Swaminathan Gurumurthy (Tamil: சுவாமிநாதன் குருமூர்த்தி;Hindi: स्वामिनाथन गुरुमूर्ती) is the co-convenor of the Swadeshi Jagaran Manch, a journalist and a chartered accountant in India, and an RSS idealogue.[1] He portrays himself as an economist with a right antidote for economic crisis caused due to Globalization.
He is a strong proponent of the traditional Indian economic wisdom that was a part of every home and village model but he was also associated with some of the biggest corporate deals in India.
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Gurumurthy was born in a small village, 160 kilometres South of Chennai (formerly Madras). He had his schooling in a local school and higher education at the Vivekananda College, Chennai. Unable to realize his dreams to study law, he chose to become a Chartered Accountant. After completing the course in 1972, he joined an auditing firm and was allotted the job of maintaining the books of some of the companies of the press baron, Ramnath Goenka. Impressed by this young accountant, in 1975, Goenka offered a job, which Gurumurthy declined. In 1976, he started his own firm, Guru & Varadhan, which was financially supported by the Goenka family. He was drawn into RSS since his college days and continues his affiliation with the organisation and has had an important role in many assignments. He is a leading member of the think-tank of Sangh Parivar.
He was not happy with the aggressive empire building by Dhirubhai Ambani and strongly believed Ambani's business practices were highly unhealthy for the nation. Goenka entrusted the job of fighting what he considered the Goliath of Reliance with Gurumurthy. His articles in The Indian Express created unusual stir in the corporate world, which brought lot of troubles to the conglomerate.[2] All his articles were written based on extensive study and lot of pains he took to collect all pertinent data. The articles meticulously pointed out many of the irregularities in the Reliance Group of Companies . One of his articles, co-authored by Arun Shourie claimed Reliance was operating an entire plant with the machines that were actually imported as spare parts,paying lower Customs Duty,and doubling its production.[3]
Besides, he exposed how Pranab Mukerjee, the then Finance Minister of India helped Reliance against Bombay Dyeing through differential taxation in textile industry. As a result Bombay Dyeing was almost decimated.
After this, Gurumurthy wrote on the Bofors issue and later regarding the Swadeshi Movement. Later many of his articles in The New Indian Express highlighted the disadvantages of globalization.[4] His articles espoused the cause of the Swadeshi Jagran Manch and the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh and the concept of a united India.[5]
He came to the limelight again, when he publicly accused two of the then senior Indian bureaucrats of being American moles. He indirectly named them in the New Indian Express Article titled "US plots Gujral-Sharif show" dated 20-09-1997.[6] Later, in his article "Not one mole, Mr prime Minister and Mr jaswant, but Two!" dated 27-07-2006,he explicitly named Dr. V S Arunachalam and Naresh Chandra Saxena as the two he identified as moles.[7]
Later he wrote extensively on the infamous Sankararaman murder case, in which Sankaracharya of the Kanchi Mutt was the prime suspect.[8]
Gurumurthy is known to have played a pivotal mediating role to resolve the feud between Bajaj Auto Ltd Chairman Rahul Bajaj and his younger brother Shishir who controls Bajaj Hindustan Ltd and has a stake in Bajaj Auto and other group firms.[9] However he has not voiced anything when the Reliance Empire got divided between the brothers in feud.
He also played a major role in the transfer of L&T's cement division to Aditya Birla Group.[10] In 2004 Gurumurthy also ended another corporate stalemate when he persuaded non-resident Indian investor C Sivasankaran to divest his 33 per cent holding in the Tuticorin-based Tamilnad Mercantile Bank for Rs 130 crore (Rs 1.3 billion)
He was the convenor of the task force conceived by the BJP to assess black money illegally deposited by indian politicians and businessmen in foreign banks.[11] He has criticized the UPA government for its alleged failure in recovering black money back to India.[12]
He is a staunch proponent of the Swadeshi model of economic development and is a leading light of the Swadeshi Jagran Manch (SJM), which is currently spearheading the agitation against the evils of modern economic policies.
Besides politics, he also enjoys considerable clout in corporate circles.
His role in on reliance issues adopted in cinema, R. Madhavan played his role as Shyam Saxena in the movie Guru.