“Why does he sound like he is part of the Left Front?” a senior government official asked a colleague of mine.
It was 2008. Tensions were high between the Congress-led United Progressive Alliance (UPA) and the Left Front over the India-U.S. nuclear deal. I was a television reporter then. I covered the Left parties while my colleague reported on foreign policy.
“He even pointed out that you refer to leaders of the Left as ‘comrades,’” she told me while conveying the official’s observation about me. His was less of an observation and more of a complaint. It questioned my neutrality as a reporter.
