The Breaking Story
The Hoot excerpts a passage from Madhu Trehan’s Tehelka as Metaphor.
Selected and introduced by SUBARNO CHATTARJI
Interpreting Media
November 2010
The media explosion in India over the past two decades has been the subject of popular and academic scrutiny. For much of this period The Hoot has been at the forefront of media analysis in India (and South Asia in general). The book section on The Hoot brings to the fore recent debates and studies related to this exciting and constantly changing field. New extracts are posted on the site every month and we invite readers to send in comments, book recommendations, and reviews.
Madhu Trehan’s magisterial study of the Tehelka sting Operation West End combines interviews, commentary, and analysis in its attempt to comprehend India’s most (in)famous journalistic scoop. It not only conveys the audacity of the operation but also the excitement generated by its revelations. The first extract deals with the press conference where Tehelka went public with its explosive findings and the immediate political fallout. Trehan dwells not just on the contemporary aspects of corruption in defence deals highlighted by Tehelka but on a larger historical frame and culture of political corruption in India.
Madhu Trehan. Prism Me a Lie, Tell Me a Truth: Tehelka as Metaphor. New Delhi: Roli Books, 2009.
587 pages/Hardback: Rs. 595 (978-81-7436-580-4)
Extracted with permission of Roli Books.
The Breaking Story
On the morning of 13 March 2001, journalists all over Delhi began receiving calls from Tehelka, inviting them to come to a press conference at Imperial Hotel at 2:30 p.m. I received a call from Shoma Choudhary, Tehelka’s Literary Editor. My response to her was: ‘Okay, I’ll send someone.’ Shoma: ‘No, Madhu. For this, I think, you better come yourself.’ When I arrived at the Imperial ballroom, Tarun, with his brother Minty Tejpal, was standing at the top of the stairs. Minty first and then Tarun echoing his words, said, ‘The government is going to fall. The government is going to fall.’ They were tense, but it was a happy tension. How could he have guessed he was counting governments before they hatched?
As the tapes were screened, cellphones began ringing. As names were mentioned, journalists watching the tapes, called people they knew and warned them they were on the tapes or had been mentioned. Jaya Jaitly was ordering her daughter’s wedding invitation card when she received a phone call that stunned her. Jaya couldn’t even remember this meeting with Mathew Samuel. In a state of alarm, she rushed back to the defence minister’s home, 3 Krishna Menon Marg. Army officers on the tapes began getting phone calls. At army headquarters, senior brass huddled into one office to watch the Zee telecast of Operation West End. There they saw army officers drinking, shooting the breeze, pouring out classified information, handing over documents, and accepting bribes. Bangaru Laxman, the president of the ruling Bhartiya Janata Party (BJP), was on tape, accepting money from Mathew Samuel on 5 January 2001 without so much as glancing at him. The tapes also showed Jaya Jaitly, president of the Samata Party, on 28 December 2000, being offered a packet at the defence minister’s house. She did not, at any point, refuse the money. Jaya gave instructions on where the money should be sent and explained how it would to be used. She did not touch the packet.
While the ruling party was working out a damage-control exercise, the country was shocked. Okay, but not that shocked either. Everybody in India is aware of corruption, but who had ever proved it on camera? There was no sympathy for those caught on tape. If anything, there was glee and masala excitement. Yes, in the early days of the exposé, Tehelka did have its brief moments of Camelot. Tarun Tejpal, with whom most of the press was familiar because of his work with India Today and Outlook magazines, was a hero. Aniruddha Bahal was known to some journalists from a cricket match-fixing exposé he had done. Nobody knew who Mathew Samuel was. Where then was Samuel while all this was happening? Why wasn’t he sharing the glory with Tarun and Aniruddha? Samuel’s story often turns into a yesteryear Bollywood weepy.
When Samuel returned to Delhi from Kerala that evening, he discovered his landlord had decided to throw him out because of his Tehelka connection. His Kashmiri landlord was wary of any ‘trouble’. Samuel was walking the streets with his wife and little child, desperately looking for a house. When Samuel called him in frustration and anguish, Tarun suggested he move into the Tehelka guesthouse. Samuel, the man responsible for it all was the first to feel the perniciousness of the aftermath.
By 3:00 p.m., when the Lok Sabha reconvened, Priyaranjan Dasmunshi, the Congress chief whip, was pumping with excitement when he interrupted the discussion on the Farmers’ Rights Bill. The Opposition already had copies of the transcripts of Operation West End and were baying for resignations. Many members of the Opposition had been invited to Imperial Hotel. They then turned out in full strength in parliament. (The late) Madhavrao Scindia, senior member of the Congress, was forthright, ‘The matter concerns national security; we want an explanation from the government on what seems to be irrefutable evidence. If the government cannot refute these allegations it has no moral right to continue.’ Jaipal Reddy, the Congress spokesman, said, ‘In the history of this country, we have never had such explosive evidence of corruption. It is equivalent to Pokhran III. It’s not just money that changed hands. India’s national security has been severely compromised.’
The Opposition gleefully and noisily demanded the immediate resignation of Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee. He comfortably retorted, ‘Let them make a case for the resignation of the government. This is a political demand.’ When asked about the rumours of a conspiracy behind Tehelka’s exposé, Vajpayee said, ‘Daal mein kuch kaala hai [there is something fishy]’.
In the Rajya Sabha, the then leader of the Opposition, Dr Manmohan Singh, raised the issue soon after Finance Minister Yashwant Sinha had finished his reply to a call attention motion on the stock market crisis. Yashwant Sinha rejected the Opposition’s demand for a Joint Parliamentary Committee to probe into the crash in share prices over the past few days. Sinha said, ‘We are in complete control of the situation and therefore there will be no JPC probe’. Sucheta Dalal (The Indian Express) later wrote that Shankar Sharma had timed the Tehelka exposé to sabotage the stock market crash discussion in the Rajya Sabha, crediting Shankar with remarkably prescient qualities.
Opposition politicians had a bash up fest, zeroing in on the Prime Minister’s Office. Brajesh Mishra, principal secretary to the prime minister, had been mentioned in the Operation West End tapes. Ranjan Bhattacharya, Vajpayee’s foster son-in-law, had also had his name bandied about.
Although the Opposition was having a premature dance party on the BJP’s grave, if a little thought had gone into it they might have realized it could well have been them. The Tehelka group clearly has no affiliation with any political party. Corruption in India had not developed overnight during the BJP regime. It was a twin, born along with Independence: real Midnight’s Children. Jawaharlal Nehru himself was scrupulously honest, but he turned a blind eye to the corruption around him. The first reported virus eruption came as early as 1945, when T. Prakasam, a freedom fighter from what is today Andhra Pradesh, accepted money at political functions from poor peasants and then insisted on keeping it for his personal use as compensation for his sacrifices during the freedom struggle. Prakasam only forwarded the money to the Congress Party after a shakedown from Mahatma Gandhi himself. Allegedly, the first arms deal with a commission took place when Krishna Menon was high commissioner in London (1947-52), in the purchase of jeeps (Rs 80 lakhs). Other contracts included Mitchell bombers, rifles and armoured cars. An outraged press wrote about it, there was havoc in parliament but Nehru did nothing. The case was closed in 1955 and Menon was later, significantly, appointed defence minister. Subsequently, other cases of corruption were reported, involving Partap Singh Kairon, Bakshi Ghulam Mohammed, and T.T. Krishnamachari. No action was taken. The concept of India had begun, and in corruption we had only just begun.