Prism Me a Lie Tell Me A Truth: Tehelka as Metaphor

By Madhu Trehan

In March 2001, the website Tehelka broke Operation West End, the biggest undercover news story in Indian journalism. Using spycams and masquerading as arms dealers, Tehelka's reporters infiltrated the Indian government, bribed army officers, gave money to the president of the ruling party and the defence minister's close colleague right in the defence minister's residence. This eventually forced both the ministers'resignations. In a rigorously researched and searing authentic account of the Tehelka expose and its aftermath, Madhu Trehan does a forensic study of the imperatives at the root of it, the characters and heroes and villains of the story, and of how the system got back: by obfuscating, by attempting to destroy the investors without leaving any footprints. In the style of Rashomon, the story is related by numerous participants of the same incidents and, of course, none of the stories tally. With exhaustive personal interviews, this is a must-read for anybody who wants to understand modern India - or even better, modern international journalism.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Roli Books
• Release date: Apr 6, 2011
• ISBN: 9788174369505

Book preview

INTRODUCTION

Akira Kurosawa wrote about the meaning of his film Rashomon (1951) in his book Something Like an Autobiography (1982):

One day just before the shooting was to start, the three assistant directors Daiei had assigned me came to see me at the inn where I was staying. I wondered what the problem could be. It turned out that they found the script baffling and wanted me to explain it to them. Please read it again more carefully, I told them. If you read it diligently, you should be able to understand it because it was written with the intention of being comprehensible. But they wouldn’t leave. We believe we have read it carefully, and we still don’t understand it at all; that’s why we want you to explain it to us. For their persistence I gave them this simple explanation: Human beings are unable to be honest with themselves about themselves. They cannot talk about themselves without embellishing. This script portrays such human beings – the kind who cannot survive without lies to make them feel they are better people than they really are. It even shows this sinful need for flattering falsehood going beyond the grave – even the character who dies cannot give up his lies when he speaks to the living through a medium. Egoism is a sin the human being carries with him from birth; it is the most difficult to redeem. This film is like a strange picture scroll that is unrolled and displayed by the ego. You say that you cannot understand this script at all, but that is because the human heart itself is impossible to understand. If you focus on the impossibility of truly understanding human psychology and read the script one more time, I think you will grasp the point of it.

It was the right place. Sharing a New York taxi. Writer Gita Mehta pointed me in the direction of Rashomon when I tried to relate the story of Tehelka to her. Where else but in a city where egoism is not a sin but rather a badge of success?

What has Rashomon come to mean today? Simply expressed: different versions from all the participants of the same event and the impossibility of establishing One Truth. Kurosawa based his film on Japanese writer Ryunosuke Akutagawa’s book Rashomon (1915). Akutagawa’s work can appear deceptively simple. The stories are about a woman’s rape and a man’s murder. All the participants in the incidents tell the story of how the rape and murder took place but none of the stories are the same.

Akira Kurosawa’s legendary film Rashomon was based on the book, but instead of following the book literally, he rather pushed Akutagawa’s intent. If readers of the book or film viewers try to figure out the truth of what actually happened chronologically in the story, they are wasting their time. It isn’t really about what happened but about the impossibility of determining the final, certain truth and, more crucially, how each version is important in itself. Each person’s perspective distorts events and reality. Can there be an absolute truth about any event? The conclusion at the end of Rashomon: absolute, objective truth is impossible to establish, but then, here too there is a Rashomon. That’s what the film and the book meant to me. Only to me.

To lay the blueprint of Rashomon on Tehelka is irreverent but downright irresistible. From September 2000 to January 2001, a couple of journalists from the website, Tehelka.com, worked out a sting operation, clandestinely videotaped army officers, the president of the party in government, the close colleague and president of the party of the defence minister, bureaucrats, defence ministry officials, while they accepted money from the sting operatives and sold information. The defence minister’s party colleague is on tape discussing how the money offered would be used for her political party. They also supplied army officers with sex workers and filmed them in hotel rooms. In the case of all the characters on the videotapes, those mentioned in the tapes, as well as those in some way connected to the story, each incident has that many different versions. Not one person agrees that any particular event took place in the same way. Who is telling the truth? They all are, as they choose to believe it. Add to that strategically subversive lawyers’ selective facts and you have a pile of conflicting stories. This is a chiaroscuro play of truth and memory. They all remember it the way they want to.

Milan Kundera has written: ‘To take, with Cervantes, the world as ambiguity, to be obliged to face not a single absolute truth but a welter of contradictory truths (truths embodied in imaginary selves called characters), to have as one’s only certainty the wisdom of uncertainty, requires no less courage’ (The Art of the Novel, 1986). Kundera said, in a 1980 interview to Philip Roth, ‘The novelist teaches the reader to comprehend the world as a question. There is wisdom and tolerance in that attitude. In a world built on sacrosanct certainties the novel is dead.’ But this is not a novel. It is a journalist’s Rashomon on the events around Tehelka’s Operation West End sting: how they did it, their motivations, and how, in varying degrees, it destroyed everyone involved. There should be, at least, some certainties. One cannot apply the ‘wisdom of uncertainty’ to, say, Nicole Simpson’s murder. Either you believe O.J. Simpson is guilty or not. And much the same way, people around the world formed judgements about Simpson’s guilt that most often reflected and projected their own identity and background.

Without much doubt, it can be predicted that politicians, particularly, will read political leanings into the writer’s opinions. It is possibly difficult for them to believe, there are neutral journalists. It was a coincidence that a particular party happened to be in power at that time. It could have been any other. The story would, in all likelihood, have been the same. Let it be clear, the author is not anti-BJP, not anti-Congress, not anti-Samata Party, not anti-Samajwadi Party, not anti-Communist or any other party. The levels of corruption may be up and down a few drops, but clearly it is rampant across the board. It happened to be BJP’s kismet that it was in power when Tehelka decided on the sting operation.

Commissioned to write about Tehelka, what was expected to be a bang-off book in six months developed into six years of intense research, lengthy interviews and, not surprisingly, became a book that reached beyond Tehelka. It is about India. It is about what happens. And most important of all, it happens under such a ‘nice’ veneer that we do not notice the rot. It would be risky to not comprehend the book as your own story. It could be anybody’s. It could very well be yours.

This book attempts to examine what happens to each player’s thinking and psyche as the drama unfolds. Political policies create sociocultural phenomena and mindsets. Just as in the Stalin period of the Soviet Union, the culture of fear-psychosis so permeated every person’s life that it was impossible to separate political policy from the interior life of any citizen. It was a tapeworm lodged in every citizen’s brain: children reporting on parents, neighbours reporting on each other, fellow workers reporting on peers. It was contagiously pervasive. Indira Gandhi’s Emergency rule in 1975 created a frighteningly similar paranoid culture in Delhi during those years. There was self- censorship in speaking freely even in social situations and caution crippled a substantial section of the mainstream press. It is difficult to believe how quickly people changed, from those who took their fundamental right of freedom of speech for granted, to being too afraid to express a political opinion even in a private home. What happened to the journalists and particularly to the investors of Tehelka is not commonly known. Frank Kafka wrote The Trial (1925) about a man accused of a crime he is not aware of and how that destroyed him. That would be one day in the life of Shankar Sharma and Devina Mehra, the couple who invested in Tehelka. The State’s multi-dimensional attack on their lives is far worse than other stories, because it is invisible. No human rights organizations raised the flag for them. How do you substantiate with documentary evidence the before and after pictures of the interior consciousness that has undergone changes that will never recover? The Unbearable Changes of Being that occur when you find yourself in jail sweating next to killers and pimps. The most traumatic and indelible change is how you begin to view yourself. From an achiever and a winner, you become the hunted and a victim. You turn more and more inward within yourself and can relate to others only through the prism within which the State has enveloped you.

In the story of Operation West End, listening to each character’s version you enter their variegated surround. The three principal players could not be more different from one another. Mathew Samuel, the man who initiated the sting operation and was largely responsible for it, was a villager with a dream of making it in Big City journalism. Samuel would rather use paper by rolling it into a point to clean his teeth than write one correct sentence in English on it. Aniruddha Bahal sold brassware, nurtured ambitions of becoming a novelist, but ended up as an investigative reporter. Tarun Tejpal, for his part, better known for his writing skills with no known desires to become an investigative reporter, shot into fame as one, though he did no investigating. Kumar Badal, a Tehelka reporter, was imprisoned for six months and two weeks on the basis of the police finding his phone number in the possession of arrested wildlife poachers. With the Tehelka team and their journalistic spirit, you are in an area where there is always adventurous electricity about stories, often in language that was repeatedly pointed out in the Commission of Inquiry as ‘obscene’. Milan Kundera defines ‘Obscenity: the root that attaches us most deeply to our homeland.’(The Art of the Novel, 1986). NRIs (non-resident Indians) will often soothe their homesick hearts on meeting up with Indian friends and curse away to replenish their connection to their motherland (yeah, right). As Natalie Angier wrote in an article, ‘The History of Swearing’, in The New York Times (20 September 2005), ‘In some settings, the free flow of foul language may signal not hostility or social pathology, but harmony and tranquillity.’ In ‘polite’ society, a presumptuous phrase anyway, such language is not used. But, the same lawyers in the Commission of Inquiry on Tehelka, who primly pointed out Mathew Samuel’s ‘foul’ language and used it as a weapon to discredit him, could well be using the same language in private. A significant part of the Tehelka team’s story is that the investigators are, to their perplexity, being investigated. They were supposed to be the good guys. What happened here?

Anil Malviya, alias Rajiv Sharma, got involved at the outset of the sting operation after a chance meeting with Mathew Samuel on a train. Malviya sold advertising space and had nothing to do with journalism. When the sting began heating up, he reportedly decided to opt out. Malviya reportedly died in Allahabad before the sting was made public. It seemed a little too convenient. The man who was involved at the start of the clandestine taping and allegedly organized the sex workers suddenly dies. Did he really die or just disappear? Did Mathew Samuel and Aniruddha Bahal pin the procuring of the women on a dead man who could no longer defend himself? I surprised his relatives to get an interview.

Shankar Sharma and Devina Mehra’s lives remain the most damaged. During the dotcom boom they casually invested in Tehelka an amount that was to them small change. Their lives were transformed from being among the most successful brokers on the stock exchange, to being hounded by government agencies, which infected every part of their lives. This young, self-made couple was dragged down from their financial orbit into Delhi’s swamp of politics and journalism. Their business in India closed down, their bank accounts were frozen, they were not permitted to trade on the Bombay Stock Exchange, which was their livelihood. For five years they found themselves consumed with fighting never-ending court cases. Sharma spent two-and-a-half months in jail for his connection with Tehelka and was accused of financial irregularities. Questions to be answered are: Were Sharma and Mehra part of a larger conspiracy to destabilize the government and make a killing on the stock market? The BJP government lawyers accused them of conspiring with arms dealers such as the Hindujas, notorious for their connection with Bofors. These questions are investigated.

Jaya Jaitly was president of the Samata Party when she met with Tehelka’s reporter Mathew Samuel in Defence Minister George Fernandes’s house, where Samuel presented a packet of money. Jaya Jaitly and George Fernandes occupy an old-world, jholawala space where materialism is still a bad word and social activism the motivator. But, as with so many jholawalas, there are juxtaposing inconsistencies. Jaya is a journalist’s dream. She has been obsessed with her own defence since the exposé on 13 March 2001. Jaya is sultry, attractive, and virulently articulate, but again the facts are through Jaya’s kaleidoscope. Jumbled colours at different angles, but clear to her. She is known for her work with crafts and artisans, and has spent her life working for the underprivileged. That George Fernandes and Jaya Jaitly share a rather special feeling for each other is obvious. Furious at the innuendoes, Jaya elaborates on her feelings for him.

An interview with George Fernandes displays his devastated psyche in his fury against the journalists for destroying Jaya’s career. Yes, Tehelka also transformed George Fernandes’s inner being. He is a man full of contradictions that makes him all the more intriguing.

Bangaru Laxman, then the president of the Bharatiya Janata Party, could not fathom what he did wrong when he took money ‘for the party’. He was convinced that it was part of his job as president. Has he been more maligned than he deserves? Laxman could be a walk-on in any Bollywood movie for a corrupt politician. Yes, he does so look the part. His interview shows that there is no crisis of values here. Laxman’s surprise at the fuss over taking money from a supposed arms dealer shows that the interior moral life of most politicians has been regulated to expediency, convenience, and survival.

The army officers, skulking around in a cloak of opprobrium, exist in a world of ingrained rules and regulations. Living in almost Victorian format, they were the ‘naughty boys’ who got caught. Their regulated lives on autopilot sequence with anticipated promotions now lie in smithereens around them, along with confused and depressed families: all for one mistake. But, it rarely takes hours or days to extirpate one’s life. It is that split-second decision: jumping a red light, experimenting with a new recreational drug, stealing from a department store, hitting and running away, relishing a White House intern, buying a gun from Mumbai mafia that can U-turn your life forever. How you react to the army officers’ predicament will in turn reflect your own values. Were my own reactions while watching the sex tapes justified? Many questions are raised. Should such men be forgiven? I attempt to answer the big question that puzzles many women and brings a curious, bemused smile to men: Why do men do what they do?

The Army Court of Inquiry is a realm by itself, apparently untouched by political considerations or vote-bank politics. The army announced their investigation two days after the Tehelka exposé, and it was completed in two-and-a-half months. The army is not an understanding wife who will look the other way nor is it a politician, ensuring that justice is not done but appears to have been done. The army court did not buy the argument that the tapes were ‘doctored’. Although some of the officers attempted to ‘fix’ their trials through old boy contacts, the army showed how a commission of inquiry really should be conducted.

The Indian government ordered a commission of inquiry on Tehelka which was constituted on 24 March 2001. The frame of reference of the inquiry by the government had some rather dubious inclusions that set a damaging precedent for journalists. The messenger of bad news had better be prepared to pay the price of exchanging his normal work and personal life with one that involves only court appearances and his defence. One judge resigned in the midst of the inquiry when questions were raised about his integrity, another judge took over and the inquiry went into a slow trot in a completely different direction. What happened there?

What are the ramifications of the pinpointed, topic-related interest taken by Soli Sorabjee, the then attorney general of India (appointed by the BJP), and his self- interpreted role in the Commission? The impact his presence made was completely missed by a bored press who had moved on to the next story. Will his interventions set a precedent for future attorney generals?

When the Congress-led alliance won the general elections in May 2004, the lawyers representing the Union of India changed, as did the attorney general of India. The judge sitting on the Commission then had to adjust his breeches: suddenly the good guys were the bad guys. The lawyers of those caught on tape were confused for a bit when they found the government lawyers, instead of protecting them as had been the case in the past, were protecting the other side and often checked them from badgering witnesses. It has become clear that justice is not based on the principle of right or wrong but more on who hired or appointed you.

In the Commission, Justice K. Venkataswami repeatedly rejected the argument that the tapes were doctored. When Justice S.N. Phukan took over from Venkataswami, he accepted that the doctoring of tapes was a possibility. Immediately the lines were drawn. The Tehelka team perceived him as pro-government and anti-Tehelka; all the others were relieved that Phukan was on their side. The ‘experts’ performed a technological battle, armed with displays on how easy it is to alter what a person is saying. Tehelka had its own experts. Displays of the magic of video technology stirred up a buzz in the Commission. Which one of the ‘experts’ has a handle on the truth?

Then you have the Others. The second rung fixers, small-time wheeler-dealers, bureaucrats; who live in a planet where the biggest boast flies you to the moon. R.K. Jain, treasurer of the Samata Party said, ‘If you are purchasing Qutab Minar, why don’t you sell Taj Mahal to me?’ in justification of all the lies bandied about. There are always numerous versions: the first, what they said in the Operation West End tapes; the second, what they said in the Army Court of Inquiry; and the third, what they said in the Commission of Inquiry. And I, presume, a fourth version for the wife at home. More often than not, none of them match. That brings up the question: Why do we, Indians, find it easier to lie than tell the truth?

An examination of values is churned up here. The values of the lawyers, who seem to be the only ones to have benefited from Operation West End and end up as collaborators in the diversion of justice. Most of the Tehelka lawyers, however, worked without a fee. Obviously, the lawyers’ truth is chosen according to which facts will help to exonerate their client and destabilize the accuser’s credibility. Does the cliché, constantly thrown by lawyers, that ‘every individual is entitled to a defence’, mean that lawyers need not adhere to any principles whatsoever?

The journalists’ truth is what makes a good story. Journalists will sometimes don blinkers if a new fact kills their story. Although Tehelka created a new paradigm in Indian journalism, the presentation of the story raised questions of slanted editing. Where should journalists draw the line? Why is there no law for privacy in India? Where are the values of Indian journalism going? Editors of leading news organizations are interviewed for their perspective. Also to be considered: are the spin-doctors way ahead of the news-hungry journalists and taking them for a disingenuous ride?

As always various conspiracy theories were floated. Who are the active participants in promoting these? Unravelling those bring some intriguing answers.

After the exposé, and as the consequent developing events began to unfold, each person involved was deeply changed. It was not an easy time for those caught on tape and even worse for those who caught them. This book then explores the inner lives of these people. How events fracture, heal, splinter again and thereupon crush the interior of beings. How many of them are able to heal, recover, and reconstruct themselves? Each one applies a different form of balm.

When you listen to each player in the Operation West End network and their lawyers, you return to Rashomon. Whose truth is the Truth? The videotapes should be considered apodictic. But doubts about them have also been raised. When Jaya Jaitly makes a statement on the tapes, who is she addressing? Each person in that room has a different version and watching the tapes it is almost impossible to tell. Whose reality are we to accept?

In the making of The Matrix trilogy, Larry and Andy Wachowski, the writers and directors, decided that they would not declare the meaning or basis of the film to avoid what they feared would become a dogma. They wanted to leave an open space for reflective interpretation. Larry explained that the film was about introducing questions and does not provide answers. The film asks: What is reality? Larry discussed with integral thinker Ken Wilber his exploration of the philosophy of the Upanishads, the inquiry into what is Truth; how we arrive at rational conclusions, and how the film raised these eternal questions.

In The Matrix, Morpheus (Laurence Fishburn) tells Neo (Keanu Reeves), ‘The Matrix is the world that has been pulled over your eyes to blind you from the truth’. At another moment, Morpheus tells Neo,

How would you know the difference between the dream world and the real world? What is real? How do you define real? If you’re talking about what you can feel, what you can smell, what you can taste and see, then real is simply electrical signals interpreted by your brain. This is the world that you know. The world as it was at the end of the twentieth century. It exists now only as part of a neural – interactive simulation that we call the Matrix. You’ve been living in a dream world, Neo. This is the world as it exists today. Welcome to the desert of the real.

The philosophical questions in The Matrix are those that are written about in the Upanishads’ illumination of Maya (illusion). What is Maya? ‘That which is truly not, but appears to be is Maya’. How do you know what is which? That’s the point. You don’t know. But the knowledge not the acceptance, of not knowing makes the difference. Maya is the purely physical and mental reality in which our everyday consciousness is entangled, which veils the true reality that one can only experience through meditation, psychological unravelling and perhaps terrific mushrooms that take you beyond your immediate experience. It is the realization that there is more than what we daily see, hear and feel; the realization of how much we do not know. The journey of Man (Neo) begins when he breaks through these daily illusions. That’s what makes life worth living: finally learning that it isn’t worth anything much at all. There is something much bigger out there and that’s when you really enjoy the ride.

Yes, the Tehelka story is based on facts, but which of these are in double bold, which are in italics and which are in fine print? That perception lies in the eyes of the beholder and his own reality. The story is then heuristic. It is an interfusion of the projection of idealism, on the one hand, and the annihilating power of those who rule, on the other. Sounds simple; virtually a cliché of David and Goliath. The twist here is: Can David ever survive Goliath? In these times of global multinationals and One superpower, where is the story of the small company or any small country winning? David has been merged; taken over in an acquisition, or simply shocked and awed out of existence. It is a battle between those who are part of the system and those who want to change it because they see it as hurting the larger good. Tehelka’s journalists are not part of the establishment although they would certainly like to turn it on its head. The commonality that both warring factions shared was that they both pushed the edges of the law. One side did it for financial profit, the other for journalistic gain. Tehelka’s tale, if read with scrutiny and the necessary speculation, would then expectedly culminate in disparate opinions. The reader participates in the Rashomon and his/her reactions, then, become part of the story.

It is my belief that Indian mythological literature was written using protagonists and characters in an attempt to instigate dialogue about ethics and conduct. The worshipping of these characters, to me, is sacrilegious to the intent of the scriptures. The establishment of eternal dilemmas in the Mahabharata and Ramayana and their catalysing effect on daily life is the goal of the scriptures. They are written for people to react to. That there is disagreement in the interpretation signifies the success of the intent. For each individual must make them his own. For Mahatma Gandhi, the Mahabharata was a message of peace. When asked how he came to that conclusion when the epic is all about war, Gandhiji answered by putting his palm to his heart and said, ‘From here.’ Given that Hinduism does not have a single book of dogma, but rather a series of philosophical, lifestyle guidebooks, that are all open to interpretation and always hold the question mark in reverence, there is a historical and traditional freedom in personal perspective. In some way, it also explains why Indians find it so difficult to simply obey rules. In writing about Operation West End, Tehelka, and all that went with it, the attempt is to follow that tradition of interpretation. Yes, there are facts, but they are subject to my and your interpretations.

Above all, the book brings up the issue of ethics or the lack of them in our lives: in journalism, in the legal profession, in government. In our acceptance of corruption – we are like this only – consequently adjusting our lives and decisions by cooperating with it, are we damaging ourselves, our national character and the future of India?

I conducted over forty interviews, all of which were recorded on audiotapes with the subjects’ permission. Four legal luminaries have vetted the manuscript to ensure that all information serves the purpose of public interest and is based on established facts.

Is there a clear conclusion in the book? Yes, there is, but it is only my conclusion. Readers must come to their own.

As loud and different as every singular story is, it knits into another, while forming a separate entity sometimes nudging the whole. The trick, then, lies in balancing it all. There is good and there is evil, yet both those colours are in all of us. To some, the comfort of knowledge only comes after certainty. Yet, there is great wisdom in looking at life in shades of grey. It is in the hazy hue of grey that you will find a crystal of truth.

CHARACTERS

Ahluwalia, Major General Manjit Singh: Additional Director-General of Ordnance Services, Army Headquarters. Introduced to Operation West End by Lieutenant Colonel V.P. Sayal. Was involved in general discussions about army procurement and equipment. Tehelka said they gave Rs 50,000 to Sayal to give to Ahluwalia, Sayal admitted to keeping the money for himself.

Badal, Kumar: Reporter in Tehelka who was arrested on the basis of arrested wildlife poachers found with Badal’s phone number.

Bahal, Aniruddha: Head of the Investigation Cell of Tehelka. Took all the decisions about Operation West End, and Mathew Samuel reported to him daily.

Berry, Lieutenant Colonel V.K. (Retd): Formerly with Corps of Signals Service Department. Retired from DGQA as a senior quality assurance officer. Attempted to be a middleman and worked as a consultant for Mohinder Pal Sahni. Took West End to meet Major Sarabjeet J. Singh in a hotel.

Choudary, Major General P.S.K.: Additional Director-General, Weapons and Equipment (ADR, WE). Seen on tapes advising West End on the procurement procedures and current army requirements. Accepted a gold chain and Rs 1 lakh from West End.

Gupta, Deepak: Son of R.K. Gupta (an RSS trustee), reportedly working with his father in arms deals as a middleman. Introduced West End to Rakesh Nigam, reportedly a second-rung middleman.

Gupta, R.K.: Known to be an RSS trustee and dabbling in arms deals. Made extravagant boasts to West End about his proximity to the prime minister and Brajesh Mishra (security adviser in the Prime MInister’s Office). Claimed he gave the BJP Rs 3 to 4 crore every month, made Rs 100 crore a year in commissions, and that he paid George Fernandes through Jaya Jaitly.

Jain, R.K.: Treasurer of the Samata Party. Spoke in detail and offered to show minutes of meetings with George Fernandes and commissions collected on behalf of the Samata Party on numerous defence deals.

Laxman, Bangaru: President of the party in government, the Bharatiya Janata Party. Seen on tapes accepting money from Mathew Samuel. Resigned on 14 March 2001.

Jaitly, Jaya: President of the Samata Party during the taping of Operation West End. Resigned from the party and has failed to renew her membership of it. Was seen in Operation West End tapes with Mathew Samuel in Defence Minister George Fernandes’s house.

Malviya, Anil: Alias Rajiv Sharma in the Operation West End tapes. Small-time advertising space salesman who colluded with Mathew Samuel in the initial tapes. Reportedly died of a heart attack in Allahabad before the tapes were aired.

Mehra, Devina: Director of First Global Stockbroking Pvt. Ltd along with her husband invested Rs 3.5 crore in Tehelka.

Mehta, L.M.: Additional Defence Secretary. Was introduced to West End by Major General S. P. Murgai. Met West End and was accused of accepting a gold chain which he denied.

Murgai, Major General S.P. (Retd): Former Additional Director-General, Quality Assurance. Murgai introduced West End to Surendra Kumar Sureka, a businessman from Kanpur, who took them to Jaya Jaitly.

Nigam, Rakesh: Reportedly a second-rung arms dealer. West End offered him Rs 2 lakh to introduce them to Yogendra Narain, defence secretary.

Pant, H.C.: Staff Officer in the Ordnance Factories Cell. Was additional secretary to Hiren Pathak, minister of state for defence.

Phukan, Justice S.N.: Appointed by the Government of India to head the Commission of Inquiry into the Tehelka exposé on 4 January 2002 after Justice Venkataswami resigned.

Sahni, Mohinder Singh: Mistakenly referred to as Mohinder Pal Sahni in Tehelka transcripts. Allegedly an arms dealer middleman and then Consul General of Belize.

Samuel, Mathew: Maverick, aspiring journalist who started the clandestine videotaping of defence ministry officials and army officers.

Sasi, P.: An assistant (post between an upper division clerk and lower division clerk) in the Ordnance Services, Army Headquarters. Calls himself Sashi Menon rather than P. Sasi, his actual name in order to upgrade his caste. The first person who began selling documents to Operation West End and led them to Colonel Anil Sehgal.

Satya Murthy: Private Secretary to Bangaru Laxman. Was reportedly given Rs 10,000. Met with West End a second time to finalize a commission for a defence deal.

Sayal, Lieutenant Colonel V.P. (Retd): Last posting as Commandant of 24 FAD (Forward Ammunition Depot). Was attempting to become a middleman between the army and suppliers of arms and equipment. Introduced West End to Brigadier Iqbal Singh, Major General Murgai and Major General Manjit Singh Ahluwalia.

Sehgal, Colonel Anil: Director, Armaments in the Army Headquarters, in charge of procurement of spares for the army. Sehgal reportedly took money from West End in exchange for information on army requirements and starred in sex tapes with prostitute.

Seth, Suhel: Co-CEO of Equus, an advertising agency. Was part of the core group that formed Tehelka.com but dropped out before any work started.

Sharma, Lieutenant Colonel Bhav Bhuti: Assistant Director, Air Formation Signals, QMG Branch, Air Headquarters. Is seen on tapes drinking with West End poseurs and prostitutes in a hotel. Was not paid any money and was only interested in women.

Sharma, Shankar: Director of First Global Stockbroking Pvt. Ltd, along with his wife Devina Mehra, invested Rs 3.5 crore in Tehelka for a 14.5 per cent equity stake.

Singh, Brigadier Iqbal: Deputy Director-General, Procurement Progressing Organization in the MGO (Master General Ordnance) Branch, Army Headquarters. Singh was seen on tapes with Mathew Samuel and Lieutenant Colonel V.P. Sayal (Retd) in a hotel.

Singh, Narender: Assistant Financial Adviser, Ministry of Defence. Advised Tehelka on arms deals and details of army procurement procedures. He is accused of accepting Rs 10,000 from them.

Singh, Major Sarabjeet J. (Retd): Formerly in the Infantry Division in the army, now reportedly a middleman aspirant. Singh introduced West End to Major General Satnam Singh.

Singh, Major General Satnam: GOC 8 Mountain Division. Also Director-General of Operations in the Drass-Kargil sector. Got roped in inadvertently and provided West End with general information on army equipment and procurement.

Sureka, Surendra Kumar: Mistakenly called Sulekha in the Tehelka transcript. Businessman from Kanpur who supplied clothing to the army. Took West End to meet Jaya Jaitly. Accused of accepting Rs 1 lakh from them.

Tejpal, Minty: Tarun Tejpal’s brother who worked with him in Tehelka.

Tejpal, Tarun: Editor-in-Chief of Tehelka.com. Played a key role in fielding the media after the exposé on 13 March 2001. He was the media face of Tehelka.

Raman, Vijay: Video editor who worked on the Operation West End tapes.

Venkataswami, Justice K.: Appointed by the Government of India on 24 March 2001 to head the Commission of Inquiry to probe the Tehelka exposé.

Venkatesh, Raju: Private secretary to Bangaru Laxman. Was reportedly given a gold chain to provide West End access to Bangaru Laxman.

OPERATION WEST END TEAM

Mathew Samuel • Aniruddha Bahal

1 Grate Expectations

The Breaking Story

Imperial Hotel, New Delhi. 3.00 p.m., 13 March 2001. Website Tehelka.com showed four- and- a-half hours of videotapes in which Tehelka reporters posing as arms dealers bribed army officers, defence ministry officials as well as the BJP president Bangaru Laxman. In the defence minister George Fernandes’s residence, Jaya Jaitly, president of the Samata Party met fictitious representatives of a company unknown to her who offered a financial donation to her political party. Jaitly directed where the money should be sent and explained how the money would be used for the Samata Party.

13 March 2001. What could be more ordinary than a date? Yet what makes a particular date unforgettable? Perhaps your life changing, irretrievably, for the worse? That morning, Tarun Tejpal had no inkling of this. He was wired with the ‘centre of attention’ charge. He had waited for this moment: the biggest journalistic coup in India’s history. His website, Tehelka.com, was going to raze them all: the government, other news organizations, competitors, the lot. Wouldn’t there be a slight tinge of gloating when his former bosses saw what he was worth? A lucky few get to experience this kind of euphoria. The sense of achievement and then just awaiting the accolades. Your interior being is in a pitch. A soft high that you can feel its colour inside. Your own faith in yourself is no longer shaky. You feel so right. Touched by an invisible hand that keeps the tension around you in a confident incandescence. As editor-in-chief of Tehelka, Tarun felt he had finally done what he had always wanted to do. Good journalism without some businessman with his eye on advertising revenue telling him what he couldn’t do. Tehelka would be on the map of India forever. They would be heroes of all good citizens who believed in transparent governance. The value of the Tehelka website would soar. They would be rich. His wife’s unfailing support would be rewarded. They would tell nostalgic stories of the bad old times when money was tight. Tarun’s expectations were natural, given the outcome of journalistic exposés the world over.

The Tehelka team had used three cameras hidden in a briefcase, a handbag, and a tie, had bribed to obtain sensitive information, classified documents, and introductions to people involved in arms deals for the Indian Army. The reporters had filmed army officers with sex workers they had supplied. The journalistic sting was called Operation West End, after the fictitious company Tehelka created to uncover corruption in the government, army, and defence ministry. Sixteen individuals allegedly accepted money from the purported representatives of West End. The journalists portrayed themselves as arms dealers who wanted to supply non-existent hand-held thermal cameras. Tehelka taped them for four months, starting September 2000.

It was around 10.00 in the morning when Tarun put in a call to his investor in Mumbai, Shankar Sharma of First Global Stockbroking. Tarun told him that Tehelka was about to explode with a Big Breaking Story. He didn’t give any details, only informed Shankar that they were going to show a political defence exposé. Shankar responded by telling him, ‘Don’t do it’. He pointed out to Tarun that they were in the midst of negotiations for funding with Subhash Chandra of Zee TV and it would be bad timing.

Shankar: Look boss, doing anything controversial right now, anything that has political overtones is going to just blow your financing plans away.

Tarun: I can’t stop this because it’s become very dangerous. There’s a real risk we are running now. If they get hold of this, we’re going to be in trouble. I can’t stop it. It’s way too big now.

Shankar: If you can’t stop it, then you can’t stop it.

In Shankar’s Rashomon, all business decisions should be based on whether they will make a profit. As he heard Tarun talk about the story he was about to break, Shankar did not share his enthusiasm. He only saw losing future funding. Shankar lived in a different surround. Mumbai’s financial fundamentalism is a planet removed from Delhi’s twisted politics and journalism. The twain shall never meet. Shankar too had no idea how his own life would be transformed.

The second phone call Tarun said he made was to film star Amitabh Bachchan, who was on the board of directors of Tehelka at that time. Tarun said he told Amitabh they were about to break a big story and as he was on the Tehelka board he wanted to inform him. Tarun said Amitabh asked him if he would like to tell him what the story was about. Tarun said he declined and Amitabh accepted that. Now this is where Rashomon begins and repeats itself through many incidents. When I contacted Amitabh Bachchan he professed ignorance. He said he didn’t remember any phone call from Tarun. When reports of the phone call were printed in the newspapers at that time, there was no denial from Amitabh. Yet, in fairness to Amitabh, if he were to refute every incorrect story printed about his life that is all he would be doing. He did tell me that when he was asked to become a member of the Tehelka board he pointed out the potential conflict of interest as he was on the board of Sahara and his own AB Corp, both in the media business. Tarun had told Amitabh that he could step out of it if it ever became a conflict. When I repeated to Tarun that Amitabh could not recall his phone call, Tarun, with a bitter laugh, said how funny it was that people found it difficult to demonstrate support for him. Amitabh did subsequently remove himself from the Tehelka board through a letter to Tarun, which Tarun announced on 5 September 2001. No surprise there.

On that same capacious day, Tehelka’s Mathew Samuel, the journalist–investigator and representative of the fictitious arms company, had no hint what a depressing night lay ahead. Mathew Samuel was the man who initiated the Operation West End investigation. He was flying back from Kerala, following instruction from Aniruddha Bahal, his boss and head of Tehelka’s investigation cell. Samuel sat in the plane, quiet excitement gurgling inside him. All the gruelling work he had put in would now be shown to the world. Maybe his disgruntled wife, who couldn’t deal with his weird working hours, would now understand. It was his dream to be recognized as a serious, investigative journalist.

None of the people shown on the Operation West End tapes, all of whose lives would be shattered by the afternoon, were aware of what lay in store. Ah, yes! There were a few. R.K. Jain (treasurer of the Samata Party) had become suspicious and traced Samuel’s cellphone number to Tehelka. His nephew nosed Samuel down to the Tehelka office and Operation West End’s cover was blown. Tehelka was forced to push out the story before it was actually ready. That nexus informed each other: the man they had met as Mathew Samuel, representative of West End, a multinational arms manufacturer, was actually a Tehelka journalist. They also knew now that he had videotaped them taking bribes and in sexual acts. Some of them contacted Samuel, frightened, angry, and hurt. Why had he done this? One of them begged Samuel not to expose the tapes because his daughter was about to be married. It would ruin all their lives, he said. Tehelka had no choice but to air the story as quickly as possible. In retrospect, the story was not journalistically ready. The transcriptions of the tapes had been hurriedly done. There could be errors, and as it turned out, there were plenty. There were still many loopholes and unchecked facts. There had been no crosschecking of damning allegations. Would that even have been possible given the nature of the story? The people clandestinely taped were a breed apart from the helpless, common masses. These were the sort who were used to fixing people who got in their way. Who could blame the Tehelka team for having nightmares? The story was ticking RDX that had to be flung out of the office.

On the morning of 13 March 2001, journalists all over Delhi began receiving calls from Tehelka, inviting them to come to a press conference at Imperial Hotel at 2.30 p.m. I received a call from Shoma Choudhary, Tehelka’s Literary Editor. My response to her was: ‘Okay, I’ll send someone.’ Shoma: ‘No, Madhu. For this, I think, you better come yourself.’ When I arrived at the Imperial ballroom, Tarun, with his brother Minty Tejpal, was standing at the top of the stairs. Minty first and then Tarun echoing his words, said, ‘The government is going to fall. The government is going to fall.’ They were tense, but it was a happy tension. How could he have guessed he was counting governments before they hatched?

As the tapes were screened, cellphones began ringing. As names were mentioned, journalists watching the tape, called people they knew and warned them they were on the tapes or had been mentioned. Jaya Jaitly was ordering her daughter’s wedding invitation card when she received a phone call that stunned her. Jaya couldn’t even remember this meeting with Mathew Samuel. In a state of alarm, she rushed back to the defence minister’s home, 3 Krishna Menon Marg. Army officers on the tapes began getting phone calls. At Army Headquarters, senior brass huddled into one office to watch the Zee telecast of Operation West End. There they saw army officers drinking, shooting the breeze, pouring out classified information, handing over documents, and accepting bribes. Bangaru Laxman, the president of the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), was on tape, accepting money from Mathew Samuel on 5 January 2001 without so much as glancing at him. The tapes also showed Jaya Jaitly, president of the Samata Party, on 28 December 2000, being offered a packet at the defence minister’s house. She did not, at any point, refuse the money. Jaya gave instructions on where the money should be sent and explained how it would be used. She did not touch the packet.

While the ruling party was working out a damage-control exercise, the country was shocked. Okay, but not that shocked either. Everybody in India is aware of corruption, but who had ever proved it on camera? There was no sympathy for those caught on tape. If anything, there was glee and masala excitement. Yes, in the early days of the exposé, Tehelka did have its brief moments of Camelot. Tarun Tejpal, with whom most of the press was familiar because of his work with India Today and Outlook magazines, was a hero. Aniruddha Bahal was known to some journalists from a cricket match-fixing exposé he had done. Nobody knew who Mathew Samuel was. Where then was Samuel while all this was happening? Why wasn’t he sharing the glory with Tarun and Aniruddha? Samuel’s story often turns into a yesteryear Bollywood weepy.

When Samuel returned to Delhi from Kerala that evening, he discovered his Kashmiri landlord had decided to throw him out because of his Tehelka connection. His landlord was wary of any ‘trouble’. Samuel was walking the streets with his wife and little child, desperately looking for a house. When Samuel called him in frustration and anguish, Tarun suggested he move into the Tehelka guesthouse. Samuel, the man responsible for it all was the first to feel the perniciousness of the aftermath.

By 3.00 p.m., when the Lok Sabha reconvened, Priya Ranjan Dasmunsi, the Congress chief whip, was pumping with excitement when he interrupted the discussion on the Farmers’ Rights Bill. The Opposition already had copies of the transcripts of Operation West End and were baying for resignations. Many members of the Opposition had been invited to Imperial Hotel. They then turned out in full strength in Parliament. (The late) Madhavrao Scindia, senior member of the Congress, was forthright, ‘The matter concerns national security; we want an explanation from the government on what seems to be irrefutable evidence. If the government cannot refute these allegations it has no moral right to continue.’ Jaipal Reddy, the Congress spokesman, said, ‘In the history of this country, we have never had such explosive evidence of corruption. It is equivalent to Pokhran III. It’s not just money that changed hands. India’s national security has been severely compromised.’

When Opposition members were screaming in Parliament, George Fernandes had no idea what was going on. He was embarrassed as they brayed for his resignation. He reportedly smiled in a daze and repeatedly asked them to calm down.

The Opposition gleefully and noisily demanded the immediate resignation of Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee. He comfortably retorted, ‘Let them make a case for the resignation of the government. This is a political demand.’ When asked about the rumours of a conspiracy behind Tehelka’s exposé, Vajpayee said, ‘Daal mein kuch kaala hai [there is something fishy]’.

In the Rajya Sabha, the then leader of the Opposition, Dr Manmohan Singh, raised the issue soon after Finance Minister Yashwant Sinha had finished his reply to a call attention motion on the stock market crisis. Yashwant Sinha rejected the Opposition’s demand for a Joint Parliamentary Committee to probe into the crash in share prices over the past few days. Sinha said, ‘We are in complete control of the situation and therefore there will be no JPC probe’. Sucheta Dalal (The Indian Express) later wrote that Shankar Sharma had timed the Tehelka exposé to sabotage the stock market crash discussion in the Rajya Sabha, crediting Shankar with remarkably prescient qualities.

Opposition politicians had a bash up fest, zeroing in on the Prime Minister’s Office. Brajesh Mishra, principal secretary to the prime minister, had been mentioned in the Operation West End tapes. Ranjan Bhattacharya, Vajpayee’s foster son-in-law, had also had his name bandied about.

Although the Opposition was having a premature dance party on the BJP’s grave, if a little thought had gone into it they might have realized it could well have been them. The Tehelka group clearly has no affiliation with any political party. Corruption in India had not developed overnight during the BJP regime. It was a twin, born along with Independence: real Midnight’s Children. Jawaharlal Nehru himself was scrupulously honest, but he turned a blind eye to the corruption around him. The first reported virus eruption came as early as 1945, when T. Prakasam, a freedom fighter from what is today Andhra Pradesh, accepted money at political functions from poor peasants and then insisted on keeping it for his personal use as compensation for his sacrifices during the freedom struggle. Prakasam only forwarded the money to the Congress Party after a shakedown from Mahatma Gandhi himself. Allegedly, the first arms deal with a commission took place when Krishna Menon was high commissioner in London (1947-52), in the purchase of jeeps (Rs 80 lakh). Other contracts included Mitchell bombers, rifles and armoured cars. An outraged press wrote about it, there was havoc in Parliament but Nehru did nothing. The case was closed in 1955 and Menon was later, significantly, appointed defence minister. Subsequently, other cases of corruption were reported, involving Partap Singh Kairon, Bakshi Ghulam Mohammed, and T.T. Krishnamachari. No action was taken. The concept of India had begun, and in corruption we had only just begun.

During Indira Gandhi’s premiership corruption flourished not only among politicians, but spread to epidemic proportions in the bureaucracy. Numerous books have been written about the abundance of corruption right through Indian history. It should be part of the curriculum in schools because corruption has catalysed historical events. Parliamentary history is replete with questions being raised about politicians: from Jagjivan Ram’s ingenuous excuse for not paying taxes at all (‘I forgot’) to the fur coat allegedly given to Indira Gandhi by Dharam Teja, the first of all the operators. (Teja duped banks and financial institutions into funding his virtually non-existent Jayanti Shipping Company, and in 1965 fled to Costa Rica. The Indian government was in the process of extraditing him when he died with his sullied reputation in tact.) There is not a political party that has not been touched by some scandal or the other. In March 2001, the Opposition parties would have done well not to get too comfortable in an extraordinarily vulnerable glasshouse.

On Breaking Story Day, the Lok Sabha had to be adjourned as Opposition members shouted, ‘Gali gali mein shor hai, yeh sarkar chor hai [in every street the word is out, this government is a thief]’. It was almost as bad in the Rajya Sabha where members demanded the arrest of the people on the tapes. Arun Jaitley, law minister, was in the Lok Sabha. By the time he got back to his office at 5.00 p.m. his staff had downloaded the transcripts of Operation West End from the Tehelka website. A super rapid reader with an unfailing, photographic memory, Jaitley was fully prepared by 6.00 p.m. when Prime Minister Vajpayee called him to his office. Right after the meeting with senior party members, the government issued a statement read by (the late) Pramod Mahajan, then minister for information technology and communications: ‘The attention of the government has been drawn to the Tehelka tapes. The government is ready and willing for a thorough debate in Parliament and an inquiry, if necessary. The government has nothing to hide. The guilty will not be spared. No innocent reputation will be allowed to be tarnished.’ The prescient part of the statement was: ‘No innocent reputation will be allowed to be tarnished.’ The words were carefully chosen. It had a portentous resonance. Tehelka should have put their ears to the ground. And listened. They would have heard a slow, slow drumroll.

In an interview two years later, Arun Jaitley recounted, ‘I was called to the prime minister’s house, along with Pramod Mahajan and [M.] Venkaiah Naidu. The prime minister had also called for Bangaru Laxman. I was sent in to grill Bangaru Laxman. I concluded, "Yeh bilkul jhoot account nahin hai [this is not an entirely false report]." It was decided that Bangaru must resign.’ As simple as that. Not for Bangaru Laxman, who could not comprehend what he had done wrong. Wasn’t he supposed to collect money for the party and doesn’t everyone? When Laxman first heard of the tapes his initial reaction was, ‘My conscience is clear.’ He pointed out, ‘You can’t run a big party like the BJP without accepting cash donations’. His conscience may have been clear, but the prime minister’s reaction was also clear: resign. Vajpayee had to save himself and his government. A puzzled and deflated Laxman reflected that because he belonged to the Dalit community there must have been a conspiracy to push him out.

That evening, Vajpayee’s damage control team waited for George Fernandes to arrive. Fernandes delayed the meeting while he read the Operation West End transcripts. It was reported that Fernandes did strongly propose that the government should fight it out and he not resign, following Jaya Jaitly’s advice to him. The following day a contrary buzz was generated by the government spin-doctors that Fernandes had offered to resign.

That same night, senior officers of the defence ministry and the armed forces were called for a meeting by Fernandes to decide on what action should be taken against army officers caught on the Tehelka tapes. Much later in the night, all the army officers in the Operation West End tapes were summoned to the defence ministry and interrogated. The following day, on 14 March, Fernandes suspended three officers in his ministry because of the revelations in the Tehelka tapes: H.C. Pant (staff officer in the Ordnance and Factory Board); Narender Singh (assistant financial adviser); and P. Sasi (assistant in the Ordnance Services, Army Headquarters). The army immediately suspended Major General P.S.K. Choudary (additional director-general, weapons and equipment) for his alleged role in the Tehelka scandal. Choudary was the only officer who immediately admitted he had accepted bribes of Rs 1,00,000 and a gold chain. Choudary’s timing of admission of guilt would have serious significance later. Other officers on the tapes, by now posted outside Delhi, were asked to report back but none of them admitted anything.

A day after the exposé, pandemonium again reigned in Parliament, with Opposition members shouting slogans against Fernandes. Prime Minister Vajpayee said his government was ready for an inquiry. Then the damage-control exercise finally got into gear. Rural Development Minister Venkaiah Naidu told reporters there seemed to be a big conspiracy behind the Tehelka revelations. There was suspicion on who funded the sting operation. Along with Naidu, Jana Krishnamurthy, acting president of the BJP, called the Tehelka tapes a conspiracy to defame the party and to destabilize the government. Krishnamurthy praised Bangaru Laxman for his resignation on moral grounds. When reporters asked Krishnamurthy whether journalists carrying briefcases would be banned from the BJP party offices, he responded with a broad smile, ‘Let’s see what happens’.

The government’s team then slowly crunched into warfare mode. They followed the basic rules of combat propaganda.

First: the psychological operations to affect the enemy’s reasoning. Three days after the exposé the BJP’s media cell issued a press release accusing Tarun Tejpal of links with Congress leader Arjun Singh, who the BJP said was behind Tehelka’s sting operation. Various departments in the government were informally asked to start digging for dirt on the Tehelka team. The government arrested six persons who were allegedly planning to kill Tarun Tejpal. Tarun was given Z-category security, which meant he was watched every second by security personnel who reported to the government. There is a Rashomon in this too. I was told that the ‘would be killers’ were prosecuted in Patiala House. Yet, Tarun said he had received no threatening calls.

Second: the warfare that denies accurate information to the enemy. This involved appointing the Commission of Inquiry, with Tehelka not being able to figure out what was happening to them in the Commission until too late in the game.

Third: physical destruction, which means any method to debilitate the enemy. This was effected through numerous raids on the First Global and Tehelka offices.

Fourth: security measures to keep the adversary from learning about capabilities and intentions. No one in First Global or Tehelka could put a finger on who the one man was or who were the men who issued all the orders and so cohesively coordinated the attacks against them.

Fifth: the information attack. Plant sufficient damaging information, counter- information, and disinformation to keep Tehelka busy defending itself instead of focusing on the corrupt caught on tapes. A series of stories were planted: Subhash Chandra of Zee TV did it to improve his ratings; the Hindujas were behind it to engineer the fall of government and get out of the Bofors scandal; investors conspired to make a killing on the stock market. One report said the ISI was behind it, another that the CIA was. The triumphant accusers were rapidly morphed into the bewildered accused.

How did the Sensex behave on 13 March 2001? Even that was to become a controversial issue, interpreted by government lawyers as crashing because of Tehelka, with the Tehelka investors’ lawyers presenting a completely contrary view. On 13 March, Shankar Sharma said his office stopped trading the moment he had spoken to Tarun over the phone. First Global began trading after 4.00 p.m. when the Tehelka episode was aired on Zee News. Given the Indian tendency to always presume there is a conspiracy within a conspiracy, it was presumed that Shankar Sharma traded through other people. I questioned Tejpal about this:

Madhu: The fact that you spoke to Shankar Sharma from your cellphone on the morning of your press conference showing the tapes at Imperial Hotel has led to the opinion that Sharma then started dumping stock expecting a crash. Did he discuss with you what he would be doing?

Tejpal: If they are tapping phones, why don’t they reveal the conversations? In fact, Shankar was advising me not to go ahead with the exposé. He said it would jeopardize my future and investments into Tehelka would be a problem. He was worried and did not want to get involved in anything like this and I tried to reassure him. Now First Global is being dragged into this for nothing. This was straight journalism and not anything personal against anyone or any government.

After all, how could anything possibly be as simple or as it appears to be? Is the Tehelka story as straight as the Tehelka journalists claim? Or does it appear to be a conspiracy and unexpectedly, isn’t?

The story of Tehelka has its application in our daily lives. At every step, will you bend? Lie down? Crawl? Break? Or sing: Get up, Stand up, Stand up for your rights? Or just turn your face away? Even more important, will you stand up for someone else when you have nothing to gain and perhaps something to lose? You cannot live in a country like India and ignore your choices. The Tehelka story can be dismissed as just another story. That would be