The Importance of Being Sudha Murty

DEATH MAY BE the leveller in real life but on social media, trolling is the leveller that takes a heavy psychological toll, with little fear of real repercus­sions. In late July, Sudha Murty, Infosys chairperson and wife of founder NR Narayana Murthy, discovered the ugly angst of willing understudies to the left-liberals targeting her on social media, again. All she did was tell journalist Kunal Vijaykar on a food show that she carries her own food and cutlery while travelling abroad. Since she was a strict (‘pure’ or shuddh) vegetarian, she did this to avoid the possibility that the same spoons were used for vegetarian and non-vegetar­ian food served on flights and in restaurants.

Sudha Murty said, “I am adventurous in my work, not in my food. I am actually quite scared to try new things.” She doesn’t even consume eggs or garlic. “There is always a fear that the same spoon is used in veg and non-veg items… This thought bothers me often. And so, when I go out, I look out for pure veg restaurants and also carry a bag full of stuff to eat,” she said on Khaane Mein Kya Hai. She carries chapatis, spoons, a mini-cooker, and more whenever she travels. “I learnt this from my grandmother; I used to mock her for this earlier and now, I am doing the exact same thing,” she said.

A perfectly ordinary thing to say for a vegetarian in India. But Murty’s words went viral on social media and netizens erupted, mostly in bigoted indignation. “My suggestion is that Sudha Murthy should travel solely in a pure veg plane,” said one tweet. “Someone please tell Sudha Murthy not to touch her son-in-law, daughter and their kids,” said another. The rage simmered even a week later.

The attacks moved to casteist, classist and communal slurs that took pleasure in shaming the Padma Bhushan awardee, businesswoman, author, educator and philanthropist. One tweet commented: “Sudha Murthy is rich, she can talk illogical things. Don’t question her.” Someone asked if her son-in-law, British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak, used different cutlery for his mother-in-law. Another, accusing her of weaponising even her alleged simplicity, said, “Sudha Murthy’s lies to portray herself as a humble, down to earth, vegetarian simpleton are now, quite frankly, sickening.”

Simple though Sudha Murty may be, she’s hardly a simple­ton. She was awarded the Padma Shri in 2006 and the Padma Bhushan more recently. Murthy broke the glass ceiling decades ago when she became the first woman engineer at India’s largest auto manufacturer Telco. She later joined the Walchand Group in Pune as a senior systems analyst. In 1996, she started Infosys Foundation and the story of her lending money to her husband Narayana Murthy to set up Infosys is well known. Murty has been the trustee of Infosys Foundation and an academic. A philanthropist who bankrolls several orphanages, she is also a published author and bilingual columnist. At a conference, she had declared that the wives and partners of suc­cessful men were expected to be financial advisers, managers and much more to them at home, although the men appeared very rational and in command in office.

None of that deterred left-liberals from trolling her. More vit­riol followed, in a nation that in recent decades has only tended to see ‘pure vegetarianism’ (avoiding eggs, onions, etc) as a dan­gerous weapon in the context of casteism and communalism. Social scientist Janaki Srinivasan tweeted: “Vegetarianism, as practiced in India is imbricated in the caste order. As a personal choice, it has only one line of defence—it is a matter of habit, which is tough to break even while acknowledging its caste foundation.”

“Do vegetarians not understand the concept of soap? This level of paranoia and focus on ‘purity’ and ‘contamination’ is 100% a product of Brahmanism,” wrote another Twitter user ignorant of the fact that some Brahmin communities eat meat, too.

Many of those spewing venom are self-styled liberals and, by extension, votaries of freedom of speech. Tweets defending her right to food and dietary choices were few and far between. “Sudha Murthy is perfectly right,” said one. A second person tweeted on July 26: “I can understand Murty’s concerns about cross-contamination. I’m a vegetarian too, and I would be worried about eating food that had been prepared with the same utensils as non-vegetarian food.” Yet another tweeted: “Sudha Murthy does not ask for special spoons in flight or in restaurants. She carries her own, nothing wrong with that.”

The hate unleashed against Sudha Murty underscores some key issues: those launching concerted attacks on her were mostly underachievers of the liberal and left-leaning kind who felt empowered when bringing her down, albeit only on social media. Another trigger for the attack was her steadfast refusal to conform to the liberals’ demand that she toe their line. Murty continued to show images of Hindu rituals on her Twitter feed, even protesting against the slaughter of cows.

The attacks proved without doubt that liberals and their useful idiots don’t really want ‘freedom of choice’ for all. Their fundamental demand is that others should affirm their own choices as the solely valid ones. Social media provides fertile ground for such rigid “my way or the highway” binaries.

Many of these issues are an extension of the old leftist playbook where wealth creators in the new republic of India were routinely tarred with the brush of alleged monopoly and exploitation of labour for profit. In the 1970s, an entire genera­tion of Indians grew up on the staple chorus of “Tata Birla ka yeh Sarkar nahi chalega, nahi chalega”. Jawaharlal Nehru’s reliance on the public sector was already wreaking havoc on the economy. The result was an inefficient economy and prolonged periods of stasis.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi, however, burned the playbook and changed all that, urging his fellow citizens to respect entrepreneurs, wealth creators and job creators in the private sector. In February 2021, replying to the President’s Address, Modi carried this into the new age of a prosperous India with a thriving private sector. He restored respect to private business. The prime minister said: “I would like to remind my friends in the Congress that while the public sector is critically important for the economic growth of the country, so is a robust private sector. The culture of damning business­men and entrepreneurs as outright crooks and wringing political capital out of name-calling them in public may have served parties well at the hustings in the past. But that has to stop. Wealth creators have a crucial role to play in the econo­my. Fruitful employment cannot be generated in a vibrant, youthful nation unless private enterprise distributes its wealth by setting up companies and employing people.” Modi went on to list the achievements of the private sector in the pharmaceutical and the telecom sectors—the former instrumental in making India the key pharmacist to the world and the latter in making the country a global IT hub and backroom office. The timing of the de-stigmatisation of wealth creation and the celebration of the private sector was crucial.

Thanks to Modi, these angst-ridden outbursts of yesteryear are no longer gaining traction. For the first time in modern India, the aspirational classes have lauded Modi’s words celebrating entrepreneurship. Sudha Murty is living proof of a vibrant wealth creator who has earned her laurels legitimately and who speaks her mind and owns her personal life choices boldly.

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