Sanjay Kapoor, wellknown to me, apart from looking at Russy nostalgically – with joy, sorrow, sentimental chagrin too – exposes Sudheendra Kulkarni who was exec ed of Sunday Observer, when I was working as a special correspondent, Observer Group. Kulkarni vitually became a lap dog of Vajpayee and for that he switched over from the Advani camp.
He was not alone. Devendra Kaushik, the pro-CPI scholar who did good research on central Asia before and after the Russian Revolution, like Dange's daughter Roza and son-in-law also joined the Sangh Parivar.
Sankar Ray
Citizen Kane says goodbye March Issue, Hard News Monthly (http://hardnewsmedia.com/2008/02/2048)
With the death of Russy Karanjia, editor of Blitz, the journey of journalism from socialist ideals to Hindutva to corporate interests takes a full circle. The only irony is that even in his last days he thought that the fiery tabloid was still shaping the politics of the day
Sanjay Kapoor, Delhi, Hardnews
Russy Karanjia (1912-2008), the colourful founder editor of weekly Blitz, who died in his sleep on February 1, 2008, has been staying away from the public eye after he slipped in his bathroom more than 10 years ago. bathroom falls have hastened the passage of the old, but Russy, as he was called, hung on. It impaired his memory and prevented him from discharging his responsibilities as the editor of Blitz. During his period of ill health and amnesia, Russy, never really got to know the demise of his lifelong passion - his weekly newspaper. Whenever he used to have flashes of his old memory, he would ask his handlers to find out whether the "edition" had gone for print. He would even ask on what subject the editorial was going. Right till his death, it appears that he did not know that the newspaper had discontinued publication.
I was the bureau chief of Blitz (1991-98) right till the time the weekly suddenly folded up on one September morning in 1998. Blitz was a small organization - quite flat in its functioning - and its closure came as a bolt from the blue. No one really believed that the weekly that brought fear in the hearts of the high and mighty through its exposes would fade away so quietly into history. It was evident that Russy was not in control of the events that led to the collapse of the paper. Old employees would always pride in the fact that crisis had been simmering in the fiery weekly on many occasions in the past, but Russy and his wife would never allow the paper to close down. They borrowed from relatives, friends and well-wishers to ensure that their employees get their salary on time.
When the crisis sharpened in September 1998, we all knew, this time it was different. A manager showed up wearing a funereal countenance and told me that Blitz was closing down and he was under instruction to pay off everyone and put a lock in the office. My illustrious predecessor, A Raghavan, although had retired after working for 40 long years in the organisation, he continued to come to the Blitz office in the INS (Indian Newspaper Society) building at Rafi Marg, New Delhi, to write his weekly column.
Raghavan, who is no more, flared up when the manager revealed his agenda. An old union leader, he had been at the vanguard of the protracted struggle to get journalists better wages and had fought several attempts of newspaper-owners to cheat their staff. Raghavan, too, never expected such a fate would befall the paper. After all, Blitz, was different. It was a people's paper that never sided with other newspaper-owners. The slogan, 'Free, fair and fearless,' now borrowed by other pretenders, was originally and typically Blitz.
Understandably, it stayed away from all such groupings like the Indian and Eastern Newspaper Society (IENS). Russy would say that it is a body controlled by the "jute press". The manager revealed that the magazine had been in dire straits for some time and the company had taken a loan from Vijay Mallya to revive the paper. Seemingly, the money was not put to its intended use so the matter had gone in for arbitration to a former Supreme Court judge, who awarded Blitz to Mallya for three years. The manager also said that as part of the arbitration orders the entire office had to be handed over to the new company without the staff. It seemed that the new management was keener to close the weekly for good rather than make a serious attempt to run it. Expectedly, after a few months, the weekly under the new management was wound down.
And there were reasons why the voice of Blitz had to be stifled. It is a story that has never been told, and Russy Karanjia's 'obit' cannot be complete till the time some of these facts are included. Even he would not have approved of it.
Russy was very close to the Nehru-Gandhi family. Blitz, aggressively supported 'the family' and the 'socialist ideals' of the Congress government. From abolition of privy purses to bank nationalisation, the paper backed the government to the hilt. Russy's close proximity with Nehru helped him to draw close to world leaders like the Shah of Iran, President Abel Gamal Nasser of Egypt and many others. His close relationship with the prime minister helped him to emerge as one of the powerful editors of one of the most popular tabloid in the country. His book, based on a long interaction with Jawaharlal Nehru, provided a peep into the mind of Nehru. Later, he also wrote a book on the Shah of Iran, a 'close friend'.
When it became known that Russy had the prime minister's ears, several ministers and bureaucrats would seek him out and fear him. Expectedly, what was carried in the newspaper was taken very seriously by the government ministers. He was Citizen Kane with a spin.
If anything appeared in the pages of Blitz it had the ability to shake up the government. The grievances of ordinary people against corruption and high-handedness were routinely aired in the paper and invariably got quick response from the administration. Reporters were venerated by the people for taking on the insensitive and unjust administration and at times treated like 'heroes'. Indeed, many charlatans masqueraded as Blitz reporters to get their work done from local administrators in different parts of the country. Routinely, the editor would take out a notice denying "so and so" had anything to do with Blitz. Funnily, later, one such gentleman against whom such a notice was taken out in the pages of Blitz ended up joining the publication.
Indira Gandhi was upset with Russy after he only dumped her during the Janata Party days and ran a campaign against her; but he made up with her later. Karanjia's philosophy was simple: If you have the prime minister to back you then there is nothing to fear. In fact, he called himself at times as the "PM's bulldog". Besides, he believed that the government represented public interest and it was best equipped to protect the masses with a little bit of help from a vigilant press.
Blitz sought to fill that all important role. Close association of the government also helped him to get advertising support from public sector companies - which were occupying the commanding heights of the economy then - and state governments. He really did not need the help of the corporate world that was perceived by his Leftwing editors and reporters as predatory, selfish and anti-people.
For Russy, life was comfortable when the Nehru-Gandhi family was in power. His comfortable world began to look unsettled when the Janata Party and its other avatars began to successfully pose a challenge to the Congress. Hence, when the Janata Party came to power in 1977, he found Morarji Desai as the new prime minister. Karanjia had campaigned hard against Desai and his son, Kanti, and knew that he would not enjoy the same respect and influence as he did when the Congress was in power. Cosying up to Charan Singh, the deputy prime minister, was the logical thing to do if Russy wanted to remain relevant.
Russy had a way of endorsing leaders and the issues they championed. He always claimed that he represented 'public interest' and if he was supporting Nehru, Gandhi or Charan Singh, it stemmed from his feel of the pulse of the masses. Sometime he used to go horribly wrong, as it happened when he opposed VP Singh. In fact, he became so close to Rajiv Gandhi that he took it upon himself to defend him against all odds. He scooped exposes on how the CIA was trying to unseat Gandhi. He claimed that he befriended Chandraswami and sailed with him in an yacht in the south of France to find out what the anti-Gandhi group was really up to.
An expose that really stirred up things was a letter that he published on the front page of Blitz written by then head of American intelligence agency CIA Bill Casey, to the chief of the conservative Heritage Foundation where he suggested that a study should be done to find out the political implications if Rajiv Gandhi is removed from the scene. Russy sensed a conspiracy that Rajiv Gandhi will be assassinated. He also branded all those opposed to him as "friends or agents" of CIA.
The fact that VP Singh and his Janata Dal managed to make the government clearly indicated that the Blitz campaign did not wash with the masses. The allegations of corruption against Rajiv seemed truer than what Russy was alleging. His manifest miscalculation of politics began to reveal itself in the progressive slide of the weekly. After that, the weekly never recovered.
VP Singh, hurt by the opportunism of Russy, never gave him an appointment. And that hurt a man who drew his sustenance from the office of the prime minister. For perhaps the second time in his life, he began to run a campaign against an incumbent prime minister. He was strategically helped as the Ambanis were there to see an early exit of the Janata experiment - they were backing the then deputy prime minister, Devi Lal, to upstage VP Singh.
Expectedly, Singh's government fell. And Russy awaited the return of Rajiv Gandhi after the 1991 elections. In fact, 1991 was a significant year for Blitz and Russy. During this year the weekly did some of the most significant scoops in recent years. In May 1991, he did a front page article detailing a meeting of businessmen and other conspirators who wanted to "stop Rajiv at all cost" from returning to power - implying that they would even get him killed. Karanjia's article was so prescient that the week his article appeared in the paper, Rajiv Gandhi was killed by a human bomb at Sriperumbudur.
Surely, Russy did not believe in his own story. He was stupefied when I informed him about the assassination. Suddenly, he realised that the person on whom he had invested so much time and space and also his future plans, has gone. And more impo-rtantly, many of those he had hinted in the story - of conspiring to kill Rajiv Gandhi - were out there, powerful and calling the shots
Although, the Congress rode back to power, Russy realised that it was not the same party. The policies of economic liberalisation initiated by the then prime minister PV Narasimha Rao and finance minister Manmohan Singh, not only devalued the government, but also gave primacy to an ideology that Blitz had been consistently opposing. The Soviet Union had collapsed. The 'ugly American' was being celebrated and the capitalist class was enjoying a major image makeover. Rao did not trust Russy. He, too, reciprocated similar sentiments. He alleged on many occasions that Rao was a beneficiary of Rajiv Gandhi's assassination and worse, that he still kept the company of 'godman' Chandraswami, who was perceived as a major conspirator behind the removal of Rajiv Gandhi. Although he knew Sonia Gandhi, but she was not in a position to help Blitz as she was never sure as to how Rao will respond to it.
In 1991, the paper exposed one of the biggest scandals of our times. The expose was done by me and Karanjia was an active player in ensuring that the report got good display. So excited was he about the story that he thought it would turn the fortunes of the paper. Although help never came from anywhere, Blitz and Karanjia collected more enemies. It became a magazine that had to be silenced at all costs. It was just too independent for those who were the reigning kings of organized sleaze and corruption.
During this period of ideological confusion, Russy employed Sudheendra Kulkarni, after his trusted lieutenant and deputy editor, P Sainath, decided to part ways with the newspaper. Kulkarni had earlier worked in The Daily, Russy's mindless and exhausting foray into daily journalism. At that time, Kulkarni used to literally wear his ideology - Marxism - as a medal on his shirt. But when he joined Blitz during 1994-95, he had already shed his old skin. He became a strong votary of Right-wing Hindutva.
To his credit, he had sensed early the rise of the BJP. He became close to LK Advani. Desperate for relevance Russy gave him space in his newspaper and allowed him to make a clear departure from its earlier Leftist moorings. The change in Blitz's policy shocked many of its diehard readers. Many of them felt betrayed by the turnaround. But he was reassured that this would get him a new set of readers who had stayed away from the weekly for so many years. He was also promised that this change in policy would get him critical funds.
Under Kulkarni's 'executive editorship', Blitz announced a series on "tycoons of our times". As part of this series, Kulkarni was asked to interview the Hindujas. Russy knew the Hindujas from the days of the Shah of Iran and wanted them to help out the paper during this hour of crisis. Russy's hope for help was misplaced. His trusted 'messenger' joined the people from whom he was expecting help. Kulkarni was employed by the Hindujas. Later, he joined the Advani camp in the BJP and subsequently became a senior official in the Prime Minister's Office (PMO) when Atal Behari Vajpayee was at the helm.
Karanjia was grievously hurt professionally. He had been out-thought and out-maneuvered by those whom he had opposed all these years. He was used and thrown aside. This setback took a heavy toll. He fell ill. When he came out of this illness, Karanjia published a front page apology for backing Hindutva and for abandoning the Nehruvian socialist editorial policy. His illness, he claimed, was due to the values that he had forsaken. Tragically, there weren't enough faithful readers left to read his apology.
Karanjia never fully recovered from his physical problems after that. His family tried to have a tie-up with London's Daily Mirror, but that did not go beyond the drawing board stage. Russy's absence did not stop the weekly from doing tough exposes against Chandraswami, hawala dealers and how the government was being subverted by corporate interests. The buzz in influential circles was that the newspaper has become inconvenient. The exposure of the Hawala scandal and the manner in which it began to redefine national politics in 1996 when the Supreme Court took control over its probe made these vested interests more determined to close down the newspaper. The non-political family members of Russy were not aware of these undercurrents when they began to mobilize funds from the market.
Indeed, was the meltdown of Blitz an outcome of the shenanigans of these vested interests?
Karanjia lived for 10 years more after the tabloid's closure in the belief that his paper was still coming out every week and stirring up politics and the country like it did many years ago. Whenever he would come out of this memory loss, he would call me sometime or Raghvan, till he was alive, and ask: "What is the story you are doing for the cover page." That's the only page that mattered to him.
I never had the courage to tell him that Blitz was history.
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