The latest New Yorker reports that Jawaharlal Nehru did an interview for Playboy’s October 1963 issue. Oh yes, we read it only for the articles. 
Will anyone cop to having a copy, or you gonna make me drag my culo down to the N.Y. Public Library? ‘Cause you know I will.
… Playboy’s fiction was far less important than its interviews, inaugurated in 1962. Among the subjects were Miles Davis, Peter Sellers, Bertrand Russell, Malcolm X, Billy Wilder, Richard Burton, Jawaharlal Nehru, Jimmy Hoffa, Albert Schweitzer, Nabokov, Jean Genet, Ingmar Bergman, Dick Gregory, Henry Miller, Cassius Clay, and George Wallace, and that’s just for the first three years. The questioning was long (seven to ten hours) and confrontational. Presumably for that reason—and maybe, too, because this was a skin magazine and what the hell—the subjects often said what they did not say elsewhere. [Link]
The cover model uses Nehru as a fig leaf of civility (NSFW):
Shortly after this interview ran, the Nehru ‘jacket’ became popular in America. I think you see where I’m going with this. Embarrassed, the Indian government quickly backpedaled:
… after the rest of the magazine had gone to press, we received word from the Indian Embassy in Washington that our interview with PM Nehru was not, in fact, the result of an exclusive, personal conversation with the head of the Indian state, but simply a gathering together of public pronouncements made by the Prime Minister in various speeches, statements, etc., over the past several years. The Nehru material was submitted to us by a well-regarded journalist-publisher who has previously conducted numerous similar interviews with famous personages all over the world: it was sold as an actual interview, recorded on tape, and the covering letters that so described the material also included photographs of the Prime Minister and journalist together… [Link]
Rajiv Gandhi also did an interview for Penthouse’s Jan. 9, 1987 issue (thanks, Karthik). And Kal Penn did a famously raunchy, somewhat tongue-in-cheek Playboy interview (NSFW):
What’s the most number of women you’ve slept with in a day?
Two, when I had the threesomes. But, ask me again three months after Harold & Kumar comes out. [Link - NSFW]
Top that, Mr. Nehru.
Apparently the Amitabh was merely boning up on foreign affairs (via Daily Rhino):
Which raises the question: if Manmohan Singh did a Playboy interview, how would Musharraf respond? Bare Ankles Daily? I hear it’s very hott.
You can read the full text of the interview here.
Related posts: Kal Penn interviewed in Playboy, There is no place to hide it in India, Indians love their newspapers; related site: Sheetal Sheth in Maxim (NSFW)
