Bofors is not just a gun. At least for those who have lived through the 1980s in India, it’s much more. Almost synonymous with bribery, corruption and abuse of power. The first whiff came in April 1987 through a Swedish radio broadcast. What followed was a series of exposes by Chitra Subramaniam, then a journalist with The Hindu.
Now comes Bofors Gate, her own written account of the pursuit of truth and all that she went through. But what took her so long to come up with the book? It’s a combination of several things, as she says.
There were domestic responsibilities and initially she didn’t realize what else was there to say about the case. “But over the years, I saw that my story had never been told; what I went through—my triumphs and tribulations,” she told StratNews Global Editor-in-Chief Nitin A. Gokhale.
She also needed time to tide over a range of emotions. To write a book without fear or favour, she needed to be at peace with herself.
There are no two sides to the Bofors story, she says. “There’s only one side—India.”
I didn’t write this book for the wow factor; I needed to do this for my family, my children and hopefully my grandchildren, she adds. “Who would go and meet an arms dealer with a baby? But I wanted to put it down that there was a circumstance. There was a context. So I wanted to put all that down on paper so that one day, when they look back at me, they won’t think I was crazy.”
During the course of the investigation, did Chitra feel threatened? There were threats to my life, to my children and even my marriage, she says candidly. “But I had to be truthful to myself and to the story. You can argue which one comes first. I still don’t have an answer.”
