Indian cricketer Kapil Dev broke down into tears for ten minutes on his show. He mercilessly butchered India’s Human Resource Development Minister Arjun Singh and former Defense Minister George Fernandes on TV.
His recent interview with former Indian law minister and country’s best-known lawyer Ram Jethmalani in his show “Devil’s Advocate,” in which the top lawyer lost his cool, will be remembered for a long time.
His show “Court Martial” featuring Pakistani Foreign Minister Khurshid Mahmud Kasuri won him the prestigious Asian Television Awards for best presenter. His highly charged interview with Pakistan’s President Gen. Pervez Musharraf won him laurels the world over.
He is Karan Thapar — India’s best-known television commentator and interviewer — an aggressive man who loves to unnerve his subject with his intelligent questioning and acerbic style.
Karan’s critics feel he keeps on taunting and badgering his subjects unnecessarily. Some say he gets his facts wrong and that he brings in irrelevant information into his discussions and abruptly stops interviewees from talking.
But that’s all right: Any journalist would tell you that in this business it’s impossible to please everyone — journalists make enemies as much as they make friends.
“When you’re doing current affairs programs you ask questions that the audience would like to ask,” Karan told Arab News. “When tackling politicians who are to be made accountable you have to persist to the point where you get an answer. If you don’t — find out why the answer is not forthcoming. After all, the press is one way of making them accountable!”
Karan is the best while interviewing politicians — especially in making them explain their contradictions. He dissects them in style, and it’s quite obvious that he has done his homework before each interview.
Carefully and confidently, he brings out his ammunition. Armed with statements made by the guest, he asks such pointed questions that one almost feels sorry for the person on Karan’s hot seat. He is (in)famous for butchering people, yet celebrities from all walks of life love to be interviewed by him. Everybody wonders how he manages to convince his guests to come on his shows.
One of the most widely recognized and popular faces of Indian television, Karan has hosted several programs, including “Eyewitness on Doordarshan,” “The Chat Show,” “In Focus With Karan,” and “Face to Face” on BBC, an Indian version of the immensely popular “Hardtalk.”
His “Devil’s Advocate” on CNN-IBN brings live a high-profile scuffle between him and the interviewee. He is prolific in print, too. His popular weekly column in the Hindustan Times, called “Sunday Sentiments” has a huge readership.
Recently, Karan was in the Kingdom on the invitation of the Consulate General of India to deliver a lecture on the “Challenges for the Indian Democracy Today.”
As he spoke to Arab News during his visit, more of the well-known Karan style emerged. He rattles off matter-of-factly details of his formative years as a budding journalist.
Karan was born in November 1955 in Srinagaris to an acclaimed Indian writer Nayantara Sehgal and Gen. P.N. Thapar, former Indian Army chief. After his father retired from the army, he was posted as Indian ambassador to Kabul.
“So my first school was the American International School in Afghanistan, and then I went on to Doon School for 5 1/2 years and later, Stowe School. I graduated in Economics and Political Philosophy from Cambridge,” he said. “Then I did my Ph.D. in international relations at Oxford in 1980, and then I decided to be a journalist.”
Karan said the first five newspapers he contacted for work turned him down.
“The sixth wrote back to me saying that they had never had such a cheeky letter, and invited me to lunch, as (the editor) was curious to see the kind of human being I was,” he said.
The curious newspaperman was Charles Douglas Hume, the deputy editor of The Times, London.
“He offered me a job,” he said. “I was with them for two years.” He also worked for London Week and Television.
But throughout the years, he says it was Douglas Hume that really sparked his interest in the profession.
“Charlie is the greatest human being I have ever met,” he said. “When I went to Lagos for my first job. Charlie said, ‘I want you to file to me rather than to the desk.’
I said ‘no problem’, because I had never written an article. Every day for three months, at 11:00 to 11:30 p.m., he would ring me in Lagos and he would walk me through my article like a tutorial, telling me what was wrong, how it should have been rearranged. He would suggest a better structure for it. At the end of three months he said to me, ‘Tomorrow you are filing to the desk.’
I said they would tear up my stories. Charlie said, ‘don’t worry, you know what you are doing now.’”
Karan was deported from Lagos for his work exposing corruption in the Nigerian government.
Afterward, Karan was back to London writing editorials for The Times of London.
One fine morning in 1981 Karan got a call from London Week and Television and offered him a lucrative salary and perks. He took the job.
“I was intrigued by TV and I supposed there was something inside me that wanted to see whether I would look good on the box, and for that reason perhaps, I switched over,” he said.
While in London Karan met Nisha — a successful banker — and soon they fell in love and married.
But unfortunately she died of encephalitis in 1991.
Fondly remembering her, Karan for a moment turned sad with voice choking with emotions and eyes closed.
“Nisha was a wonderful person,” he said. “A person who knew that there is a child in me and, she always pampered that child.” The couple never had children.
“When we were both 33 we decided to have a child by the time she was 35 and raise the child in India, which was a country we wanted to live in and belong to and felt was home,” he said. “But it never happened.”
Karan said after his wife passed away he had to rebuild his life. He joined the Hindustan Times Television Group.
Karan said he’s happy with the performance of TV channels in India but added that they need to improve a lot. He criticized the sensationalism of Indian media, but said progress is being made and politicians are increasingly being held accountable.
“Indian media is now able to arouse concern about injustice — the Jessica Lal case, the Manu Sharma case, the Priyadarshini Matoo case all these cases were brought back for retrial because the media created a great a concern about the injustice and that is the very positive outcome,” he said, referring to three high-profile cases in which the accused were released from the lower court but under intense media pressure retrials were ordered by the higher court.
“The media have made Indian politicians much more accountable,” he added. “No longer are we intimidated by them.
Today we see them as what they are: Some of them are intelligent, many of them are people of no great skill and competence, and now that has been revealed. They are being scrutinized.” However, all is not rosy.
Karan says the media is also getting lazy in some areas.
“Having said that I agree that Indian channels are not as analytical and not as investigative as it could be and should be,” he said. “The awareness that the serious crisis is there in Indian agriculture as a result of which farmers are committing suicide has been again created by TV. What TV hasn’t done is to explain why that crisis exists, to explain what needs to be done and whether it is being done. To explain if it is not being done, why it is not being done. Much therefore of the background information much of the analysis is missing.” Going down the memory lane, the veteran journalist shared an interesting incident which happened to him in Kabul and which reflected the anger of Afghans with India for siding with the Russians.
“Those days I was in Kabul and doing a series of articles. On my first day in Kabul, I was moving around in the old quarters, there was a shop of antiques. I was standing there facing the shopkeeper looking for things on the counter and suddenly Russian soldiers entered into the shop and asked me for my passport, so I took out my passport and gave it to them, they filtered through it and saw my nationality, ‘Indian,’ and then gave it back to me and left. I took my passport to keep it in and was about to begin talking to the shopkeeper, he looked at me and said, ‘You are an Indian?’ I said ‘yes’ and then he slapped me in the face. That was the level of anger against India in Afghanistan those days. They looked to India as a country that would support them and when Prime Minister Indira Gandhi — as soon as she came back to power — supported the Russians instead of them, they felt deeply let down and this slap was an emotional expression of betrayal and anger,” Karan said.
Face to face, his interview reflected a small glimpse of the man behind all that hard talk. A dedicated professional — doing a damn good job.
