The Polyester Prince (18 page)

Though he had limited contact with V P Singh – confined to direct industrial concerns – Nusli Wadia had kept up his ties with Rajiv Gandhi and can be expected to have voiced similar concerns to those of Blitz about the impunity with which Reliance had operated.

At that point Rajiv was still fired with zeal to cleanse the Augean stables as well. When Congress Party delegates gathered in Bombay at the end of December to mark the centenary of the party’s founding, Rajiv delivered a stinging attack on its corruption. On the backs of ordinary party workers rode the ‘brokers of power and influence, who dispense patronage to convert a mass movement into a feudal oligarchy’. Rajiv attacked the legions of tax-dodgers in Indian companies, and the ‘government servants who do not uphold the law, who shield the guilty, tax collectors who do not collect taxes but connive with those who cheat the state’. But industrial empires built on excessive protection, social irresponsibility, import orientation and corruption might not last long.9

The Great Polyester War had been lifted out of the factories of Patalganga and from the Pydhonie yarn market to the national arena.

It was at this stage that the Polyester War was joined by an lentirely new set of combatants. It became a life-and-death strugglefor dhirubhai’s company, and the critical test of Rajiv Gandhi’s efforts to clean up the Indian Government. Dhirubhai survived.

Rajiv failed, and lost power as a result.

The new element was ‘Seth’ (Master) Ramnath Goenkal the legendary Indian newspaper tycoon. From a Marwari trading background in Calcutta, Goenka had moved to the southern city of Madras in the 1920s-according to some accounts, at the instigation of his own family, as even they found him too hard to work with-and begun building up the chain of English-language newspapers put under a common Indian Express masthead in the 1950s. By 1985, the Express had India’s biggest newspaper 1 circulation, 670000, from 12 regional editions.

Inclined to the Jana Sangh and critical of Congress, though never committed either way, Goenka was happiest in an opposition role, exposing cant and corruption. Like most Marwaris, Goenka was a strict vegetarian, but he did not shrink from drawing blood in print. In the 1950s, he had employed Indira’s husband Firoze Gandhi and encouraged his exposure of the Mundhra scandal. The Express had been one of the few newspapers to resist the censorship imposed by Indira during the Emergency all kinds of pressures including a move to demolish its New Delhi buildings for alleged building code violations. Ultimately, Indira had baulked at closing him down-some say because Goenka threatened to publish private papers of her late husband about their unhappy marriage.

In late 1985, Goenka was 81, and his health was starting to fall. But mentally he was still alert and combative. From his sparsely furnished penthouse on the 25th floor of Express Towers in Bombay, Goenka intervened daily in editorial decisions on the Express, hiring and firing editors with great ftequency. He was far from reclusive, receiving a daily stream of visitors anxious to keep in his good books, and flying frequently to New Delhi where the Express had its own guesthouse.

Dhirubhai had been introduced to Goenka in the mid-1960s by Murli Deora, the yarn trader who was moving up in the city’s Congress Party circles and later to become a member of parliament. Goenka had noted Dhirubbal as someone of promise, and thereafter the young Gujarati businessman made regular visits. Goenka was regarded as a family friend, addressed as ‘Bappuji’ (Grandfather) by the Ambani children. The Express frequently reported the controversies involving Reliance, but when protests were made Goenka seems to have placated Dhirubhai by explaining his target was the Congress government.

Nusli Wadia also became a close friend and, as with the childless J. R. D. Tata, became something of a son to the old Marwari. (Goenka’s only son had died at an early age, depriving him of his only heir bearing the Goenka name.) Together with his wife, Wadia had got into a routine of having lunch or dinner at least once a month with Goenka.

On one such occasion, around October 1985, Goenka asked Wadia how his business was going. Wadia made a noncommittal reply, but Maureen Wadia intervened and related the smear campaign against Bombay Dyeing in the press, including the Express group’s own newspapers.

Goenka said little. But the next morning he arrived suddenly at Bombay Dyeing’s head office, Neville House across town in BOard Estate, and walked into Wadia’s book-lined corner office unannounced. Goenka waved a file of press cuttings that were obviously planted information. The same morning his business newspaper, the Financial Express, had carried both an anti-Bombay Dyeing story and an editorial on the same subject.

Goenka promised to crack down on the Reliance-sourced reports, both in the Express newspapers and in the national wire service run by the Press Trust of India, of which he was currently chairman.

But on 31 October, the Press Trust put out a story based on a press statement by the Reliance public relations officer, Kirti Ambani, about the reports a few days earlier that Reliance was under
CBI
investigation over the
PTA
contracts in May.
PTI
quoted verbatim Kirti Ambani’s statement that ‘our enquiries reveal that there is no such
CBI
probe into the matter and that the whole issue is being motivated by a large, private, textile company which also happens to he manufacturers of
DMT
Our enquiries further reveal that this party is not in a position to dispose of its
DMT
and carry large stocks of about 5000 tonnes of
DMT
The basic problem seems to be the quality of the said DMT’

Goenka was outraged, especially when finding that Reliance had directly approached a
PTI
desk editor to run the press release against Goenka’s explicit orders. Goenka ordered a retraction and apology. On 1 November, the
PTI
issued it: ‘The Press Trust of India circulated yesterday a report based on a press release by Reliance Textile Industries Ltd, containing allegations against a reputable Bombay-based textile company. We did not verify the veracity of the allegations before issuing the report. We regret if the publication of the said report has caused any damage to the reputation of the party concerned.’

The old press baron took the issue up with Dhirubhai at their next meeting. According to two former confidants of Goenka, Dhirubhai admitted he used his influence to get a favourable press. ‘I have one gold chappal [slipper], and one silver chappal,’ he said, breezily. ‘Depending who it is, I strike him with the gold chappal, or with the silver chappal.’ (Another widely repeated version has Dhirubhai remarking that ‘Everyone has his price.’ He has denied saying this.)’

It was probably the most damaging blunder and misjudgement Dhirubhai made in his life.

Goenka was outraged. He was already embarrassed enough by the case with which Dhirubhai got his version of events into the Express. The implication he drew from the ‘gold chappal, silver chappal’ remark was that Dhirubhai saw no one, perhaps even Goenka himself, as inunune to his offers. It was just a matter of price.

Goenka resolved to expose Dhirubhai, using all the resources and contacts at his disposal.

Alarmed at the unfavourable turn of government attitude and press coverage in November, Dhirubhai meanwhile made a desperate effort to restore himself to Goenka’s favour, and to head off Wadia’s successful-looking campaign to have use of domestic
DMT
forced on the polyester manufacturers. One morning in December he telephoned Goenka and asked him to arrange an urgent meeting with Wadia in Goenka’s presence so they could settle their disputes in an amicable way. Goenka called Wadia, who was reluctant. The old man persisted, and called back in the afternoon to tell Wadia a meeting had been fixed in the Express penthouse for that evening. Left with little choice without causing offence, Wadia swallowed his misgivings and agreed to attend.

The three sat around a low table. According to one account, Dhirubhai did almost all the talking during the 45-rninute meeting, proposing that Reliance and Bombay Dyeing carve up the polyester feedstock market between them, or alternatively that Reliance help its rival to place its
DMT
Goenka presided, taking off his sandals and resting his feet on the table. For long stretches of his monologue, Dhirubhai caressed the old man’s feet.

At the close, Dhirubhai invited Wadia to the wedding of his second daughter, Nina, a few days later, and then suddenly embraced the startled Bombay Dyeing chairman. ‘So now we are friends?’, he asked.

Wadia, highly embarrassed and still suspicious, mumbled a vague assent. Dhirubhai walked towards the elevator, and then just as suddenly turned and prostrated himself on the floor facing Goenka. Then he left.

After the elevator door closed, Wadia turned to Goenka and said: ‘I’ll bet you that before the lift reaches the ground floor, he’ll already be plotting where next to stick the knife into me.’

Goenka reached over and gently slapped Wadia on the cheek: a tacit admonition not to be too cynical.

The next day, Dhirubhai telephoned Wadia at his Ballard Estate office and announced he was personally bringing an invitation to Nina’s wedding. Wadia told him there was no need, and after much persuasion Dhirubhai had the card brought over by an executive soon afterwards. On the day of the wedding, a Reliance manager arrived several hours ahead to ‘escort’ the guest. Wadia sent him away, and went by himself. The reception was in the Cooperage Football Ground, scene of the Reliance share - holders meetings.

Mukesh Ambani was waiting to escort Wadia in, and offered to take him to the head of the line of guests waiting to greet the newly married couple and their parents on a podium. Wadia refused, and the two waited in the queue for about 20 minutes making awkward conversation. When he reached the stage, Wadia found a crowd of press photographers waiting to capture the two warring textile magnates together-the point of the exercise clearly being to dispel the atmosphere of dispute surrounding Reliance. Anil Ambani was deputised by Dhirubhai to escort Wadia out to his car, but was sent back by Wadia at the gate.

Within a few days, hostilities had broken out again, and Goenka decided to press on with his investigation.

The person he chose to find out the secrets of the Ambanis was not one of his famous editors, nor one of his reporters, nor even someone from the business milieu of Bombay, but a young South Indian accountant from Madras whose name had not previously appeared in print except at the bottom of audited accounts.

Swaminathan Gurumurthy, then 36, was the product of a Brahmin family in a small rural village 160 kilometres south of Madras. Educated initially in his local school, and then at the Vivekananda College in Madras, Gurumurthy had hoped to enter law school but found his way blocked by his upper-caste background. The state of Tamil Nadu had been swept many years earlier by political movements which instilled the notion that the Hindu hicrarchy—with Brahmins at the top-was a relic of an ancient conquest of southern India’s original peoples, the Dravidians, by light-skinned Aryans from the north. To redress centuries of discrimination, the majority of places in universities and state offices were reserved for lower-caste candidates.

Gurumurthy had turned instead to accountancy, qualifying as a chartered accountant in 1972 and joining a local auditing firm which used to keep the books of Goenka’s companies registered in Madras. He met Goenka himself in 1975, and made a big impression. Goenka offered him a job, which Gurumurthy declined, and then promised his business if Gurumurthy went out on his own. In 1976, Gurumurthy set up a partnership, Guru & Varadan, which enjoyed substantial billings from Goenka’s corporate empire, a labyrinth of companies acquired over the years and controlled through a trust.

The young accountant held some smouldering feelings that made him an ideal crusader against an erring capitalist. In Tamil Nadu, his caste had been subject to constant ridicule and demonisation. He personally had suffered a loss of opportunity as a result of the state’s sociopolitical upheavals, despite coming from a family of modest means in a remote town. The good was being thrown out with the bad.

As a youth, he had found a political movement that for him and many thousands like him across India seemed to provide a way for India to save its soul. The Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (
RSS
[the National Volunteers Order]) had been founded in the 1920s by a Hindu revivalist in the central city of Nagpur, and expanded across the country to encompass millions of members, many from upper castes who felt threatened by change. The
RSS
view was that Indians had been left with a defeatist mentality by their centuries of rule by Muslim and European invaders. The foreign rulers had gone, but they had left behind elites indocrinated in their outlook and manners. Ordinary Indians had been made apologetic about the injustices that seemed part of their own Hindu culture, and inclined to believe they could not win against the world’s ‘martial races’. By counter-indoctrination, from childhood through to manhood, the
RSS
hoped to create gradually a confident new Indian. Sessions at
RSS
lodges taught boys the glories of India’s past, mixing legend with fact, while members of A ages put on a simple uniform of khaki shorts and white shirt for early morning drill with lathis (wooden staves) to build up their spirit. To counter the valid criticisms of the Hindu order, meanwhile, the
RSS
tried reform from within through voluntary social work to eradicate evils such as untouchability and caste prejudice, which it insisted were historical accretions on a just culture.

The movement is often ridiculed as a collection of small-town reactionaries playing boy-scout games, retreating to a vague ‘mental’ battle instead of pushing for power, hiding behind the political parties it spawned (the Jana Sangh, and later the Bharatiya Janata Party). A less benign view, particularly after the murder of Mahatma Gandhi by a former
RSS
member in 1949 and after the 1992 demolition of the Ayodhya mosque by members of affiliated groups, sees it as a sinister quasi-fascist force. But its reputation for discipline and lack of corruption has also made the
RSS
political ‘family’ seem the natural successor by default to the failed Congress and communist alternatives-at least until the
BJP
started getting tainted by state-level power in the 1990s.