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Feb 21Liked by KBS Sidhu

Your illuminating long post presses me to share the following portion from my book "Instant History: A Memoir (Bloomsbury 2021). It may be of interest to you.

Jaito Then, Jaito Now

One early October day in 1988, PM Rajiv Gandhi visited terrorism-infested Punjab and addressed three public meetings. With modest audiences of a few thousand people, there were no cheers and no clapping.

What greeted him instead was an unnerving silence, and that summed up the response of the people of the state—indifference and scepticism.

The rather bland and unimaginative fare that Rajiv dished out had failed to enthuse people at the public meetings at Goindwal in Amritsar district, Jaito in Faridkot district and Jalandhar. People had been ferried from other places after elaborate security checks to make up the audiences as Punjab

was reeling under violence. I was covering Jaito while my colleagues were covering Goindwal and Jalandhar. As usual, the public relations (PR) department took the press party from Chandigarh to Jaito in a cavalcade of cars. Packed breakfast from a reputed restaurant was served while travelling. The PR team had also put together a bunch of cyclostyled papers from a relevant book about the historical Jaito Morcha of 1923.

Rajiv Gandhi offered the same package to Punjab in all three meetings. The same speech was repeated everywhere. There was elaborate bandobust for the press at the Central Telegraph Office of the nearby

town Bathinda. Cups of steaming coffee were being served. Typewriters were lined up, and the teleprinter operators were waiting to transmit copies. We reported the speech. Inputs from all three places were summed up by newspapers to make a single comprehensive news item. But the Statesman stole the show. Its young

reporter Sanjeev Miglani filed an altogether different story. He compared Rajiv Gandhi’s Jaito visit to the visit of Jawahar Lal Nehru and other freedom fighters on 21 September 1923 to take part in the morcha of the gurdwara reforms movement. Jaito was the part of Nabha State, ruled by a feudal lord. The entire population had, with unprecedented enthusiasm, thronged the venue of the morcha in 1923. This time,

however, an undeclared curfew had forced residents of the town to remain confined to their houses. The town bore a deserted look. As mentioned earlier, the audience comprised people ferried from other places

in trucks and buses. He merely compared the two moods of the people. It was a hit. Despite having the relevant material, I failed to use it to make the news more interesting.

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author

Thanks a bunch! Truly grateful.

Your comprehensive story puts my article into. 3D perspective.

The political graph of Rajiv Gandhi went down deeply and in 1989 we had the VP Singh Government coming in.

From the immense optimism created by the Rajiv-Longowal Accord, the Barnala government, its dismissal in 1987 events moved very fast till 1989.

The turnout in Punjab in 1989 Lok Sabha elections was overwhelming— Simranjit Singh Mann’s landslide victory.

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Feb 21Liked by KBS Sidhu

I left for Srinagar in June 1989 from Chandigarh where I had come on transfer from Lucknow in March 1987, a few months before the historical elections in Haryana.

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Feb 21Liked by KBS Sidhu

Bitter truth narrated with courage and wisdom 👍👍

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