CHENNAI: A practitioner of bold journalism, a voice that has been keenly taken note of by both admirers as well as foes for around five decades, an eyewitness to the key political developments before and after the imposition of Emergency, and a personality that won admirers, including leaders like K Kamaraj, CN Annadurai, Acharya Kripalani, C Rajagopalachari, Morarji Desai, Chandraksekar, MG Ramachandran and J Jayalalithaa among others, Srinivasa Iyer Cho Ramaswamy, has taken shelter in the annals of history.
Cho possessed a razor sharp intellect and logic, but has remained staunchly unassuming throughout his life. To him, all his achievements were due to athirustam (fortune).
“Opportunities that do not go to those much more skilful than me, who worked harder, who were much more influential persons, came to me… I would say, for some people, fortune came their way, but for me fortune chased and reached me... Some of the opportunities were funny, some were painful, and yet others were controversial. I had the opportunity to dabble in various fields, as a lawyer, dramatist, actor, politician etc. I would say I am not a man who attained success in all these. In many fields, I have experienced both victory and defeat,” Cho once said in self-appraisal.
As a journalist, he never hesitated to express his views. Perhaps, Cho may be the only journalist who expressed extremely provocative views on political leaders yet maintained close ties with them till the end. He had been a bete noire of DMK president M Karunanidhi and his magazine Thuglak faced unprecedented repression in its early stages in the 1970s when Karunanidhi was the chief minister.
Yet, Cho never hesitated to praise Karunanidhi positive aspects - his memory power, film industry and hard work, writing skills, administrative capacity and the ability to handle tricky situations. Likewise, criticism did not prevent the DMK leader from presiding over dramas staged by Cho’s troupe, just like Kamaraj and Annadurai used to do. After thoroughly enjoying one such play, Annadurai had opined that Cho’s plays have three most important qualities that a playwright should have: “courage, clarity and loving kindness”.
Cho, ever the dramatist, did not just stop with humility; he went the whole hog to extreme self-deprecation. Writing his political memoirs, Athirshtam Thantha Anubavangal in Thuglak many years ago, he said in the introduction: “If I write my real biography, it would contain many sensational information like these: I woke up in the morning; after brushing the teeth, had a coffee; after a bath, had my breakfast and went to school etc. So the readers need not have any fear.”
At the national and State level, there were no leaders who escaped his criticism - Indira Gandhi, MG Ramachandran, Jayalalithaa, Charan Singh, Jyoti Basu, VP Singh… the list is endless. But all of them regarded his views highly because of his sharp vision. Objectivity, the inevitable requisite of any journalist, was with him till the last moment.