Gopalkrishna Gandhi’s review of Karan Thapar’s Devil’s Advocate, published on Scroll.in on 27 October 2018, argues that the television interviewer’s command of his medium carries over into print. Gandhi’s case rests on observation: he says Thapar interprets the people he writes about, not just reports on them, and that this control is as visible on the page as it is on screen. What follows is an account of that argument, the examples Gandhi uses to support it, and the places where he qualifies his praise. It describes what the review says; it does not independently verify the book’s contents or the events it recounts.
What Gandhi argues
Gandhi opens by calling Thapar both a “master” and a “slave” of television. He is a master, in the reviewer’s account, because he commands the medium’s possibilities and its departments. He is a slave because he is possessed by its power. Gandhi says television has shaped Thapar’s reflexes, speech and deportment, and has produced a strong intolerance of imprecision.
From that starting point the review makes its central claim: the book shows comparable command. Thapar is not only writing about his interview subjects but interpreting them and the worlds around them. Gandhi’s most quotable line puts it this way: “Amazingly, in his book Devil’s Advocate he shows the book to be no less his possession than TV, and he, of the book.”
A book that is not quite an autobiography
According to the review, Devil’s Advocate resists being read as a conventional autobiography, yet it reveals a good deal about its author. Gandhi points to material on Thapar’s family and schooling, his study in Britain, his meeting with his future wife Nisha Meneses, her fatal illness, and his later loneliness.
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Gandhi’s reading is that Thapar presents himself as a witness to events rather than foregrounding his own role. The reviewer still sees the author’s observing presence in the scenes. In other words, the self is present without being the subject.
How the portraits work
Gandhi’s key description of the book’s structure is that “Karan is present in all the seventeen chapters of the book as an observer of the persons concerned, interpreter and portrait-painter of their personalities, radiographer of their spines, brains and neurological systems.” The seventeen-chapter figure is the reviewer’s count. The review does not provide a full contents list, so readers should treat the number as Gandhi’s report of the book rather than an independently checked fact.
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The Vikram Seth scene at Doon
Gandhi offers the account of Vikram Seth at Doon as his clearest example of the observational style. He describes Seth listening to Thapar practise a speech, asking for repeated attempts and responding sparingly. Gandhi reads the passage as showing Seth’s concentration and Thapar’s powers of observation. This is the reviewer’s interpretation of a scene in the book, and it has not been checked against the book’s text here.
Subjects named in the review
The review names a wide range of public figures. The list below is drawn from Gandhi’s examples; it is not a complete contents list.
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- Vikram Seth
- Amitabh Bachchan and Jaya Bachchan
- Women in the households of Atal Bihari Vajpayee and P. V. Narasimha Rao
- Amal Clooney
- J. Jayalalithaa
- Jeremy Thorpe
- Benazir Bhutto
- Aung San Suu Kyi
- Rajiv Gandhi
- P. V. Narasimha Rao
- V. P. Singh
- Chandra Shekhar
- Atal Bihari Vajpayee
- Manmohan Singh
- Narendra Modi
- Pranab Mukherjee
- L. K. Advani
Where Gandhi finds the book less candid
The praise in the review is qualified. Gandhi says the portraiture and frankness are strong, and he singles out the account of L. K. Advani as an example. He also finds that the chapter on Pranab Mukherjee sacrifices candour for courtesy.
He draws a further contrast between the book’s treatment of Aung San Suu Kyi’s life before office and its more interrogative account of her official role. In Gandhi’s view the earlier material is more open than the later. These are critical judgments and belong to the reviewer.
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The reviewer’s correction
The published review carries a correction and apology from Gandhi himself. He had used a term to describe Thapar’s account of his wife’s passing. He has withdrawn it, acknowledged that his characterisation was inappropriate and wrong, and apologised to the people involved and to readers. In his own words, he wishes “to acknowledge the error and convey my deep apologies.” He says he had misread Thapar’s description and had applied a term that did not fit it. The correction concerns Gandhi’s wording, not a statement by Thapar.
Independent reader supportYour contribution helps us test, update, and keep practical guides available for everyone.What this review does and does not establish
- It establishes what Gandhi argues, when he published it, and the judgments and quotations he attributes to himself.
- It does not establish the accuracy of the scenes and biographical events Gandhi describes. It is strong evidence of what the reviewer wrote, not independent corroboration of the book’s contents.
- It does not establish critical or reader consensus. This is one reviewer’s assessment, and it is positive overall but explicitly mixed on specific chapters.
- It does not establish current editions, formats or where the book is sold. This article does not check those details.
Testing Gandhi’s claim while reading
If you read the book with the review in hand, a few checks follow directly from Gandhi’s argument:
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- Does the Vikram Seth passage show the observer at work, as Gandhi describes, or does Thapar step forward as a participant?
- Compare the Pranab Mukherjee chapter with the Advani account. Does the candour Gandhi praises in one hold up in the other?
- Read the Aung San Suu Kyi material in two halves, before and after her official role, and judge whether the shift in tone is as sharp as the review suggests.
Readers who watched Thapar’s interviews will be able to judge the comparison from direct experience, which is the most useful test of the review’s central claim.
Quick Recap
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