan, where he continues to be the best known Indian journalist. In due course, his coverage and interest expanded to all of South Asia, where he developed contacts.

But peace between India and Pakistan is something towards which he made many personal efforts, the best known being the lighting of candles at the Wagah border on the intervening night of August 14 (Pakistan's Independence Day) and August 15, our Independence Day. The goodwill gesture attracted huge following, and soon people from Pakistan, too, joined in! Only the last year or two did he give it a miss, on grounds of health, otherwise it was his passion. Lately, he got neck deep in the area of people's rights. Many NGOs working in this field would invite him, and he rarely refused any of them.

Inder Kumar Gujral, as minister for external affairs, sent him to London as India's high commissioner, and that was the only time he suspended his column, Between the Lines. He wrote  it regularly even as a Member of the Rajya Sabha!

So he was a scoopster-newshound, a diplomat and someone actively engaged in the fight for human rights, campaigning for peace between India and Pakistan. That was his life of 94 years.

H.K. Dua is a former Rajya Sabha Member and editor-in-chief of The Tribune group of newspapers