A MAVERICK'S TALE

News consumers in the digital age may chiefly remember Arun Shourie for his corpus of books on subjects ranging from political ideology, religion, and law to personal memoir and his tenure as a forward-thinking disinvestment minister in the Atal Bihari Vajpayee government.

- Sunil Sethi

But a few still recall his trail-blazing innings as editor-activist of The Indian Express that made him a household name in the 1970s and 1980s. Relocating to India from his World Bank job due to his son’s illness, Shourie’s passionate critique of Indira Gandhi’s Emergency regime coincided with the fierce opposition mounted by press baron Ramnath Goenka, owner of the Express.

Together, they forged a partnership that ineluctably changed the tenor of journalism in that turbulent time. An implacable defender of press freedoms, Goenka had doting epithets for Shourie—“my racehorse” was a favorite. He also wanted to put up a sign reading “The Commissioner for Lost Causes” outside his cabin—that is the source of this book’s clunky title.

A series of searing, relentless exposés made the paper’s name. Among them were the plight of 85,000 undertrials, including women and children, rotting for years in jails and, even more horrifyingly, suspects in Bihar who had acid poured into their eyes by the police. Scoops such as the “Bhagalpur blindings” shook the nation and became bywords of New Journalism. As sensational was the case of Kamla, an abandoned young woman who an enterprising