Everybody’s Guy

{ONE}

DRESSED IN A TURBAN and white kurta pyjama, Narendra Modi sat in the passenger seat of a van crossing the Patan district of Gujarat, in September 2012. Next to him sat Rajdeep Sardesai, the founder-editor of the news channel CNN-IBN. Sardesai’s team had set up for an interview with Modi in the van’s spacious rear, with proper seating and light, but the chief minister had refused the idea. He compelled the star anchor to sit on the footboard, physically below him. Given their longtime association, this came as a rude shock. In the years since, Sardesai has recounted this anecdote to portray himself as a journalist who was facing retribution for standing up to a powerful politician—but he sometimes leaves out the ending.

Modi and Sardesai had first met in 1990, during the nationwide chariot procession led by the Bharatiya Janata Party stalwart LK Advani to build momentum for a Ram temple at the site of the Babri Masjid in Ayodhya, Uttar Pradesh. Modi was the organising secretary of the BJP in Gujarat, where the procession started. It was his first big event in charge, and Modi ensured that journalists had access to fax machines and the next day’s itinerary. He laughed a lot, even if his eyes seemed stuck in an unblinking glare, Sardesai recalled in his 2014 book, The Election That Changed India.

Advani’s procession was also a big moment for Sardesai. Two years into his journalism career, he was already a fast-rising editor at the Mumbai bureau of the Times of India, the most influential newspaper in the country, and the rally offered him a chance to cover a national political event. Over the next few years, the politician and the journalist developed a friendship, often meeting over a plate of kadhi chawal. Both were rising stars: Sardesai soon joined NDTV—a production house led by Prannoy and Radhika Roy which would become the fixture of primetime news among English-speaking Indians in the 1990s and 2000s—becoming one of the most recognisable and trustworthy faces in the media. Modi became a prominent name in Gujarat politics, winning crucial elections for the BJP and setting himself on the path to becoming chief minister. He was briefly banished to Delhi and sidelined by his party for stoking factionalism, but Sardesai helped Modi get the national visibility he desired. “Modi had not fought an election,” he told me. “TV became his platform.”