{"id":66,"date":"2013-11-02T10:00:00","date_gmt":"2013-11-02T10:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.mapsofindia.com\/on-this-day\/2nd-november-1941-arun-shourie-indian-journalist-writer-and-politician-was-born\/"},"modified":"2013-11-02T10:00:00","modified_gmt":"2013-11-02T10:00:00","slug":"2nd-november-1941-arun-shourie-indian-journalist-writer-and-politician-was-born","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.mapsofindia.com\/on-this-day\/2nd-november-1941-arun-shourie-indian-journalist-writer-and-politician-was-born","title":{"rendered":"2nd November 1941: Arun Shourie, Indian journalist, writer and politician, was born"},"content":{"rendered":"

A writer, journalist, politician and union minister, Arun Shourie has worn several hats \u2014 and never been far from controversy. <\/span><\/p>\n

Shourie was born on November 2, 1941, in Jalandhar, Punjab, to H. D. Shourie and Dayawanti Devasher, and educated in elite institutions of Delhi \u2014 Modern School and St. Stephen\u2019s College. He then studied economics at Syracuse University in the United States, and followed this with stints at the World Bank and the Planning Commission. In 1979, he joined the Indian Express<\/em> as executive editor. Over the next four years, thanks to his dogged pursuit of stories as editor, he came to be known as a \u2018crusading journalist\u2019. In this he had the backing of the Indian Express<\/em> boss, Ramnath Goenka. <\/span><\/p>\n

Some of the major stories pursued by Shourie and his team of reporters in that phase include the Bhagalpur blinding incidents, the rights of undertrials, and cement and oil scams. Together, these put the Congress government on the back foot, and Shourie and Indian Express<\/em> began to epitomize a special brand of hard-hitting, fearless journalism, the likes of which the country had not seen before. <\/span><\/p>\n

Shourie\u2019s methods were often unconventional. In 1981, for instance, he encouraged a reporter to \u2018buy\u2019 a girl called Kamala. He wrote to two Supreme Court judges and other important persons that the Indian<\/em> Express<\/em> was effectively breaking the law to prove that the law was being broken every day in the country \u2014 by the illegal trafficking of women and children.<\/span><\/p>\n

Then, in 1982, Goenka, allegedly under government pressure, suddenly sacked Shourie.<\/span><\/p>\n

Shourie continued writing for several media outlets and was also general secretary of the the People\u2019s Union for Civil Liberties. In 1986, The Times of India<\/em> hired him as executive editor, but the next year Goenka brought him back to the Indian<\/em> Express<\/em>. This time around, campaigns like the Bofors corruption scandal made it to the front page of the Indian Express<\/em> regularly. <\/span><\/p>\n

By 1990, Shourie was again out of the Indian Express<\/em>. He continued writing regularly for newspapers and magazines. It was also clear by now to anyone who read him that his political sympathies were with the BJP, a party he would later join, and he espoused a stronger internal security policy in the wake of the unrest in Kashmir and Punjab.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cWhat is the poor Muslim weaver, his trade being swamped as that of any other weaver by the rush of technology, or the poor Muslim boy toiling away over a carpet like any other poor boy, going to get from the conferment of constitutional status on the Minorities Commission?\u201d he wrote on October 25, 1990 in The Indian Express<\/em>. \u201cIt is that many of these sops will worsen the lot of the Muslims: Just set up separate financial institutions for them and see the attitudes of managers in ordinary banks towards Muslim clients.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

In a piece on the Hazratbal mosque crisis in Kashmir, in The Observer<\/em>, <\/em>on October 27, 1993, he alleged that the siege of the mosque by the militants was a \u201cspectator sport\u201d for many newspapers. \u201cOne paper finds the siege of the terrorists symbolic of the siege of the people of Kashmir,\u201d he wrote. \u201cAnother focuses on cruelties of our forces \u2014 not a word about what the jawans have to go through.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

Shourie later became a member of the BJP, and then minister of Disinvestment, Communication and Information Technology in the Atal Bihari Vajpayee government. <\/span><\/p>\n

Delivering the Cariappa Memorial Lecture in 2002 as a union minister, he said:\u00a0<\/span>\u201cToday economic levers are routinely used to achieve political and diplomatic ends. To safeguard our freedom of action, our sovereignty, the first requisite is that we do not have to succumb to economic pressures. [W]hen we do anything that slows economic progress, when we block the reforms that are necessary for that growth, we weaken the country.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

Besides his career as a journalist and politician, Shourie has written and co-written more than 25 books, many of them generating controversy. His book on B. R. Ambedkar, Worshiping False Gods<\/em>, was slammed by the likes of historian Ramachandra Guha, who wrote that Shourie\u2019s \u201cattacks on Dalits and their hero\u201d come after books attacking \u201cCommunists, Christians and Muslims\u201d. Guha added, \u201cThe only category of Indians he [Shourie] has not attacked\u2014and going by his present political persuasion, will not attack\u2014are high-caste Hindus.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

Shourie turned to matters more personal in Does He Know a Mother\u2019s Heart?<\/em>, a book on questions of suffering that came up while taking care of his son, Aditya, who is afflicted by cerebral palsy, and wife, Anita, who is diagnosed with Alzheimer\u2019s.<\/span><\/p>\n

Who is the real Arun Shourie? Legendary journalist, right-wing ideologue, or the Ambedkar-baiter? Perhaps, all this and more. <\/span><\/p>\n

In an incisive article on him in 2009 in the\u00a0Tehelka<\/em> magazine, the journalist Shoma Chaudhury wondered if the key to Shourie\u2019s \u201ccomplex\u201d character lay in his ‘Arya Samaji background’: \u201cWhat complicates simple denunciations of Arun Shourie [. . .] is that, unlike many contemporary writers and intellectuals, he has dared to leave the ivory tower and take on the big questions of our time, bare-knuckled,\u201d she wrote. \u201cHe has put himself in the firing line . . . What also complicates the denunciations is [. . .] his massive body of work as a writer.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Also on this day:\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

1877 \u2014 Aga Khan III, first president of the All-India Muslim League, was born<\/span><\/p>\n

1965 \u2014 Shahrukh Khan, Bollywood superstar, was born\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

2012 \u2014 Kinjarapu Yerran Naidu, Andhra Pradesh politician, died<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A writer, journalist, politician and union minister, Arun Shourie has worn several hats \u2014 and never been far from controversy. Shourie was born on November 2, 1941, in Jalandhar, Punjab, to H. D. Shourie and Dayawanti Devasher, and educated in elite institutions of Delhi \u2014 Modern School and St. Stephen\u2019s College. He then studied economics at Syracuse University in the… <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-66","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-history"],"yoast_head":"\n2nd November 1941: Arun Shourie, Indian journalist, writer and politician, was born -<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"- 2nd November 1941: Arun Shourie, Indian journalist, writer and politician, was born\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.mapsofindia.com\/on-this-day\/2nd-november-1941-arun-shourie-indian-journalist-writer-and-politician-was-born\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"2nd November 1941: Arun Shourie, Indian journalist, writer and politician, was born -\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"- 2nd November 1941: Arun Shourie, Indian journalist, writer and politician, was born\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/www.mapsofindia.com\/on-this-day\/2nd-november-1941-arun-shourie-indian-journalist-writer-and-politician-was-born\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"What Happened on This Day in History - 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