Hello and welcome to News Laundry Interviews. Today we have with us probably one of the most well-known journalists in the country, whose name is Josie Joseph, who I have interviewed for the third time now because he has written yet another book. it's called birth of a nation uh and i had started my book when he had come first with his book and his third book has come out and my book is still under construction so josie you're clearly very prolific before we get to your book you've written three books since news laundry not began probably done a lot more you've done some of the biggest investigations in the country your book Feast of Vultures you got a thousand crore defamation suit also by Mr. Naresh Goyal which you fought and in the meantime you were heading investigations first for the Hindu then for Times of India so how long are days in Kerala unfortunately I am in Delhi unfortunately I unfortunately leave across the park but seriously that's a lot of work you do Yeah, I mean, I don't, maybe I write mediocre books, so it doesn't take much time. That's one possibility. Ambrose, clearly. But I think that I'm relatively disciplined. So I am, I get up every day at six o'clock, seven days a week. And I also have a quick switch on switch off mode. So if I'm focusing on something, I go deep in, and I can switch off and move into the next one. And third is that, you know, it's 99% perspiration. I have been at it for years now, so it has become a habit. So in the morning if I do not have something very serious to read and think and challenge myself, I feel very uncomfortable. So in the first two hours of my waking day, my family also does not disturb me, they know that I am doing something and I had to, I feel very insecure in the morning. I wake up with lot of insecurity. So I have to challenge myself. And clearly you put your chops as an investigative journalist to a very different kind of news where you visited the primary sources of information of when the British were set to leave India, in fact a few decades before that even. I may get some names wrong, I have read most of this book. So in fact the gentleman who was like very cosy with all these prince and princess, basically This book is about all these little kingdoms, big and small kingdoms that were dreaming of independence, that we'll get our kingdoms back once the British go, who did not really want to be a part of the Indian Union. Some of their heirs are sitting in parliament today. And the story is limited to how that part played out So you used your chops as an investigative journalist to get into the details of that You investigated that aspect a historical aspect of which almost 90% of the communication, there was a department that used to document all these little scandals and all the filth of these royal households. 90% of that was destroyed. You also got evidence of that, right? Just tell us a little bit about that. and okay first tell us Ram Guha has written a book on you know when India came about there's so many books written on this so when you take up that same subject did you feel that dude will I be end up doing what has been done before already how are you confident that you're going to explore a side of birth of India which has not been explored in such depth before see Ram Guha is somebody that I really look up to and he has done really classics that define modern Indian or modern non-fiction writing. So, please don't compare me to Mr. Guha. He is too big a legend to be compared. But, what I must tell you is that I did not start to write a book. In 2011-12 period, I was in Times of India and I had a lot of time to kill. You know, India Against Corruption movement had started and there was concerns about economy being completely shaken up. A lot of us were indirectly slowing down investigations because of various hints and maybe the wind was changing whatever it is a lot of time the other thing is i also detested almost going and sitting in some pr's office having coffee with my fellow journalists in the afternoon just you know shooting the wind so i would end up in national archives and there i began to figure out that the british had of course documented all their you know communications etc very properly and they're all available in very organized way but in the starting the summer even before summer with the Nehru's Indian government slowly you see the Indians are taking over little functions of governance and many of those things are lying in files that Indians were maintaining not the Brits and the most important of that happens in June to 1947 because political department that you are talking about which is like the which is the most important department of the empire run by Sir Conrad Corfield he is burning down documents which contains all the secrets and scandals of the princely states and the rulers of the princely states so nehru keeps writing now writes a couple of very angry letters but nehru is very angry in that summer he's actually very on a short fuse so on in in the second week of june there is a meeting which mountbatten called with the indian government's members nehru patel etc as well as Jinnah and Congress President Kripalani and others. At that meeting, Nehru just gives it to Sir Conrad Caulfield. He takes him on in front of everybody and Mountbatten goes quiet. At the end of the meeting Mountbatten agrees to set up the States Department and Mountbatten is smart enough to maneuver it away from Nehru and make Patel the minister and VP Menon who is his trusted constitutional advisor as a secretary of the department and that is how the department begins. And this department is entrusted with the task of getting all the princely states together. Together. Now once they are given the task there is a lot of things happening because when a department happens as you know anywhere in the world the bureaucracy kicks in. So, you have these file numbers where you have, you know like, I was looking for the first file. So, I came across the first file and you have a note from Nehru about what it should be and then there is a comment from Corfeel. Then there is a note saying that we should also follow in telephone numbers. Then there is a note saying that we should write to the yellow books, the Mahanagar Telecom books to say that please enter our number below the statesman newspaper and above so and so department. So, little little bureaucratic steps, very bureaucratic steps and the big things are happening but those files have never been have never been organized in a way in a good manner by anybody nor the government bother to declassify them in time so about 10 12 years ago government uh manmohan singh's governments began to declassify a lot of files among them some of them were these files so you probably won the first few people who actually went and checked out these files yeah in fact in fact if you look at many of those files you will find that either me or my researchers or for some of the royal family members because they are now fighting over the assets so they want to say all right they want to present this evidence in courts so many of those files have been accessed by them now I see okay so there as you closely read you realize how a group of six eight ten men under Patel are taking on the world's largest I mean carrying out the largest surrender of predatory power or in human history 565 princely rulers plus another maybe 150 200 principalities you know the zamindar you know chieftains we never necessarily have you seen so many rulers giving up power in such a short time of span and I thought and that is when I began to Marvel about the fact that look Indian Independence was not just the bloodiest partition human history not just the of the largest republic in human history, not just the first big state to emerge out of non-violence. You know, Gandhi pulls himself out of our great Indian Hindu tradition and makes it into the most powerful weapon. And it is also the largest surrender of hereditary power. So I said, OK, let me limit here and see if I can tell a story. A very interesting take to that part of history. Now, you have credited a team of researchers who you have said got into these files. It must be really daunting and you have mentioned that even when you write to put this together in a cohesive story. So two questions, one, what is the process? We'll get to the content a little later. What is the process when you have all this information Where do you start Where do you end i think that that an that that is the process that a lot of non long writers go through in in our case what happened was it because it was very half aside we didn't know what i'm doing so initially i was collecting so you didn't actually go there start reading these files with the idea of a book no no no i was collecting i was collecting things like the you know treaty of ourselves first world war So, they had taken 30 to 24 photographs, one of them is in National Archives, I would take the photocopy of it, for what I do not know. So, I kept collecting documents here and there. So, there were some documents from Nehru's archives, PMO's archives, I would make photocopy. So, there was no scheme or a specific strategy. So, because of which, I, then my two researchers who worked with me and later more researchers, we ended up actually collecting a lot of files of 48, 49, 50 period. And then I realized, no, the story should actually begin in the summer of 47. And I need to find a tight timeline so that it looks like a race against time. Not creating, but what was it happening? So once you get the documents, I think that is where not just your skill as, not skill, your mediocre skill as a non-fiction writer, Plus great editors around you like Prem Panikkar, Karthika, Ajitha, all these friends come in handy. We rewrote, I mean, I rewrote the draft five times at least. Wow. With the help of the editors to get the correct architecture and narrative in place. Because if you don't have the right characters, the horses to draw the cart, no story works. And finding those characters is the most, actually in the research part, But I understand why a lot of people end up being academic researchers, because they don't have that kind of a challenge before them. For us, it is not just research, we also have to find great characters to make it appealing to very busy people, right? So that is how I ended up finding the spy in Nizam's cabinet, the young militant in Trivandrum. You know the crazy, there is a British politician who is planning to smuggle gold for his business partner who is a ruler of India in one of the princely states. So, characters had to be located and then you had to time stamp them over. So then you find out, July 25th is a very important day because that is the last day when the princely rulers were assembling under the Narendra Mantel, the Chamber of Princes. For the first time and last time, Mountbatten is addressing them in the old Parliament building and he is telling them to sign the instrument of accession. But that meeting is boycotted by some of the most important rulers and their advisors from to Nawab Bhopal to Junagadh Troller to Travancore. That evening, there is an attack in Travancore on the Diwan by a young militant. It is treated, even in my younger days, in Trivandrum, in Kerala, it is treated as a local historical fact. And he's a hero. He's a hero, but a small, minor hero. A footnote in the Diwan.
