"Truth, Love and a Little
Malice," the renowned scholar, journalist and editor Khushwant Singh's much
awaited autobiography, has finally
been published.
Khushwant
Singh's fans who have been reading his column, " With Malice Towards One and
All," in the Illustrated Weekly and Hindustan Times, "This
Above All" in The Tribune, his
controversial books, Company of Women, Unforgettable Women,
and
the novel Delhi will be adequately compensated.. He gives blunt opinions
about his friends and foes, exaggerates their weaknesses, weaves stories around
some anecdotes with the creative imagination of a fiction writer, and adds doses
of sensationalism here and there in the narration.
There is no dearth of juicy masala of K
Singh’s variety in the book. His characters swear in typical unsavory Punjabi
(Punjabi galan). He has a dig at every one, friend or foe, from Nehru,
Krishna Menon, Indira Gandhi to Sikh leaders Bhinderanwala, Zial Singh, Buta Singh,
and Sikh intellectuals Kapur Singh, Tarlochan Singh, Gopal Singh to name a few..
He remembers Nehru as a vain and
arrogant man. Singh narrates an
interesting story of Nehru’s secret midnight visit to Lady Edwina Mountbattan
which The Daily Herald covered with a large photograph of Nehru with Lady
Mountbatten in her negligee opening the door for him .
Singh perhaps reserves the worst for Indira
Gandhi. He not only gives a detailed account of Indira Gandhi’s petty
and vindictive nature as mother-in-law (when she threw Maneka Gandhi, her
widowed daughter-in-law, out of her house), but holds her responsible for all
the ailments of India. " I had no great admiration for her as Prime
Minister and I am convinced that all that has gone wrong with the country
emanated from her ," observes Khushwant Singh .
He is furious about her secret plans to attack
The Golden Temple in 1984, despite her assurances to the contrary. On the Blue
Star Operation he writes
"Despite
my indifference and hostility to religion, I had no doubt in my mind that I
should re-affirm my identity with my community. I regarded Bhinderanwale as an
evil man who deserved his fate. But " Operation Blue Star" went well
beyond the slaying of Bhinderanwale : it was a well-calculated and deliberate
slap in the face of the entire community."
In protest Khushwant Singh returned the Padma
Bhushan award to the President of India, Giani Zial Singh. Gianiji, being a Sik
h
in that high office, felt quite a lot of guilt about this.
"I don’t
think my qaum (community) will ever forgive me for this," confessed
Gianiji.
"No Gianiji I
don’t think the Sikhs will ever forgive you for the Blue Star,"
confirmed an angry Khushwant Singh.
Khushwant Singh also decries the 1984 Delhi
pogrom against the Sikhs where his own life was in danger. He describes how he
exposed the nefarious designs of the government in his speeches in Rajya Sabha.
For a more detailed account of this turbulent period,
one must read his A
History of the Sikhs, Vol.2, 1999.
The religious influence of his grandmother
in his childhood did not go to waste.Despite his aversion to religion, and his
Western thinking and bohemian life style, he stuck to his Sikh identity and to
his wife.
"I continued to retain the outward emblems of the Khalsa not
because of any conviction but out of a wish to remain a part of the Khalsa
fraternity," claims Khushwant Singh.
When his son became clean-shaven,
he was deeply hurt. At one point when his relations with his wife came to a
breaking point, and she threatened
to leave him, he spent the whole night in Gurdwara Bangla Sahib praying for the
strength to face the crisis. While translating the hymns of Guru Nanak, he felt
the hand of the Guru on his shoulder.
Though Khushwant Singh knew many Sikhs were
not happy with him for his anti-religion views, he always yearned for
recognition from his own community. He was disappointed when Akalis picked
Lt. Gen. Jagjit Singh Aurora over him as their candidate for Rajya Sabha despite
promises made to him. It was a sad commentary on the political maturity of
Akalis since he had pleaded the Sikh cause most forcefully and logically in the
previous house of Rajya Sabha where he was a nominated member.
Finally recognition came with the award of Nishane
Khalsa at the tercentennial celebration of the birth of the Khalsa in 1999,
and an honorary doctorate from Guru Nanak Dev University, giving Khushwant Singh
a sense of fulfillment. His scholarly work, A History of the Sikhs and
translations of sacred hymns have reserved him a special place among the galaxy
of Sikh scholars.
In his book, Khushwant Singh comes across as a
secular man who gave a good coverage to Muslims in the Illustrated Weekly.
He persuaded Lata Mangeshkar to tie Rakhi on the wrist of matinee idol Dilip
Kumar. His pre-partition days in
Lahore, fascination with Allama Iqbal’s poetry, and family friendship with M A
Jinnah, founder of Pakistan, earned him a good number of friends in Pakistan. He
was warmly received whenever he visited Pakistan. Even there he would not
hesitate to make fun of bigots whenever he
got a chance. Once in Islamabad, he regaled his audience with an Urdu couplet
which became very popular with the people there.
Mullah, gar asar hai dua mein
To Masjid hila kay dikha
Gar nahin, to do ghoont pe
Aur Masjid ko hilta dekh
He has a very high opinion of the hospitality
of Punjabi Muslims, but for puritans, he has a simple rule, “Avoid making
friends with a Punjabi Pakistani who prays five times a day, who fasts during
Ramdan- and does not drink."
One thing
which
endears Khushwant Singh to his readers is his style of providing fun at his own
cost. In an early school incident, he played a prank on some rural Sikh students
who happened to be with him in the same tent. They got hold of him, took off all
of his clothes and threw him out of the tent as a tamasha for others to
watch. He tells us that when his mother read his novel, A Train to
Pakistan,
she called him Beysharam (shameless).
He was dubbed a chamcha of Sanjay Gandhi when he wrote in favor of
Sanjay in Illustrated Weekly. He tried to persuade Morarji Desai to leave
urine therapy and try drinking scotch.
Singh shows no hesitation in putting down his
weaknesses as a human. The assassination news of Mahatma Gandhi shook him
deeply, but he could not resist the temptation to see a play in a theatre in
London the same evening. He failed as a lawyer as he did not like lying for
money. He writes, "A common prostitute renders more service to society
than lawyers." His visits
to prostitutes, taking his daughter and wife to a restaurant in America with
topless waitresses, and his affairs with women even after marriage do not
enhance his image. The honest man does accept bumps in his married life, but
hides the details.
Yet all such things did not deter the Sulabh
International, which honored him with, "The Honest Man of the Year,"
award in 2000. The award is given every year by the Sulabh International Social Service Organisation to
uphold moral values by honouring persons of impeccable character and exceptional
integrity. He
describes the ceremony in his characteristic style, "I should have
turned down the award, but the sum of ten lakh rupees tax free proved too much
for me to quibble about my honesty……..To prove how dishonest I could be , I
stole the ball points pens from the portfolios of Chandrababu Naidu, Chief
Minister of Andhra Pradesh, who presided over the function."
The book, however, is not free from minor
errors and omissions.
In 1975, Indira Gandhi’s election to the Lok Sabha was
declared invalid by Justice Jagmohan Lal Sinha of the Allahabad High Court, not
by Justice Verma as given in the book.
Normally a biography has pictures of the
author’s family, of eminent
persons and places that influence his life, but this book has none. We know
little about the birth of his children or the time he spent with them and there
is not much about his brothers, sister or their families.
He does talk of his
leftist leanings during his Lahore days, but tells us little about the great
minds who influenced him in that direction or how and why he turned against
organized religion. He does not give dates with the incidents. It is difficult
to ascertain when something actually happened.
Finally,
his obsession with sex and profanity, which keeps appearing every few
pages has spoiled an otherwise compelling commentary on the contemporary
politics, politicians, literary figures and his friends which keeps
the reader glued to the book. His most loyal
fans will love the book, but others who had seen flashes of his genius in his
monumental works, A History of the Sikhs
and, A Train to Pakistan,
will be disappointed.
The book is available for $30.(US) in North
America from South Asia Books, sabooks@juno.com.
The
Maritime Sikh Society
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