Karan Thapar

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Karaṇ Thāpar (Hindi: करण थापर), born on 5th November, 1955 in Srinagar, India, is one of India's noted television commentators and interviewers. He is the youngest child of General P.N. Thapar. Currently the President of Infotainment Television, Thapar is noted for his aggressive interviews with leading politicians and celebrities - his interviews with cricketer Kapil Dev (where Dev broke down into tears)[1], George Fernandes, Jayalalithaa, Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, General Pervez Musharraf, Benazir Bhutto, US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and The Dalai Lama are particularly well remembered.

In December 2003, he became the first person to win both awards in the current affairs category of the Asian Television Awards. His interview with Pakistan's Foreign Minister, Khurshid Kasuri, on Court Martial won 'The Best Current Affairs Programme'. He received his second award for 'The Best Current Affairs Presenter' for his popular long-running BBC series Face to Face. In 2005 he won the 'Best Current Affairs Presenter' for the third time since 1999 for his interview with former Indian Law Minister and BJP General Secretary Arun Jaitley on Hardtalk India. He won the 'Best Current Affairs Presenter' award yet again in 2007, this time for his much talked about interview with Ram Jethmalani on Devil's Advocate. Some of his other popular shows have been Eyewitness (Doordarshan), Tonight at 10 (CNBC), In Focus with Karan and Line of Fire. The two shows with which he has been making headlines lately are, Devil's Advocate on CNN IBN and India Tonight on CNBC TV 18.

Thapar is also a prolific newspaper columnist. His weekly column Sunday Sentiments in The Hindustan Times (the second largest English daily in India) is widely read and very well received. A collection of his columns has been published by the same name "Sunday Sentiments", as have been some of his interviews in "Face To Face India".

An alumnus of The Doon School and Stowe School, he graduated with a degree in the Economics and Political Philosophy from Pembroke College, Cambridge in 1977. In the same year, he was President of the Cambridge Union. He subsequently attained a doctorate in International Relations from St. Anthony's College, Oxford. He began his career in journalism with The Times in Lagos, Nigeria and later worked as their Leader Writer on the Indian subcontinent till 1991. In 1982 he joined London Weekend Television where he worked for the next 11 years. He then moved to India where he worked with The Hindustan Times Television Group, Home TV and United Television before setting up his own production house in August 2001, Infotainment Television, which makes programmes for amongst others BBC, Doordarshan and Channel News Asia.

More recently, he evoked massive protests on the Internet by suggesting the "sudden removal" of Gujarat Chief Minister Narendra Modi in an article in the Hindustan Times on 29th December 2007 titled "'Modification' of politics", which many interpreted as an unethical encouragement of unconventional and unsavoury action.[2]

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