"I guess Mr. Modi knows Rajdeep is not all that bad.” Journalist and author Rajdeep Sardesai talks politics, media and elections in this candid chat with Brut. Watch the full interview on Brut's YouTube channel.
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00:00In 2007, my father passed away and one of the first calls I get is from then Chief Minister Modi.
00:05Are you the most hated journalist in the country right now?
00:09This is the second person who's asking me this question. So obviously there is a problem that I
00:13have. And every time I would ask her, but now let's talk politics, ma'am. You know,
00:17will Rahul Gandhi succeed you? No, no, that is a political question.
00:21Your favorite politician?
00:22I wish I could also put Mr. Modi in my list of favorite politicians. Maybe I should.
00:27I'd love to do a debate between Mr. Modi and Rahul Gandhi.
00:30We can even have two anchors, Annam Goswami and me, both. I think it would break the internet.
00:42Hello and welcome to this very special conversation. TV anchor, journalist and
00:46speaking to us on his new book, The Election That Surprised India, author Rajdeep Sardesai.
00:52Thank you so much for joining us.
00:53Thank you, Mehak and the team at Root for having me.
00:56I am going to circle back to that memory that you shared with us, which was with
01:00Narendra Modi. And you said the people were banging on the door,
01:04either to catch hold of you or congratulate him. Tell us how did your relationship with him,
01:11take us through the decades of your relationship with him and why has it become what it has become
01:16today?
01:17Look, I met Mr. Modi first during a Rath Yatra in 1990. I was a young reporter in
01:24the Times of India. He was State Secretary, I think, Gujarat of the BJP, but he was in
01:28charge of Advaniji's Somnath to Ayodhya Rath Yatra, the Gujarat leg of it.
01:35So, he was very helpful organizing press, you know, when press conferences were there
01:40with Mr. Modi, you knew that all the, you would have your pens, pads, everything,
01:44whatever you wanted available. He even organized a fax machine famously for us in Surat.
01:48So, he was very much hands-on in those days. And we built some kind of an equation.
01:53I speak a bit of Gujarati, so that helped me with Mr. Modi. My grandfather was a police
01:58officer whom Mr. Modi knew from the 70s. So, we built an equation and then he came
02:03to Delhi in the mid-90s. I came here, television was growing, he was a fine communicator.
02:08So, we often got him on TV shows, although once I bypassed him for Pramod Marjan and
02:14he rang me up to say, I know why you've got Pramod over me because he speaks better English than me.
02:18So, there have been moments like that. But 2002, when he went to Gujarat, in fact,
02:24the last debate program that Mr. Modi appeared was a big fight program I did,
02:28a few days after 9-11, on Islamic terrorism. And he starts the program by saying,
02:33I commend, main Rajdeep Sardesai ki himmat ko daat deta ho ki he is doing a program on Islamic terror.
02:40But that was then. Then he goes next month to Gujarat, becomes Chief Minister,
02:44all is well till the riots happen. During the riots itself, he gives me a couple of
02:48interviews including two in one day because the tape got chewed. So, I actually had to go back
02:52to his house at midnight to do the second interview. And that's when we were attacked
02:56as we were leaving his residence by a mob on the highway. That's another story.
03:01But I think that riot and our coverage of it changed our equation. Hopefully, not forever
03:07because in 2007, my father passes away and one of the first calls I get is from then Chief Minister
03:13Modi to condole with me. How long was it you hadn't spoken between that incident?
03:18No, I used to speak, you know, that time when he was Chief Minister, we spoke fairly regularly on
03:22the phone. He didn't give me interviews, but we spoke. Even after the Gujarat riots?
03:26Yeah, he gave me an interview in 2012, when he made me sit on the famously on the footboard of
03:31a bus. And I think that was the interview where he had made up his mind that I was going to tell
03:36Rajdeep what his position in life now was. That he is on the footboard of the bus, I am on the high
03:41seat. And I think that was, and after that also in the run-up to the 2014 elections, as I mentioned
03:48in my 2014 book, we would regularly converse. He would tell me what were, you know, he would want
03:53to know from me how I saw the election going, which I thought was interesting. Maybe it suggests
03:58one thing that very few people know. Mr. Modi will try and get as many sources of information
04:03and he is a good listener. Because he was ready to listen to me and I was happy to talk to him.
04:08I am happy to talk to any politician who wants to talk. So, that equation continued till 2014.
04:16And then as I write in my book, when I rang up to congratulate him, he had gone to sleep.
04:21And I guess the sleep has lasted for a decade. Because we met once or twice at some function
04:27like a Diwali Milan at the BJP headquarters that I went once to. But by and large, I guess he is
04:33in another universe. I am, main vahinka vahin hoon. I am still the guy on the footboard. He is in the skies.
04:39And in 2007 yet he had gotten in touch with you. Yes, very much so. That's right. We did an interview at a Hindustan
04:48time summit which didn't quite go the way it should have.
04:51I think I asked him too many questions on Godhra and Gujarat. He expected it to be much more about
04:57centre state relations. You know, that's the way it is. I mean, I think over time, obviously,
05:05things didn't quite go as planned. But I would like to believe, because he comes from that generation of
05:12politicians that I mentioned, that there is some latent mutual respect.
05:16I mean, in a strange way, I went once to the BJP office a few years ago for this Diwali Milan. I was standing at the back.
05:22He is, all the journalists are rushing to take selfies with me. He looks at me.
05:26Arey, Rajdeep, tum kab aaye America se? I had gone to America to do some stories, I think,
05:31Trump vs Clinton 2016. And he seemed to know that I had come back from America.
05:37So, I guess Mr. Modi knows that Rajdeep is not all that bad and, you know, he is someone who, I guess, he still follows very closely.
05:47On the Sonia Gandhi interview, because, and I know it's come up in many conversations. You just said, you know,
05:55you interviewed Mr. Vajpayee after Stampede which had taken place and you were able to ask the tough, difficult questions.
06:02What happened with the Sonia Gandhi interview? Which to date comes back? And I know in this
06:09profession of 30 years, sometimes you are allowed to ask questions, sometimes you are not.
06:13What really went out there? No, I will tell you. You see, two things. First, people don't know that I interviewed
06:19Mrs. Gandhi in 2005 December. Soon after CNN-IBN was formed, I asked for an interview.
06:24I got one. And we asked all questions to her. About dynasty, about, you know, the, you know,
06:30who was the remote control in that government. All those questions were asked in 2005 December.
06:34Nobody talks about that. But people talk about 2016 November, I think, whenever I had that interview.
06:40Maybe because social media was there. Yeah, because social media was there.
06:44Also the fact that the background and the context was not given.
06:47This was an interview which she was agreed to give after much difficulty on the occasion of the centenary of Indira Gandhi.
06:54100 years, it was in Allahabad, they were celebrating Mrs. Gandhi's 100 years, centenary celebrations had begun.
07:01Her assistants told me, look, she will not take any political questions. I thought, you know, let's get the interview and I'll slip in the questions.
07:09So, obviously, you start first by asking some sweet questions on Indira Gandhi and then every time I would ask her,
07:15but now let's talk politics, ma'am. You know, will Rahul Gandhi succeed you? No, no, that is a political question.
07:21So, the moment I asked a political, I tried to ask a political question, she said no. To be fair, that's what her
07:29assistants had said. Maybe I should have turned around and said, look,
07:32if she is not going to answer a political question, I am not doing the interview.
07:36But the truth of the matter is, no journalist is going to say no to a Sonia Gandhi interview.
07:39This is the reality that I keep telling people. And this is the problem with a lot of our leaders
07:44who you can never otherwise get access to. And therefore, that interview eventually
07:49ended up about, you know, Sonia Gandhi's relationship with Indira Gandhi,
07:53including the food, you know, what were the dishes that Sonia Gandhi learned from Indira Gandhi.
07:58So, I guess there will be those who troll me on it and they are perfectly justified in doing so.
08:02But they must understand the context that I would have loved to ask all the
08:06questions that I could on politics, but I couldn't.
08:09People don't know that when I was at CNN, IBM, we broke the big story, our exclusive
08:13investigation of how Otavio Quattrochi's accounts were being defrozen.
08:17It resulted in parliament, a bedlam in parliament. Now, how many people would do a story
08:21on Quattrochi who was considered so close to Sonia Gandhi when she is in power?
08:26So, you know, after you have done 35 years in journalism, people should judge you
08:31on the entirety of what you have done. Yeh interview, woh interview, yeh kyun poocha, woh kyun poocha.
08:35I mean, that can't be the basis of sort of either sort of targeting you or lionizing you. I don't want any of that.
08:44Judge a person, you make mistakes, you do some, you know, you do some things well, some things not.
08:50Chalta rahta hai, you know. I would still be happy to get an interview with both Mr. Modi and Rahul Gandhi.
08:55I would love to do a debate with both of them. You know, every time I watched Kamala Harris
08:59versus Narendra Modi on, sorry, Kamala Harris versus Donald Trump in the US presidential elections,
09:06I thought, you know, what an idea if we could all get, if we could get Donald,
09:11if we could get Narendra Modi and Rahul Gandhi together in a public debate.
09:14I know we are not a presidential system, but I would love to do a debate. I would love to do a debate
09:19between Mr. Modi and Rahul Gandhi. We can even have two anchors, Arnab Goswami and me, both.
09:22You know, let's have both, two of us here sitting and Mr. Modi and Rahul Gandhi there.
09:26That would make, I think it would make good television. It would break the internet.