Interview: John Elliott and Bernard Imhasly

Earlier this year, I read an anthology of journalistic writing, Foreign Correspondent: Fifty Years of Reporting in South Asia. Published jointly by Penguin Books India and the Foreign Correspondents Club to celebrate the latter's 50 years of existence and contains the best journalistic accounts by foreign correspondents. Now, in an email interview two of the three editors, John Elliott and Bernard Imhasly, discuss the role of a foreign correspondent and the nature of his/her work


With South Asia being exposed to a variety of new media forms such as blogs, social networking websites and, on a larger scale, the internet, how do you think a foreign correspondent approaches his work in the region?


Bernard (BI): For foreign correspondents, the nature of work in the subcontinent has not changed (yet). The citizen journalist profile has yet to gel, so the approach is still much the same - travel, investigate, meet people, use the traditional media, read, look and listen.

John Elliott (JE): A foreign correspondent approaches his work in the same professional way that he always  has, but the pace of work and consequently the time available to research and analyse stories, has been dramatically reduced by the advent of the internet. This not only affects news agencies but also leading newspapers with websites which require instant stories from correspondents. There is therefore less demand for, and time for, reflective stories and the general quality of reporting is thus at risk. Some newspapers allow (or require) their correspondents to write blogs, which gives a journalist a new way to express his personal views, but again increases the pressure on time.


When a foreign correspondent was posted to South Asia say 30 or 40 years ago, how would he react then and how would he react now?

BI: The environment was different in many ways but in one strikingly so: the fact of time had another quality. Political processes were slower and so was the reaction time. There was more deliberation before filing a story. Now, speed is of the essence; so much so that the story is still developing while the correspondent files it. 


JE: I was first posted here 25 years ago when the country and region were different in many ways, though the negative aspects which colour many people's views remain the same - the appalling poverty, dismal airports, awful roads and tiresome bureaucracy. That of course is offset by the huge potential for success, which a newcomer can see more quickly now than 25 years ago though it was of course evident then. 


During the 26/11 attacks, the BBC was severely criticised for using the term 'militants' instead of 'terrorists'. Is there still some sort of bias against the region in the Western media?


BI: Biases across societies and continents are inevitable. They have lessened with globalisation, but have become more insiduous also because now they are more hidden behind this global facade. What is important (and what has improved) is the awareness about them. 


But it is also important to differentiate between biases and points of view. It is legitimate to look at a society eg. India from the point of view of, say, a European and this is especially so in India where there are many indigenous points of view for everything anyway. So it is okay to report from where one stands - and say so.  A bias is a principled prejudice unwilling to be corrected by reality. And that is obviously wrong.


JE: This is not a bias - those who regard it as such are surely paranoid. Along with other parts of the media, the BBC is, I believe, attempting to avoid indiscriminately labeling people and group with tags - though I would agree that 'terrorists' would have been correct on the Mumbai attacks. But, to illustrate the problem, in the 1980s when I was reporting Punjab for the FT (Financial Times),  should Khalistan 'militants'  have been called extremists (as I sometimes did), or 'zealots' as another FT colleague wrote, or 'terrorists' as they might be called now?

This anthology contains a lot of pieces on the Nehru-Gandhi dynasty. What is it about this family that it towers over all others in South Asia? Is it because they gave India three Prime Ministers or is there something more?

BI: Simple: They have dominated the politics of India and therefore pretty much of the subcontinent so naturally the media, and that includes the foreign media, reflects this reality.

JE: The number of pieces on the dynasty accurately reflects the role they have played down the years.

Which are your favourite piece(s) from the lot that got left out of the book?  Any specific reason as to why they couldn't make it in the end?

BI: We left out many good pieces and it is difficult to rate them. I missed a piece on Bhutan by Simon Denyer, one by John Elliott on modern Indian art; there should have been a piece on the Maldives, women,  more on the many diversities of India - from languages to food to street culture to religious expressions.  But given the parameters, I think we covered a lot of ground.

JE: I agree with Bernard's list including his kind mention of my modern Indian art article and would add that it is a pity we have not got a couple of pieces on other politicians around Nehru in the early years. If we were going to press now, we would need one on the emergence of Rahul Gandhi as a serious politician. The paperback edition (now published) has added articles on Sri Lanka, the Mumbai attacks, and Pakistan, as well as a report from 1984 on Indira Gandhi's assassination. But note that in our introduction we said that, while we tried to get a broad spread of history into the book, we selected good reporting and writing even if that meant that subjects or events were not covered. 

In his 1990 piece about the BJP, James Clad writes towards the end that "the BJP is a coming power in India, a beneficiary of vacuum at the centre of Indian politics". 19 years later, do you think a similar/different vacuum still exists in North Indian politics?

BI: That is a wide field - too wide to be answered in this space. Certainly, the vacuum of 20 years ago has been filled to a large extent, though the BJP has not really grown into a modern right-wing party but has remained stuck in the tradition v/s modernity discourse. In that sense, there is still a vacuum to be filled by a modern party that challenges the Congress on its own ground.

JE: There is a vacuum in that there is no major party representing the poor and emerging lower castes. The parties that have grown into space left by the decline of the Congress Party are run by mostly self-serving, highly corrupt politicians with littler interest in the welfare of those who elect them. It is, however, beginning to look as if the Congress is beginning to emerge as a significant player again.

Another striking feature of this anthology is that there isn't a single piece on cricket: a sport which has a huge fan following in this region. Why? Was it a conscious decision?

BI: No, certainly not a conscious erasure but deplorable nonetheless. Our editorial approach was largely directed by what came in in terms of contributions. When there were significant gaps, we tried to plug them by looking for pieces ourselves. In the case of cricket, this wasn't possible or maybe we just didn't look hard enough.

JE: No, not a consicous decision. Add to the list of gaps above!

The year 2001 was, in many ways, a tumultuous one for South Asia - the Gujarat earthquake happened, the war on terror started as a consequence of 9/11, a Royal massacre in Nepal, an attack on the Indian Parliament....As a foreign correspondent, how did it feel to be in South Asia back then?

BI: A bit overwhelming, to be frank. The Delhi posting was always exciting and never lacked action. But in 2001, there was a surfeit of it. It was difficult to keep up especially for the (many) one-man-bureaux in town. To give an example, when the Indian Parliament was attacked, I was in Pakistan - in Quetta!

JE: Apart from the Royal massacre in Nepal which was (hopefully!) a one-off,  the other events reflect the range of stories that crowd in, year after year, in South Asia, with the Parliament attack adding emphasis on terrorism. 

Lastly, do narrate the one incident which you will always remember being a foreign correspondent in South Asia.

BI: One of many that comes to mind immediately: the destruction of the Babri Masjid in Ayodhya, being confronted by a bandana-clad man who put his face close to mine, and hissed: "Get out of here you bloody Muslim!"

JE: Maggie (Margaret) Thatcher said the Dalai Lama should not speak publicly when he was in the UK in the late 1980's ('88 I think) so most of the British media - including me from the FT - rushed to Dharamsala to interview him. He thus got much more publicity than he would if Thatcher had not tried to gag him just as he has recently because the Chinese said he shouldn't go to Arunachal Pradesh.