Amardeep Singh: Khushwant Singh's Journalism: The Illustrated Weekly of India

An interesting piece on Khushwant Singh - one of my favorite people - right from the time I was a school kid in Delhi. His"With Malice Towards One and All" column is what got me started on reading editorials as a young school kid.

Khushwant's secularism, his sense of humor, his ability to not be pompous - inspite of his tremendous stature in society and his fair take on history and contemporary events made him probably one of the most admired journalists in India of all times.

Here's a quote from Amandeep's column "I admire Khushwant Singh's secularism, which for me is always best represented by the Mario cartoon he used on his 'Editor's Page' in The Illustrated Weekly: a caricature of himself, sitting next to a pile of books, a bottle of scotch, and a girlie magazine. This is the basis for the familiar Khushwant Singh slogan, 'sex, scotch, and scholarship,' which is also the title of one of his later books of essays. Much has been made of the 'sex' and 'scotch,' both of which are somewhat ironic since testimony from people who've known him has confirmed that he's neither a womanizer nor a heavy drinker. 'Sex, scotch, and scholarship' isn't literally Khushwant Singh's lifestyle (nor does it accurately represent his attitude towards women); it's rather a slogan for his fiercely independent ethos. It's something India still has need of: a willingness to publicly be something other than 'respectable' and 'respectful,' to tell the truth rather than wrap the world in mysticism or one or another political ideology. "