It is difficult enough to
write about one's father. It is even more difficult
to write about a father like Khushwant Singh.
He is probably one of the best-known personalities
in India. He is also, by far, India's most
read columnist. His readers run into the tens
of millions.
He
is also the author of four novels, a collection of
short stories, a series of joke books and several books
on Indian history, and his articles have been compiled
in half a dozen books, all of which have sold well.
But the really serious side of my father comes
from his deep study of history and religion, particularly
Sikh history (he is a Sikh by upbringing but an
agnostic by conviction). After writing a short
history of his community in his earlier years,
in the 1960s he was able to convince the Rockefeller
Foundation to give him a grant to write what became
the definitive history of the Sikhs, which the
prestigious Princeton University Press and Oxford
University Press published in two weighty volumes.
In
the early 1970s he took over the editorship of
the Illustrated
Weekly of India and managed
to raise its circulation from 80,000 to more than
400,000 in eight years, making it the most influential
and most read publication in India. It's also the
most controversial. My father introduced an element
of daring and sex in the magazine, which upset
a lot of people. His own provocative column, "With
Malice Towards One and All," was accompanied
by a cartoon depicting him in a light bulb, glass
of whisky in hand. He has never made any bones
about his fondness for the good things in life,
particularly good scotch and attractive women.
And he has loved to expose many of the hypocrisies
of Indian life in sex, drink and religion.
While he was the editor of the Illustrated Weekly
he became close to the family of the then prime
minister of India, Indira Gandhi. He took a shine
to Sanjay Gandhi, Indira Gandhi's younger son,
and his wife. Indira Gandhi had already started
grooming Sanjay for political life. Many of the
ideas that Sanjay had appealed to my father, and
he became a somewhat uncritical supporter. Unfortunately,
he was somewhat blind to the rougher and arbitrary
ways of Sanjay.
Then,
in 1975, Indira Gandhi imposed a state of "emergency" in
the country, suspending democratic rights, including
freedom of expression. My father, after initially
protesting the censorship, went along with Indira
Gandhi and Sanjay.
Looking
back at that period, I think my father would
agree that
it was not one of his finer moments.
However, he is a man ruled by his emotions and
by his loyalty to friends. Retribution of sorts
for my father came with the end of the "emergency" in
1977. A general election was held, and Indira Gandhi
and her Congress Party were trounced. The puritanical
and rather mean-minded Morarji Desai, whom Indira
Gandhi had jailed, became prime minister. One of
Desai's first targets in the media was my father.
By
1979, when Indira Gandhi won reelection to Parliament,
my father's
star began to rise again.
He became the editor of the "Hindustan Times" and
also a nominated Member of the Upper House of Parliament.
He was awarded the Padma Bhushan, one of the highest
honors that can be bestowed on a civilian.
In 1980, when Sanjay Gandhi died in a plane crash,
my father impetuously wrote that his political
mantle should fall on Maneka. Impetuosity has often
been his undoing, and it was again this time. Indira
Gandhi was not pleased with him.
The two drifted further apart when Indira Gandhi
embarked on a disastrous policy in the north Indian
state of Punjab, where Sikh fundamentalism had
begun to raise its ugly head. The policy culminated
in the Indian army's storming of the Golden Temple
at Amritsar, the holiest shrine of the Sikhs, which
led to the deaths of hundreds of soldiers, terrorists
and innocent pilgrims caught in the crossfire.
In protest, my father returned his Padma Bhushan
award. He instinctively knew that Indira Gandhi
had committed a grave blunder. Sadly, she paid
for it with her life: Four months later, two of
her Sikh bodyguards gunned her down in her own
garden. That was the signal for an orgy of violence
against the Sikhs. Almost 4,000 Sikhs were butchered,
most of them in the capital. A Swedish diplomat
went to my father's house and took him and my mother
to his secure embassy compound, to protect them
from the howling mobs that were going around Delhi,
looking for Sikhs to kill. The real irony lay in
the fact that my father had condemned the Sikh
fundamentalists so strongly in his writings that
he had to have armed guards to protect him against
Sikh terrorists. The Sikh terrorist threat is virtually
over now, and the bodyguards who protected my father
have been withdrawn.
Some seven or eight years ago he decided to write
his autobiography, Truth, Love and a Little Malice,
which was published a few months ago. It tells
about my father's upbringing in a village in what
is now Pakistan, of his schooling in Delhi, Lahore
and London (where he took his law degree). Disillusioned
with law, he became a diplomat. That, too, he did
not like. He changed jobs every two or three years,
but his love of writing, his penchant for provoking
readers, continued.
In his autobiography he is also candid about his
marriage. Sadly, my mother became seriously ill
and she died two months ago. Her death initially
shattered my father. But the resilience he has
shown all his life finally got him back to his
old self. And his sense of humor has come back.
He
loves telling people how he still receives abusive
letters
from India and abroad, with just
the following written on the envelope: "Bastard
Khushwant Singh, India." At the age of 87, "bastard
Khushwant Singh" is busy working on another
novel.
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