“Who do you work for? Which Indian agency has sent you here?” I could tell from the tone and rising voices of the mob around me that things could get very sticky very quickly if I didn’t move. I was at Lahore airport in 2011, attempting to take a flight back to Delhi, when a group of people who seemed to be journalists surrounded me and asked for an interview on the impressions of my visit to Pakistan. But the exchange turned unfriendly as what they really wanted to ask about was an interview I had done with a senior Army official. He had said that it was “possible” that those who had trained and guided the terrorists during the Mumbai 26/11 attacks may have been formerly in the military, but that the Pakistani Army had no knowledge of them. The interview had made headlines in both Pakistan and India. The Army had issued a clarification on the comments, distancing itself from the interview. Clearly, the establishment had no intention of allowing me to leave the country without feeling some heat for the story. Back home, I faced more questions — this time on why I had even interviewed someone in the Pakistani military.
Facing the heat for an interview is a part of every journalist’s life, and comes in many forms — from governments who find it inconvenient for a counter-view to be “platformed” to commentators who believe that it is an “anti-national” act to interview officials of an unfriendly country. While much of it comes in the form of verbal criticism, sometimes the displeasure of interviewing the other side takes a dangerous turn. I learned this when I saw a brick smash my car window some years ago after I interviewed an opposition leader in a neighbouring country.
To begin with, bowing to these wishes would mean taking dictations from others on who to interview and when to interview them, whereas a journalist is answerable only to their organisation and to their readers and viewers.
