IN THE CORRIDORS OF POWER

IN I, WITNESS, VETERAN JOURNALIST SHAHID SIDDIQUI RECOUNTS FIVE DECADES OF INDIAN POLITICS WITH CANDOUR

- -Saba Naqvi

I, WITNESS India from Nehru to Narendra Modi By Shahid Siddiqui RUPA ₹795; 448 pages

I, Witness is a racy read, full of anecdotes, gossip, events and perspectives, as Shahid Siddiqui, editor of Urdu weekly Nai Duniya, saw it. He is the quintessential Dilliwala, born in Ballimaran, old Delhi, in post-Partition India. As a six-year-old, he is taken to meet Jawaharlal Nehru by his father, referred to as Abba, a Deoband maulana who would become an influential editor and later be jailed during the 1975 Emergency. The grownup Shahid Siddiqui would be both journalist and part-time politician, who would interview all Indian prime ministers from Indira Gandhi to Narendra Modi—and be expelled from the Samajwadi Party for speaking to the then Gujarat chief minister.