Indian media coy about reporting sexcapades

It may be a politically incorrect thing to say but one can’t help feel a little sorry for the 85-year-old Congress veteran and one of the country’s most powerful leaders in his prime, ND Tiwari, on a day when he goes through a DNA test in a paternity case. Before feminists and other social activists cry foul (and more) and tear me to shreds let me explain why I believe Tiwari has already been punished enough. He is one of the few Indian politicians who has suffered enough public humiliation for his misdemeanor and alleged sexual escapades in the past. The videos showing him frolicking with women in the Hyderabad Raj Bhavan not just cost him his gubernatorial assignment but also made him the butt of contemptuous ridicule across the length and breadth of the country. [caption id=“attachment_18879” align=“alignleft” width=“380” caption=“The past has caught up with Narayan Dutt Tiwari. Reuters”]  [/caption] The stories of his relationships and weakness for women are the stuff of political folklore not just in his home state, Uttar Pradesh, but also in Delhi and all those places he used to visit as an AICC office-bearer. There’s hardly anybody who remembers Tiwari today for his mass appeal and rapport with party workers at the grassroots level. There’s hardly ever any mention of his rather distinguished record as an administrator ( he was thrice chief minister of UP, chief minister of Uttarakhand, Union minister several times and president of the breakaway Tiwari Congress formed by Sonia loyalists during Narsimha Rao’s premiership). Any mention of ND Tiwari is usually met with a combination of snigger and jeer. Whatever the outcome of the DNA test, Tiwari lost the case in public perception long ago. He is like an emperor without clothes, stripped off his dignity and reputation in the eyes of those whose love once made him one of North India’s tallest leaders. I am not trying to defend Tiwari in any which way. If there’s any legal and moral punishment he should be shown no mercy. Let him atone for his past and if found guilty in a court of law also suffer whatever legal and moral punishment he is due for. But the one thing which interests me as an observer is how the Indian media—which is becoming brazen and bold by the day—has so far decided not to pry in the private lives of those holding public office. It’s not that the power circuit in Delhi is short of the kind of gossip on which Bollywood thrives.  It’s just that so far an unwritten code on crossing this Lakshmanrekha has been honoured by journalists. Sometimes there was the mention and the hint. Like in the case of India’s first prime minister, Jawahar Lal Nehru, whose lady friends were credited more to a mix of his loneliness and his sensitive, poet like persona rather than scandalous escapades. Not everyone was credited with the same ideological high perch and a moral high ground as Panditji though. It is said that Dinesh Singh, a cabinet minister in Indira Gandhi’s cabinet, himself encouraged rumors about his closeness with the prime minister. The close relationship of another Congress prime minister in the 90s with a journalist was known to everybody who mattered in the capital. The word foster son-in-law is a gift from Atal Behari Vajpayee to the Indian lexicon. Relationships were not just the exclusive preserve of the prime ministers. But yes, some kind of exclusivity—material, lineage or ideological—lend these relationships more colour as well as vigour. So the relationship of a handsome prince from a central Indian state—also a senior minister in the Union government—with a media tsarina was as much the toast of Delhi’s power circuit as any high voltage affair between two A listers would be in the tinsel town. The firebrand trade union leader , George Fernandes, was open in his relationship with Jaya Jaitley and if there has been one Indian politician who has never tried to hide his love for good life than that is Farooq Abdullah. There have always also been quite a few roving eye types in the Indian cabinet—across ideological and political divide—whom women journalists preferred not to meet alone. There are a couple in this cabinet too who have this kind of an image. The list can go on and on. But while these scandals quite often dominated the gossip charts in private conversations they have seldom made it to print in India. A man of letters himself and former foreign minister, Natwar Singh, says the restrained approach has something to do with our culture. “The Americans and the British are one extreme. They will report on the affairs of their leaders in great detail and go for the jugular. The French really don’t care. Neither do the Italians to some extent.” Natwar Singh says in India people as well as the media is more restrained, understanding and perhaps even more condoning. “In our culture and history we read about rulers having many wives. And somewhere that feudal mindset still persists in reporting on the private lives of those in power.