HT This Day: April 7, 2001 -- Devi Lal knew what his voters wanted
I ALMOST lost my job because of Devi Lal. I went to do an interview with him for The Illustrated Weekly of India which I edited at the time, and he gave me some truly amazing quotes. Not realizing, of course, that it is not the job of the Deputy Prime Minister of India to give truly amazing quotes to the media. Particularly at a point of time when his Government was teetering at the edge.
I ALMOST lost my job because of Devi Lal. I went to do an interview with him for The Illustrated Weekly of India which I edited at the time, and he gave me some truly amazing quotes. Not realizing, of course, that it is not the job of the Deputy Prime Minister of India to give truly amazing quotes to the media. Particularly at a point of time when his Government was teetering at the edge.
In fact, if Devi Lal had any sense, he should have refused to meet me.
Of course, the moment my story appeared, he was in trouble. Big trouble. Prime Minister Vishwanath Pratap Singh never liked him in the first place and kept him only because he had no choice. Arun Nehru openly detested him and the fact that Devi Lal had described him as a fat elephant in the interview and accused him of eating up the Bofors money made him see red.
Within hours of my story appearing, the entire cabinet was baying for Devi Lal’s blood. Instigated, of course by Singh and Nehru.
But Devi Lal was cool. When I called him to say I was sorry that the story had got him into so much trouble, all he asked me was: Do you really want to bail me out? I said: Sure, as long as I don’t have to compromise on journalistic ethics.
His suggestion was simple: Why don’t you say that you do not know Haryanvi and maybe you got some of the nuances wrong? No way, I said, but if you said that, I could keep quiet. That’s a deal, he said and requested me to draft a letter to the Prime Minister on his behalf saying exactly that.
It was my first exercise in political draftsmanship and, of course, the entire media knew that I was responsible for the letter because it was the first time I did not promptly pull out a tape and accuse the politician of lying.
Why did I do this? Why did I bend backward to help a man I barely knew? The reason was simple. I liked Devi Lal. He was a charmer. He knew exactly what his voters wanted and he gave it to them. Not for him all the fancy footwork we associate with politicians from the heartland. Not for him any of the pretences. For him, being in a position of power meant he could do some real things for his voters.
His goals were simple and he rarely compromised on them. He managed to get out of that scrape and very soon had Singh in a corner. By threatening to resign when Singh was at his most vulnerable. Then it was Singh’s time to say sorry and patch up with Devi Lal.
Devi Lal, true to his style, took back his threat as effortlessly as he had made it. I guess he was never really keen to resign. Brinkmanship was just second nature for him.
But it was an endearing kind of brinkmanship.
Years later, I saw him in the Rajya Sabha. He was being sworn in. His eyes were glazed. He could barely stand on his legs. And no, he did not recognise me. In fact, I do not think he recognised anyone out there. He cursorily nodded his head when colleagues greeted him. I looked away because I wanted to remember him as I had once known him. A tall, proud man who enjoyed speaking out his mind.