It was August 1990, and I was returning home after a brief, three-month overseas journalism scholarship. In those times, there was no internet. Radio was an option, but not easy to track. Newspapers globally seldom carried much news about India.
In between the dozen weeks one had left (in early June 1990), and returned in August the same year, it seemed as if one was returning to a different country, a changed reality, and completely different media coverage.
It took some time to realise that, in the meantime, the then Prime Minister VP Singh had unleashed the Mandal issue on Indian politics. Largely due to this, the media which was championing him just a few months earlier, had taken to demonising him. The turmoil in Indian politics was just to begin. The BJP-Sangh would subsequently hit back with 'mandir politics'. The rest is history....
Last week, one came across an issue of the Delhi-based 'The Caravan' magazine. On its cover, its April issue had this cover story titled 'S. Gurumurthy: The Sangh's Fixer'.
In the Delhi monthly's typical long-form style of journalism, its article covers some 30 pages of the magazine's latest issue. Written by Sujatha Sivagnanam, the article looks at the life, background and politics of just one man. It ends up telling the story of India, starting in the 1970s, before the Emergency, and giving deep insights into how national politics gets shaped and formed.
Sivagnanam has done a fascinating job. My bet is, if you read this article, you're going to begin understanding pan-Indian politics in an entirely different manner.
The story begins with a wedding behind held at a "brightly lit hall in Chennai in 2015". It's a high society wedding, and present there were senior minister Rajnath Singh, Arun Jaitley, Piyush Goyal, M Venkaiah Naidu and Ravi Shankar Prasad. Former deputy PM Lal Krishna Advani was there. So were "powerful Tamil politicians", actor Rajnikanth, and the heads of L&T, India Cements, TVS and Amalgamations. It was the marriage of chartered accountant Swaminathan Gurumurthy's daughter.
This story goes on at two or three diverse levels. At one, it is the story of S. Gurumurthy. But it is also a wider story of Indian politics, and how Gurumurthy and his perspectives shaped it. At another level, it is also a story of the tensions and strategies within the RSS-BJP over the decades.
Sivagnanam writes: "Few men have had as oversized an impact on Indian politics and economics as Gurumurthy. While his name often misses the limelight, he has left an expansive shadow over the past fifty years, shaping, industry, politics and the economy under the directions of the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh."
To back this up, she points out that Gurumurthy started as as the auditor of the Indian Express Group, become its editorial advisor, and then even played a key role in that newspaper's battle to "dethrone" former prime ministers Indira and Rajiv Gandhi.
He lead the Indian Express' "failed battle against Dhirubhai Ambani's Reliance Industries", and played a key role in "cobbling together alliances for the BJP, as well as in coordinating between the RSS, the BJP and the union government during the demolition of the Babri Masjid."
He influenced economic policy under Modi, and the article studies his support for demonetisation.
There is a detailed analysis of caste influencing Indian politics, the networks it shapes (among TamBrams, in his case), and how "journalists, industrialists, politicians and bankers" refused to speak to the journalist on learning of the subject of her work.
By explaining his connections with NITI Aayog, his 1972 meeting with Kamaraj "to discuss the future of actor MG Ramachandran", and his relationship with Indian Express czar Goenka, one gets a bigger picture of how exactly politics gets shaped in our times.
Gurumurthy graduated from being a Congressman to going to the RSS. As he puts it: "Many Congress people were in RSS, many RSS people were in Congress." Also noted in some detail is Gurumurthy's arrest during Congress times, on apparently political grounds.
Every detail seems carefully fact-checked. If one side's version was not given in the story, then the author lets you know that attempts were made to contact that party, and the latter didn't respond.
Gurumurthy doesn't see his earlier allegations against the Ambani's as being somehow similar to the Hindenberg's recent ones against Adani. His involvement in the Fairfax detective agency attempt to dig up dirt on the Rajiv government is also noted.
Gurumurthy's connections with politicians across party lines (including VP Singh, mentioned above) is enough to fill a small book. His involvement in the protests against Enron, and love-hate equation with the ideology of the RSS labour leader Thengadi or blow-hot-blow-cold equation with the Swadesh Jagran Manch is insightful. So are his connections with Prime Minister Modi, and how Gurumurthy himself sees the same.
At the end of the day, it is writing of this kind that offers deep insights into what shapes us as a country, and helps us understand why we are where we are. When it comes to the politics of Goa, some attempts have been made to go beyond the headlines, and explain things more carefully. But telling a story of this kind would need a lot of truth-telling ability, an uninvolved and non-motivated understanding of politics, and the persistence to cull along so many facts and details.
To one's mind, it is a long way before we could hope for anything remotely similar happening that explains our small State even somewhat adequately.
