The most remarkable thing about him is there isn’t anything unremarkable about him.
A journalist of repute, fighter pilot to the core and an OBE, Mohsin Ali was efficiency and aristocracy personified.
Born in Dehradun (now in Uttarkhand) on October 9, 1923, in an elite Muslim family, Mohsin Ali was descended from a line of Indian nobility in Aligarh state, north of New Delhi, where his great grandfather Sir Syed Ahmed Khan – who helped to lay the foundations of modern higher education in India – founded Aligarh University. His grandfather was the Nawab Mohammed Ali and his father had been minister of transport in the last days of the raj. His grand uncle was Sir Ross Masood, a leading educationist to whom E M Forster dedicated his classic novel A Passage to India.
Mohsin Ali studied in Doon School, an elite private school that the British had set up along the lines of Harrow. At 18 Ali was recruited into the Indian Air Force and trained as a fighter pilot at the Empire Flying School near Ottawa (Canada) with 23 other officer cadets. He was assigned to a Hurricane squadron and saw action on the Burma front (World War II). Only three of his fellow flying school cadets survived.
“Pray, how did we come out alive?” he asked later. “The Lord had mercy on us.”
Mohsin Ali joined Reuters in 1948 and, as diplomatic correspondent and later diplomatic editor, covered most of the big East-West conferences and summits; the Korea, Cambodia, Laos and Vietnam peace talks; disarmament, nuclear test ban and non-proliferation negotiations, meetings of NATO foreign and defence ministers, Commonwealth conferences and the UN General Assembly.
Mohsin Ali was famous for being able to produce from his pocket a copy of diplomatic communiqués before their official release.
In Geneva in 1961, he met Dolores Gregory, a southern belle and American civil servant working for the World Health Organisation. They married in 1978, and she survives him.
On his retirement in 1980 he was made an Officer of the Most Excellent Order of the British Empire (OBE) for services to international journalism.
Former British Prime Minister James Callaghan wrote to him: “When I think of Reuters, I think of Mohsin Ali and I feel sad that in a week or two this will no longer be true… This, together with your many kindnesses to me and my staff, has made your name synonymous with the reputation of that great agency for which you have worked so faithfully.”
After retirement Mohsin Ali moved to America and became a US citizen. He offered his experience to The Times as a part-time correspondent covering defence and diplomacy. He covered the White House, the Pentagon, the State Department, and Congress. He appeared on TV programmes about world affairs and gave lectures about diplomacy and his long experience reporting on international statesmen. At the time he lived in Washington. Eventually, he retired again, this time to Pinehurst in North Carolina.
He held two leaders in high regard – Chou En-lai, China's prime minister and foreign minister, and Charles de Gaulle, French president, who, according to him, were the two most incorruptible and principled leaders of his time.
In one of his lectures, Mohsin Ali told his American audience: “An old journalist like myself should hesitate before criticising the present media generation. However, one cannot escape the suspicion that many now join the profession for the ultimate glamour of becoming TV stars, unlike predecessors who joined what was previously one of the less sought-after and prestigious of professions.”
Mohsin Ali was fascinated by eastern mysticism. He was much attracted by Sufi thought as well as Buddhism. He would advise his friends to follow moderation, or the middle path of Buddha in life.
Despite his blue-blooded upbringing and pedigree, Mohsin Ali remained a humble and down-to-earth man.
Mohsin Ali died in North Carolina on 16 December, 2015, at the age of 92. He remained fit and spry into old age. “Nothing in this life matters as along as you have your health,” he used to say.
