Not so long ago, when Indians did not live in such financially exciting times, a dedicated band of foreign correspondents brought to the world every small twist and turn in the country's saga through reportage, comment and photographs. Technology was slow and, in some cases, the hazards were real. Yet, they soldiered on. |
The Foreign Correspondents' Club in New Delhi was set up in 1958. The book marks the first 50 years of the club with some of the best reports filed out of India by representatives of overseas media organisations. Most bylines would be familiar to any serious India watcher "" Mark Tully, David Housego, John Elliott, Daniel Lak, Edward Luce and Andrew Whitehead, to name a few.
The articles seek to cover other turbulent South Asian countries like Pakistan, Sri Lanka and Nepal too, but the theme is predominantly Indian. Political scandals, assassinations, wars and policy about-turns, Foreign Correspondent covers it all. These newspaper and agency reports were indeed the first draft of Indian history "" incomplete and often somewhat cynical to the Indian eye but indeed first off the block.
Foreign publications have often been blamed for focusing on what would appear exotic to the average foreigner during the British Raj once he set foot in the country "" tigers, snake charmers, child marriages, burning of widows, eunuchs, etc. Immensely popular and well-received abroad, it piques Indian journalists and commentators alike when these reports miss the woods for misshapen trees.
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Foreign Correspondent does carry a sprinkling of such articles "" quite a few pages have been devoted to tiger hunts, caste riots, Sai Baba, the slave trade and other similar subjects. It shows up in the selection of pictures too. The first is of Edmund Hillary and Tenzing Norgay after their Everest conquest and the second is a tiger shoot in Rajasthan in 1951. The others include shots of Sikh militant leader Jarnail Singh Bhindranwale, the Bhopal gas tragedy, Indira Gandhi's assassination, destruction of the Babri Mosque at Ayodhya, a fire set off by militants in Srinagar, dalit women at a Mayawati rally, 2004 tsunami and of course the great Indian drought.
Still, to its credit, the book captures India's concerns, anxieties, highs and lows in the last 50 years fairly well. On reading the articles sequentially, one does get a fair assessment of the evolution of the Indian republic. It tracks with a fair degree of precision the hard-working days of the Nehru era when all were fired with the zeal of nation building, the autocratic ways of Indira Gandhi, the age of reforms under Manmohan Singh etc.
Some of the later articles touch upon the country's economic transformation, though the book does not do justice with the factors that have caused it, especially the burst of entrepreneurship seen in the last few years.
The pick of the lot are Peter Kann's Dacca Diaries on the liberation of Bangaldesh, which appeared in the Wall Street Journal in December 1971 and Suman Dubey's account of Indira Gandhi's return to power after the Janata Party experiment had failed (The Indira Express in the Asian Wall Street Journal in December 1979).
Barbara Crossette's eye-witness account of Rajiv Gandhi's assassination (it appeared in the New York Times in May 1991) too needs mention. She was the last journalist he met before he was killed by a suicide bomber. The article is a gripping account of what happened during the last few years of his life as well as of his beliefs and dreams for India.
There are also a few reports by Daniel Pearl, who was killed by militants in Pakistan.
In the final analysis, Foreign Correspondent is an interesting account of how the world media has seen India in the last 50 years. You may not agree with the treatment of the article or the conclusion all the time but you will definitely find it hard to ignore.
FOREIGN CORRESPONDENT
FIFTY YEARS OF REPORTING SOUTH ASIA
Edited by John Elliott, Bernard Imhasly and Simon Denyer
Penguin (Viking)
Pages: xvi+405; Price: Rs 695