From India's Independence to the Emergency, and from Indian high commissioner to the UK to member of the Rajya Sabha, Kuldip Nayar has experienced it all. From perhaps India's most dynamic journalist and human rights activist, Beyond the Lines is as much his autobiography as a chronicle of post-independence India.
One day when Jinnah was in Lahore, Iftikhar-ud-din, Pakistan's rehabilitation minister and Mazhar Ali Khan, editor of Pakistan Times, flew him in a Dakota over divided Punjab. When he saw streams of people pouring into Pakistan of fleeing it, he struck his hand on the forehead and said despairingly: 'what have I done?" Both Iftikhar and Mazhar Vowed not to repeat the remark. Mazhar took his wife Tahira into confidence and told her what Jinnah had said, and she communicated Jinnah's comment to me long after her husband's death.
I reached Shastri's house late in the evening. He said: 'I would prefer a unanimous election [for prime minister], 'and after a pause, added: 'were a contest to become inevitable, I would like to stand against Morarjibhai because I can defeat him, not Indiraji.' Then, as if speaking of an ideal arrangement, he said: 'We need a person like Jayaprakash Narayan to head the government.' He then asked me to carry a message to Morarji suggesting an agreed choice. Shastri proposed two names: Jayaprakash Narayan and Indira Gandhi, in that order.
I went to Morarji's house and conveyed Shastri's proposal to him. About Jayaprakash Narayan, Morarji's remark was: 'A confused person' and about Indira Gandhi: 'That chit of a girl.' He made it plain that the only way to avoid a contest was to accept him as the leader. It was Congress President K.Kamaraj who intervened and persuaded the part to choose a consensus candidate and was entrusted with the task of finding one.
My information was that Narasimha Rao [the then prime minister] had connived at the Babri Masjid Demolition. He sat at puja when the kar sevaks began pulling down the mosque and rose only when the last stone had been removed. Madhu Limaye later told me that it was during the puja Rao's aide whispered in his ears that the masjid had been demolished. Within seconds, the puja was over.
