Journalist for Just Not Lost Causes   Narasimhan Vijayaraghavan   Long before social activism became fashionable, he was out on the streets championing the cause of the common man.

Journalist for Just Not Lost Causes

 

Narasimhan Vijayaraghavan

 

 

 

 

Long before social activism became fashionable, he was out on the streets championing the cause of the common man.

 

His NGO, Common Cause, was a one-man crusade set up several years ago and inspired by his conviction to safeguard the rights of the ordinary citizen. H.D. Shourie, 93, (1912-2005) selflessly battled the government, bureaucracy, local agencies and corruption till the last. Father of three children, including former Union minister Arun Shourie, “HD” was, ironically, a bureaucrat with 30 years of service before launching his NGO.

 

 

 

 

Over the years, HDS filed 70 writ petitions and PILs on behalf of various sections of society. Today’s Right to Information for citizens is because of his crusade to puncture the secrecy surrounding whatever happens in the corridors of power of public authority.

 

Arun Shourie (HD’s son) is an Indian economist, journalist, author and politician. He has worked as an economist with the World Bank, a consultant to the Planning Commission of India, editor of the Indian Express and The Times of India and a Minister of Communications and Information Technology and Disinvestment portfolio, in the Atal Bihari Vajpayee Ministry. Modern School,Barrakhamba Road, Delhi to St.Stephen’s, to Syracuse University to the most famous Editor of the legendary Ramnath Goenka’s ‘Indian Express’ and an author of multiple works. What a journey! A Memoir made Memorable.

 

“The Commissioner of Lost Causes” (concededly, what an apt title for his twenty eighth book). We bandy the expression ‘unputdownable’ too easily. Not everyone of that genre belong there. This one does. Arun Shourie is no ordinary scholar. A saintly one. Remember his work on Ramakrishna Paramahamsa and Ramana Maharishi. (Two saints).

 

Arun took care of his father- HD- for long, when unwell. Then he himself had a special child with cerebral palsy- Aditya (Does he know a mother’s heart- is a heart-rending book) and Anita, his Parkinson afflicted wife- (Anita gets Bail- his book is a rude exposure of the broken criminal justice system).

 

 

 

Yet, he had the mindset, inclination, motivation to write books on varied subjects, as if on assembly line. But this one is truly ‘special’ like the son he adores. To those of us brought upon on Shourie Diet, day in and day out, it is stunningly special. Thank You Arun. We agree as you admit that your ‘memory is fading’ as Fali S Nariman famously wrote. Yet your memory chip has delivered not disappointed? when it mattered.

 

This reviewer has been into – Musings,Anecdotes,Episodes’ bigly, during the pandemic times. Arun’s lost causes are huge, on this variant. As a legal practitioner, one has always been bewildered with his legal acumen in deciphering the legalese despite his lack of legal background. He cut out the clutter to converse in conversational style. His ‘Courts and their Judgments” is a sharp indictment on the courts’ pronouncements. Teaching those on the pulpit, a lesson or two and two hundred and more. Alas!

 

The Memoirs are veritably from a legal luminary. His articles were timed to Parliament proceedings. And Supreme Court hearings. They shook them both. I am not recalling them. Abu Abraham captured it at his colourful cartoonist’ best.

 

 

 

He was a serendipitous journalist. ‘Happenstance’ as Justice Rohinton F Nariman (Retd), uses all the time. Shourie’s stewardship of IE was when Goenka was ruling the roost. Much like Katherine Meyer Graham (publisher) Benjamin Crowninshield Bradlee (Editor) Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein (reporters) of the WaPo, the team of Goenka, Shourie and his legion of young reporters were true trailblazers at IE.

 

Shourie made rookies to ‘investigating reporters’. He taught them to report. Let ‘them’ report. Generously gave them bylines, while other newspapers denied it with being stingy, peevish and miserly. He let them hog the limelight. Arun made ‘reporting facts’ the core of Marshall McLuhan’ ‘Medium is the Message’, his mantra . Follow the money, we now say. Follow the Facts hailed Arun. And on shoe string budgets (Goenka refused to enhance salaries saying- “You reporters are now my sons. I don’t want to make sons in law of you).

 

To call the present lot also ‘journalists’, would be as if a pejorative. The sanctity of news has gone for a toss. It is mindlessly and shamelessly tweaked and tainted to pass off ‘views as news’. Hardly any reporting of facts. In this information overload age, critical analysis matters. Shourie used to take up the cause, not lost, but just. He will frame the question. Catch the eye with a provocative headline. And then threadbare analyse the issue and deliver his verdict. With incisive logic, basis and driven by Facts and Facts alone. (Goenka said that was the reason why they hit the targets as ‘unanswerable’). Shourie-Abu Abraham duo was pungent and stinging.

 

 

 

One recalls each of them vividly.Be it the Justice P N Bhagwati encounter – Flip, Flop,Flip- or Bajan Lal, Gundu Rao or the Gandhis, Indira and Rajiv- Arun never minced words. His’ readers loved it. He was no pamphleteer as ‘journalists’ as Girilal Jain alluded to him. ‘They’ were ‘ as suckers and pusillanimous as they came’ and L K Advani put it succinctly- “ During Internal Emergency ‘they’ chose to crawl when asked to just bend’. Arun was a red rag to ‘them’.

 

 

 

His supervised articles are ‘sweet remembrances’, even if on tragic causes as Bhagalpur Blindings, sale of Kamla, Drugs in Tihar and state of undertrials et al (for my father chose to walk back home on Anna Salai to pick up Spencer Plum Cake- which I gulped all by myself as I read Arun Shourie piece, word for word, and always wondered why the cake got over before the article). Not one writer of that genre in the newspapers of today, print or electronic. Shame.

 

 

Shourie always wrote with ‘ feelings and emotions’ as Ernest Hemingway intoned. He was ‘cynical and acerbic’ as a Mark Twain. He elevated his writings to ‘literary status’ rare to come by. Even while sticking to facts ,he made them read not dull, drab and dreary. He poured venom on the unjust, loaded with justification. He was ruthless in the choice of words. Not to excite or titillate but to inform, instruct and illuminate . This work is no different. Each anecdote has a message. It is for us to divine it. If we do it, we would return wise.

 

 

I am not letting in on any of them, to those who do not remember the drama or not know at all, that went on during Shourie reign as Editor of IE. And beyond, as columnist and author and a brief stint as Disinvestment Minister (Remember Supreme Court upholding BALCO). To retain the newness and flavour.I would only say that the anecdotes in his own ‘unjournalistic style’ make lovely reading. He paints a vivid picture in colloquial style and if you understand Hindi- the vernacular quotes are simply fascinating.

 

To those who may crib and complain and ‘allege’ that Arun Shourie is today a ‘peeved’ man and getting back at the ruling dispensation and he is in a typical ‘mood swing as if a pendulum’ as Justice Holmes called a US President, sorry, you are wrong. No one is pure white. Every one has his grey. Hues of it. Dark or soft, if you will. This man’s honesty and integrity scale are of impeccable proportions his ‘mood swings’ are par for that course.

 

 

 

 

For, he ‘follows the facts’, you see. One huge take away is the allusion to ‘lost cause’. He has always parroted this theme. In India and other democracies, we lack the ‘perseverance and follow up’. We muddle and stumble from one ‘scam and scandal to another for there is no dearth of them’. Yes, we do lack the strength, energy, willingness, intent and verve to pick up a ‘lost cause’ (obviously ‘just’ too) and keep hammering away until it got sorted out or solved.

 

 

 

Arun Shourie wanted ‘us’ to be different ie. We The People. If we did not seek ‘it’ from the media, the media happily moves on. ‘Media today is in it for commerce and journalists there for lure, lucre and glamour, entertaining not educating us, with lost and worthless food fights ’ as Prof. Michael Sandel puts it. . Now, journalists come too easily and too early. They are rarely trained in the rough and tumble. Language does not make them. Substance and facts alone can. There are no Aruns to carve them into a genuine ‘journalist’ with a lost or just cause. Shame.

 

(Author is practising advocate in the Madras High Court)