New Delhi: The Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh’s (RSS) cadres today are available to the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) to be instruments for the will of Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Home Minister Amit Shah, former BJP minister and veteran journalist Arun Shourie has said.
Shourie — a former minister in the Atal Bihari Vajpayee Cabinet who’s spent considerable time studying the RSS — said that the Sangh’s leadership has no authority today and is just a “mask” for a different agenda, and that the austere way of living the organisation was once known for is no longer followed.
In the latest episode of Off the Cuff, former economist, minister, and journalist Shourie sat down with ThePrint’s Editor-in-Chief Shekhar Gupta to discuss his new book, The Commissioner for Lost Causes.
A former editor of the Indian Express, Shourie in his book not only expounds on his journalistic career, but also shares nuggets about his interactions with Ramnath Goenka, the founder of the Indian Express Group, former Chief Justice of India P.N. Bhagwati — a pioneer of judicial activism — and former prime minister Chandra Shekhar.
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The RSS
Many editors, journalists, and academics, Shourie said during the conversation, make a fundamental mistake: They do not take the time to study the RSS’s literature, which is vital to understanding its agenda today.
He spoke about his time studying the RSS, recalling an occasion when he met Bhaurao Deoras, the brother of former RSS sarsanghchalak (head) M.D. Deoras.
“I found him very sharp and very well-informed,” he said.
He also spoke about the importance of studying events and examining them in the right light. In this context, he discussed what he considered his two major errors of judgement.
One, he said, was supporting former prime minister V.P Singh. Backed by the BJP and the Left parties from the outside, Singh became prime minister in December 1989.
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Narendra Modi
Shourie’s second — and according to him, more egregious — error was how he “misjudged” Narendra Modi when he was chief minister of Gujarat, and supported him to become prime minister in 2014.
“If you examine the actual record in Gujarat, it was very different from what we believed at that time,” he said. “I was wrong to have bought into that. I had not examined the matter at all.”
Shourie was referring to Modi’s claims about economic development in Gujarat, in what’s popularly known as the ‘Gujarat Model’.
“Sometimes we get so upset with the present situation that we lunge for anybody who is an alternative,” he said. Modi’s rising popularity and victory in the 2014 Lok Sabha elections came at a time when the Congress-led United Progressive Alliance government was plagued by allegations of corruption.
‘Difficult times’
Shourie also spoke about his time as editor of the Indian Express during the Congress era and under V.P. Singh’s government.
He described the “establishment” today as “incestuous”, leading to a single power centre with no separation of powers.
These are difficult times for independent journalists and the judiciary, he said.
“There are no institutional restraints now. The citizen has no recourse one way or the other,” he said.
Judges must not accept post-retirement jobs. They must also examine their judgments to understand their implications and consequences, he said.
‘No sense of remorse’
There was no sense of “remorse or shame” within the establishment for the errors they had made, he said.
“There is no sense of ‘What I have done is hurting someone else’, whether it’s demonetisation or falsification of data,” he said.
He also spoke about two major controversies that have erupted in the past few months, over the hijab and over halal meat.
Both controversies originated in Karnataka — the first making headlines after some Muslim schoolgirls were prevented from attend class while wearing headscarves, and the second after some Hindu organisations called for a boycott of halal products.
These are non-issues, Shourie said, contrived to be used just before elections.
“It is unfortunate that this is what Hinduism is being reduced to,” he said.
Declining quality of public persons
The quality of people in public life has “deteriorated dramatically” today, Shourie, a former Rajya Sabha MP, said.
This, he said, was true not only for politicians but also for bureaucrats. He gave an example: Former diplomat B.K. Nehru, who stood up to Indira Gandhi when she dismissed Farooq Abdullah’s government in Jammu and Kashmir in 1984 without giving him a chance to prove his majority on the floor of the House.
Gupta and Shourie also reminisced about their time together at the Indian Express — it was Shourie who decided to send Gupta to report in the northeast.
“Every day was like a new adventure working with Ramnath Goenka,” Shourie said, remembering how the founder of the Indian Express shielded him from angry judges and politicians over some of the stories he wrote and commissioned.
His advice to young journalists? Read more and go through public documents — that’s where many stories come from.
“When difficulties come our way,” he said, “We should put them to work”.
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