[India Today]

Published date: 30th April 1982

THERE are, said the poet Wallace Stevens, 13 ways of looking at a blackbird. The essence of that particular truth came home forcefully last fortnight as the contretemps in the Gandhi household reached a flashpoint and spilt uglily to public attention. All at once there were as many versions of the event as there were participants, and gossip spread like wildfire about the unsavoury affair which was in the nature of a not uncommon family dispute but with ominous political overtones. INDIA TODAY does not normally accord importance to what it sees to be people’s private lives, but the contentious Maneka Gandhi affair clearly had dimensions of public importance. INDIA TODAY decided to write a profile of the woman in the centre of the storm, Maneka Gandhi, who broke with more than one tradition when she drove out of 1, Safdarjung Road.

For all the limelight that has shone on her, however, Maneka was no easy figure to pin down. For all that one person was prepared to say about her, there was another to proclaim the opposite. She herself, while unrestrained in private conversation or even at press conferences, not to speak of two leisurely photo sessions with Picture Editor RAGHU RAI, steadfastly refused to give a formal interview. “I will when I have done some- thing positive,” she told Correspondent SUNIL SETHI confidently during several hours of off-the-record conversations. Sethi met with complete silence when he attempted to approach 1, Safdarjung Road for the other side’s views. Yet there was no dearth of other people volunteering” information” and views unreservedly.” It seems that everybody in town has taken sides,” said Sethi at the end of a week of monitoring the divergent view- points in both camps.

The Gandhi family wasn’t the only one pictured in less than desirable light last fortnight. In what might in retrospect be a juicy corollary to the Gandhi affair, mother and son of the former royal family of Gwalior, the Scindias, took their ongoing battle a dramatic stage further. What made the Gwalior dispute significant was the involvement of some members of the Gwalior entourage in the sale of Surya magazine in February which was something of a curtain-raiser on the Maneka affair. Correspondent CHAITANYA KALBAG, who covered the Surya sale, flew down to Gwalior with Photographer BHAWAN SINGH to find that skeletons in the Scindia and Gandhi households have a surprisingly similar rattle.

SECRETS of another kind were also being bared last fortnight. Hard on the heels of his investigation into mail interception in the capital, Correspondent PRABHU CHAWLA winged his way to Bhubaneswar to discover that successive Orissa governments have been steaming open the letters of their perceived political opponents. It is a sad comment on the system that in spite of repeated exposure, and a petition given to the Lok Sabha speaker last fortnight, the practice continues unchecked.

Last fortnight INDIA TODAY took on board Business Editor T.N. NINAN, who moves over from the Business Standard, of the Calcutta-based Ananda Bazar, Patrika Group. Ninan, 32, will join Economics Editor JAY DUBASHI in giving INDIA TODAY readers a more complete reportage of business and economic developments.