Karan Thapar’s Pakistan Link: College Crush on Benazir Bhutto
In a reversal of roles, ace interviewer Karan Thapar gets grilled – by his former colleague Rajdeep Sardesai.
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Cameraperson: Abhishek Ranjan
Camera Assistant: Amanjeet Singh
Editor: Vishal Kumar
Producer: Indira Basu
Senior journalist Rajdeep Sardesai, ribbed his friend and colleague, veteran journalist Karan Thapar on 25 July, Wednesday, at the the launch of the latter’s book Devil's Advocate: The Untold Story. Sardesai joked that their roles had reversed, and he’d be pitching some tough questions to the formidable interviewer, Karan Thapar.
Sardesai’s questions ranged from the personal to the political.
But it was no problem interviewing Bhutto many years later, and putting tough questions to her, when Thapar was almost 40 — by then, he had “matured”. He was “no more a young boy”.
Bhutto and Thapar would invite each other for debates, while they were at Oxford University and Cambridge University respectively, and also enjoyed long drives and late-night ice cream runs in London.
Thapar just as candidly spoke about his late wife Nisha, and how, at the time of her untimely death, he had been thankful for having no children, who’d have grown up without a mother. But later, when he was in his forties, Thapar regretted not having children, seeing his other friends playing with their young ones.
Rajdeep Sardesai clearly wouldn’t let Karan Thapar have it easy. He put him in a spot by asking him about his curious meeting with Narendra Modi. Sardesai also asked Thapar why indeed did he choose to ask the worst possible question (about the 2002 Godhra pogrom), to Modi, instead of softening him up a little first.
Thapar unflinchingly answered, that he simply wanted to get the ‘elephant in the room’ out of the way, and thought it wise at the time to pose the toughest question first to Modi. Unfortunately for Thapar, Narendra Modi took the question on Godhra as a clue to the rest of the interview, which he mistakenly thought would focus on 2002.
Thapar expressed pain at being shunned by BJP following that disastrous interview. He did wish that he could have done things differently, or perhaps had another audience with Modi. At the same time, Thapar also felt that his conversation with Modi that fateful day, would have anyway come to an abrupt end with the question of Godhra — no matter when he asked it.
Among the audience were Former Deputy PM and BJP man LK Advani, Former PM Dr Manmohan Singh, and CPI(M) leader Sitaram Yechury. What was going on in their minds while Thapar spoke candidly on ‘touchy’ topics, is anybody’s guess.