'The Hindu' Divided Family Squabbles Again: Godless Marxism Of Ram And The Perennial Problems Of 'Mount Road Mahavishnu'

When a newspaper is in the news, it is usually for the wrong reasons. This cliche in journalism is never truer than it is for the forever squabbling owners of The Hindu Group Publishing Pvt Ltd (THGPPL).

After a week of passive-aggressive exchanges over the Sengol issue with her cousin N Ram, the feisty Malini Parthasarathy announced her decision to step down from her position on the board of THGPPL. 

"My term as Chairperson of The Hindu Group Publishing ends. However, I have also resigned from the Board of the THGPPL as I find the space and scope for my editorial views shrinking," Malini said on her Twitter timeline yesterday.

The 64-year-old Malini, it may be recalled, was the Chairperson of THGPPL since July 2020, and she had succeeded Ram, who stepped down as Chairman of the Board of Directors on attaining the age of 75.

Though she is not the Editor of the paper, in recent times, she has been seen as the public face of the 145-year-old news publication, and her quitting in what seems to be a fit of pique over yet another family row has engendered a sense of unease among its employees who were already worried over its dwindling revenues and readership numbers. 

Nirmala Lakshman, sister of Malini, was quickly appointed as the new Chairperson of the company.

The Sengol issue, in which the 78-year-old Ram tried to aggressively take on the Central government despite the fact that The Hindu itself had carried the original event of August 1947 in its pages, albeit as an advertisement, was being seen as the outward manifestation of the simmering hostility among the fractious cousins ---- all of whom are the great-grandchildren of Kasturi Ranga Iyengar, the man who bought the newspaper in April 1905. 

The Hindu's board basically comprises the offspring of G Narasimhan, G Kasturi, S Parthasarathy and S Rangarajan (the four grandsons of the doyen Kasturi Ranga). 

In general, some board members of the paper are of the view that antagonising the governments (at the Centre and the States level) is not a mature business idea as the all-important government ads would be hit. This conundrum is faced by almost all publications.

Malini is said to be taking a practical view of things as at stake is the future of the hundreds of the staff of the organisation. Ram, on the other hand, is bringing in his ideological proclivities into the scheme of things and is hurting the paper.

"He(Ram) is trying to be clever by half," says one insider in the paper. "You can't openly align with the State government and try to make a virtue out of your opposition to the Central government. That is dubious," he adds. 

He is a battering Ram

Malini's resignation, even if out of the blue, carries a stale sense of deja vu as the paper's first-ever woman editor-in-chief had quit in 2016 amidst issues over her financial decisions pertaining to the paper's much-vaunted launch of the Mumbai edition in 2015.

Malini was at the helm for a mere 11 months, and the Mumbai edition was also unceremoniously closed after having a short run for around four-and-a-half years. 

Earlier too, Malini had quit as the Executive Editor of the paper in 2011 when she, along with her other cousins N Ravi and N Murali --- both brothers of Ram --- fought for the paper even as it was being made a mouthpiece for the 2G-scam tainted Telecom Minister A Raja of the DMK.

The cousins have been at each other's throats for over two decades, but every time it is mostly due to some overarching move from the outwardly Communist Ram. "This time too it is no different," said an old editorial hand at the newspaper. 

The first real fight in the corridors of the otherwise sober The Hindu happened in the tumultuous 1989 when the Bofors controversy and the alleged kickbacks to the then Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi was at its peak. After publishing a series of exposes on the government, the paper's then editor G Kasturi decided to discontinue further publishing of documents in the case. A miffed Ram took on his uncle by taking the documents to the paper's rival, The Indian Express, and publishing it there.

In 2003, interestingly, Kasturi and Ram had mended fences, and both were on the same side as the trio of Malini, Ravi, and Murali expressed misgivings over the paper, veering far too much to the Left and alienating loyal readers. But Ram, with the backing of his uncle, rode out the wave against him and became the editor-in-chief of the paper. Infamously, the paper's 125th anniversary was led by Ram alone, with Malini, Ravi and Murali being conspicuous by their absence.

In 2010, Ram was again daggers drawn at his brothers, who alleged that he (Ram) reneged on the promise to retire by May 2010 upon turning 65. It was at that time that the next generation of the family — Ram's daughter Vidya Ram, Nirmala Lakshman's son Narayan Lakshman, and Nalini Krishnan's son Ananth Krishnan— also got plum posts as foreign correspondents of the paper. (Nalini is another sister of Malini and Nirmala). These appointments were particularly questioned by the unmarried Malini.

In 2011, the issue was more important, and the fight even more toxic. Ram, who was to demit office as the editor-in-chief upon turning 65, pulled a fast one on his family members by going for a 'professional editor' in Siddharth Varadarajan.

N Ravi, who was to take over the editor-in-chief, quickly stepped down as the Editor, too. Ravi pulled no punches on his brother, and in an angry missive to the employees of the paper, he called out Ram's 'shocking display of bad faith'.

The litany of complaints that the brothers laid on Ram was telling: They accused him of an 'unceasing self-glorification campaign' and following a 'pronounced pro-China tilt in news coverage'. A bigger bombshell was later dropped.

Ravi, Murali and Malini alleged, in the courts --- yes, the issue landed there --- that Ram was shilling for the DMK leaders in the UPA government by using the paper's correspondent R K Radhakrishnan proximity to the Dravidian party's top brass. "The Hindu functioned as an apologist for Raja, with Ram meeting him often to discuss the scam coverage," the three top members of the Hindu said.

Referring to an interview that The Hindu had carried interviews with the scandal-touched Raja, the three said: "the interviews were similar to the ones carried by Tamil magazines such as Nakkeeran and represented the standard Raja line."

"Even more telling was the choice of the correspondent for both the interviews of May 22, 2010 and November 14, 2010. Instead of the correspondent in New Delhi who covers the Telecommunications Ministry, RK Radhakrishnan who was not following the telecommunications issues on a day to day basis was specially flown to Delhi for the interviews. Radhakrishnan's main qualification was that he was close to the DMK leaders and his choice was a special dispensation shown to Raja," Malini, Ravi and Murali said in that joint statement.

And in 2013, the family kind of closed ranks and the outsider Siddharth Varadarajan was fired as the Editor, with Ram Ram himself using his casting vote to effect the change. 

The paper's future is under a cloud

Discontent and diatribe are not exactly new to The Hindu's top family members. Seen in that context, Malini's much-publicised exit yesterday may not mean much. But what is of concern to some of the top editors in the paper is that the fights are becoming too regular and are causing a dent in its image, which has already suffered much due to Ram's outwardly pro-Left bias. It is something that his own brothers have pointed out several times.

"For a paper, whose readers are forever caricatured as the 'Mylapore types', The Hindu was never going to get by with its God-less Communist ideas of one man," says R P Vijay, CEO of a content management company.

The paper was infamously referred to as 'Mahavishnu of Mount Road' by M Karunanidhi. The former Chief Minister of Tamil Nadu's coinage was coming from a place of anti-Hindu bigotry that he was known for. But it also showed that the paper's image was that it was read by conservatives and traditionalists. "Ram's personal politics is in direct conflict paper's supposed readership base." 

It is not just its Commie bent that is the Achilles heel of The Hindu. Despite being headquartered in Tamil Nadu, it is said that the paper went out of the way to placate several governments in Sri Lanka, particularly the Mahinda Rajapaksa's regime, even as it unleashed a fight to finish on the Tigers of Eelam (LTTE).

Around the time when thousands and thousands of Tamils were being bloodily done away with, Ram personally flew to Sri Lanka at the behest of the government and wrote a piece on the camps, in which close to 300,000 Tamil civilians were forcefully cooped up, under the insensitive headline: 'Visiting the Vavuniya IDP camps: an uplifting experience'. 

"The politics that the newspaper played on the Lankan Tamils issue, all spearheaded by Ram, is among its gravest mistakes," adds Vijay. It is no secret that some sections in Tamil Nadu are waiting for the paper to slip badly. 

The paper's editorial pages alone are not in the red, as it were.

The group's balance sheet is also bleeding. THG Publishing reported a loss of Rs 43.6 crore in 2019-20. The subsequent pandemic hit the publication's revenues further, and it is still to emerge from the slump.

The emergence of Times of India as a viable alternative in Tamil Nadu has also hit The Hindu very hard, which for long took its numero uno position in the State for granted. Also, apart from The Hindu, none of the other publications in the stable, The Sportstar, Frontline or the Tamil paper, which is also named The Hindu, are profitable ventures on their own.

It is time to close ranks. But Ram and Malini's fight proves otherwise.