Rana Ayyub’s book, Gujarat Files, Anatomy Of A Cover Up is devastating as a read. If you just take the section where she relates her conversation with (Rajan) Priyadarshi (former Gujarat ATS chief), you are stunned with the revelations and the almost disbelieving cadence of the exchanges with reference to Prime Minister Narendra Modi and his top aide Amit Shah.
This section encapsulates the general tapings that Rana conducted in her disguise as Maithali Tyagi in an odyssey that covered several years.
The memory recall from the ATS chief is understandable in its entirety because bitterness has a very long life and can be as corrosive 14 years later. Here is an officer who has been sidelined and is angered and stressed and, at best, a hostile witness of the events, which unfolded at that unfortunate time.
The virulent attacks on the two politicians and the contempt that laces his statements would be scary in their repercussions if it wasn’t for the huge delay in Priyadarshi and the others in having this epiphany. Also a chat or a party talk is different in texture from a formal interview and many of these tapes will be hotly denied because they are based on invasions of privacy. Nor have they been yet tested for veracity.
Does that make them less true?
It becomes a question of ‘he said, I said, then he said’ and obviously depending on your affection or lack of it for Modi and Shah, any reader can decide whether he believes the narrative or sees it as the fiction forged in the mind of a bypassed senior officer and others who may not have known they were being taped and have their own agendas and peeves.
What it will not do is stand the legal test and that is where the litmus paper comes in. Priyadarshi’s rage at being left behind despite his dedication and commitment permeates the exchanges.
Give the author the credit in not editorializing every sentence but having said that, Ayyub does pull the reins of this chariot in a specific direction. That both the men come as anti-heroes is undeniable and herein lies the rub.
If the chasm between the events and their inclusion in a literary effort is wide and memory is the only element to fall back on, then one can find more holes in it than in a Swiss cheese.
The book has not yet erupted into heavy controversy. It might still do so and cause many a retired officer tremble in fear that they have been quoted sans permission and through utterances made in benign settings. How much of what has been said is in context or out of it is vital.
Of course it is readable. It creates an army of Rasputins and makes Ivan the Terrible look like a convent schoolgirl. But unless I hear Modi or Shah say something indictable on record or have the Priyadarshi’s statements, there is an inherent imbalance.
Those who find the Priyadarshi comments offensive will find refuge in the lack of tangible proof. It all has to be weighed in on a scale where you accept that this officer would have little cause to display rancor so late in the day. On the other hand, it is equally plausible to conclude that his loathing for his political masters made him absorb inferences that have, over all this time festered in his mind and ballooned into indictments of the worst order.
If you find your curiosity aroused read the book for yourself and decide its merit or lack of it.
This section encapsulates the general tapings that Rana conducted in her disguise as Maithali Tyagi in an odyssey that covered several years.
The memory recall from the ATS chief is understandable in its entirety because bitterness has a very long life and can be as corrosive 14 years later. Here is an officer who has been sidelined and is angered and stressed and, at best, a hostile witness of the events, which unfolded at that unfortunate time.
The virulent attacks on the two politicians and the contempt that laces his statements would be scary in their repercussions if it wasn’t for the huge delay in Priyadarshi and the others in having this epiphany. Also a chat or a party talk is different in texture from a formal interview and many of these tapes will be hotly denied because they are based on invasions of privacy. Nor have they been yet tested for veracity.
Does that make them less true?
It becomes a question of ‘he said, I said, then he said’ and obviously depending on your affection or lack of it for Modi and Shah, any reader can decide whether he believes the narrative or sees it as the fiction forged in the mind of a bypassed senior officer and others who may not have known they were being taped and have their own agendas and peeves.
What it will not do is stand the legal test and that is where the litmus paper comes in. Priyadarshi’s rage at being left behind despite his dedication and commitment permeates the exchanges.
Give the author the credit in not editorializing every sentence but having said that, Ayyub does pull the reins of this chariot in a specific direction. That both the men come as anti-heroes is undeniable and herein lies the rub.
If the chasm between the events and their inclusion in a literary effort is wide and memory is the only element to fall back on, then one can find more holes in it than in a Swiss cheese.
The book has not yet erupted into heavy controversy. It might still do so and cause many a retired officer tremble in fear that they have been quoted sans permission and through utterances made in benign settings. How much of what has been said is in context or out of it is vital.
Of course it is readable. It creates an army of Rasputins and makes Ivan the Terrible look like a convent schoolgirl. But unless I hear Modi or Shah say something indictable on record or have the Priyadarshi’s statements, there is an inherent imbalance.
Those who find the Priyadarshi comments offensive will find refuge in the lack of tangible proof. It all has to be weighed in on a scale where you accept that this officer would have little cause to display rancor so late in the day. On the other hand, it is equally plausible to conclude that his loathing for his political masters made him absorb inferences that have, over all this time festered in his mind and ballooned into indictments of the worst order.
If you find your curiosity aroused read the book for yourself and decide its merit or lack of it.
