ਕੁਲਦੀਪ ਨਈਅਰਕੁਲਦੀਪ ਨਈਅਰ

Kuldip Nayar was an Indian journalist, author and peace activist born in Sialkot in 1923, who edited The Statesman and the Indian Express, was jailed during the Emergency, served as India's High Commissioner to the United Kingdom and led the annual Wagah border candlelight vigil for India and Pakistan peace.

Early life in Sialkot and Lahore

Kuldip Nayar was born on 14 August 1923 in Sialkot, in the Punjab of British India, in a Punjabi Sikh family. Sialkot, now in Pakistan, remained his hometown in memory for the rest of his life, and the Punjabi world he grew up in shaped the subjects he returned to as a writer: Partition, Punjab and the relations between India and Pakistan. He was educated at Murray College in Sialkot, then completed a B.A. (Hons.) at Forman Christian College, Lahore, and a law degree, LL.B., at Law College, Lahore.

In September 1947, as Partition divided Punjab, Nayar left Sialkot and migrated to India, an experience he described in his later writing. Journalism, not law, became his living. In 1952 he travelled to the United States on a scholarship to study journalism at the Medill School of Journalism at Northwestern University. The combination of a Lahore legal education, American journalism training and his own memory of a divided Punjab gave him an unusual starting point for a career spent close to the centre of Indian public life.

From Urdu journalism to the editor's chair

Nayar began his career in 1948 as a reporter for Anjam, an Urdu daily, starting in the Urdu press before moving into English language journalism. He then worked inside government as a press officer in the Press Information Bureau, serving as press officer to Home Ministers Govind Ballabh Pant and Lal Bahadur Shastri in the early 1960s. Watching the state work from the inside, and building contacts among politicians and officials, taught him how news was made before he returned to making it himself.

His rise in the profession was steady. He revived and led the news agency United News of India (UNI) as its editor and general manager, worked for more than two decades as a correspondent for The Times of London, and became editor of the Delhi edition of The Statesman. He later joined the Indian Express as editor. In 1978 he founded the Editors Guild of India, the professional body for senior editors. He became one of India's first syndicated columnists: his column and opinion pieces appeared in over 80 newspapers in 14 languages, including the Deccan Herald, The Daily Star, Dawn and The Express Tribune.

Why was Kuldip Nayar jailed during the Emergency?

Nayar was jailed because he opposed the Emergency of 1975 to 1977 and protested against its excesses. When Prime Minister Indira Gandhi's government suspended civil liberties and censored the press, Nayar was among the journalists who resisted, and he was arrested towards the end of the Emergency period. Obituary accounts report that he was held under the Maintenance of Internal Security Act (MISA) after leading a protest against the administration. His stand made his reputation as a defender of press freedom and civil liberties, a theme he returned to for the rest of his career, including in his books The Judgement and In Jail, and decades later when he protested against the Rajiv Gandhi government's Defamation Bill in the late 1980s, which was withdrawn after public opposition.

Books and a column that travelled across borders

Nayar wrote 15 books, many of them drawing on his years reporting Indian politics from close range. Between the Lines, published in 1969 and sharing its name with his long running column, was described by historian Ramachandra Guha as perhaps the first non-fiction bestseller in India. India After Nehru (1975) examined the country after its first prime minister. With Khushwant Singh he wrote Tragedy of Punjab (1985), on Operation Blue Star and its aftermath, and in Without Fear: The Life and Trial of Bhagat Singh (2007) he returned to the revolutionary executed in Lahore in 1931.

His autobiography, Beyond the Lines, was published in 2012 and reads as a political history of the subcontinent told by a witness. In it he recounted his interview with Pakistan's nuclear scientist Abdul Qadeer Khan, in which Khan indicated that Pakistan had a nuclear device earlier than the world had believed, a story that drew worldwide attention. A launch of the book was held in Lahore in 2013, a sign of the readership he kept on both sides of the border he had crossed in 1947.

High Commissioner, Parliament and the Wagah candles

In 1990 Nayar was appointed India's High Commissioner to the United Kingdom, serving in London at India House, an experience he later wrote about in his book India House (1992). He was a member of India's delegation to the United Nations in 1996, and in August 1997 he was nominated to the Rajya Sabha, the upper house of Parliament, where he served until 2003. Public office never replaced journalism for him: he kept writing his column, and colleagues recalled that he dictated a column shortly before his final hospital admission at the age of 94.

His best known public work outside print was for peace between India and Pakistan. Every year he led fellow peace activists to the Attari-Wagah border near Amritsar to light candles on the night between 14 and 15 August, the independence days of Pakistan and India, greeting people on both sides and singing songs of friendship. Accounts differ on the exact year the vigil began in the 1990s, but by the 2000s it had become a fixed annual event, and he flagged off a peace march to the border days before his death in 2018. He described India, Pakistan and Bangladesh as his countries and argued for a South Asia that cooperated like a union while each country kept its own identity.

Honours, death and legacy

Nayar's honours recognised both journalism and press freedom. He received the Astor Award for Press Freedom in 2003, the Shaheed Niyogi Memorial Award for lifetime achievement in 2007, and the Ramnath Goenka Lifetime Achievement Award for journalism, reported in obituaries as presented in 2015. Northwestern University had earlier given him its Alumni Merit Award in 1999. In 2019, after his death, India awarded him the Padma Bhushan, one of the country's highest civilian honours.

Kuldip Nayar died in New Delhi at about 12.30 a.m. on 23 August 2018, aged 95, after being admitted to hospital with pneumonia five days earlier. He was survived by his wife and two sons. His funeral at Lodhi crematorium was attended by former prime minister Manmohan Singh and leaders across parties, and, following his wishes, his ashes were immersed in the Ravi river near Lahore. His legacy rests on three connected strands: reporting that treated press freedom as a public duty, books that recorded the politics of India, Pakistan and Punjab from first hand knowledge, and a candle lit each August at Wagah for a Punjab divided by a border but joined by language and memory.