The 54-year-old convener of the Swadeshi Jagran Manch (SJM), S Gurumurthy has contacts any journalist would die for. Yet he chooses to wield his power as unobtrusively as possible.

Name almost any current controversy in the corporate world or in policy-making, and, true or false, this slightly-built almost nondescript chartered accountant with thinning hair is always rumoured to have a role to play — as mediator, negotiator, Devil's advocate, whatever.

He was recently in the news for playing an unlikely go-between in the Bajaj family battle. He's behind the scenes in the skirmish over foreign accounting firms' so-called backdoor entry into India. He's the man who has remained a resolute critic of the Reliance group.

Naturally, then, he treats all journalists with a deep-rooted suspicion, especially ones who invite him out for lunch. "I am a Brahmin from a village who has lunch in the morning. Why do you want to meet me? There are a lot of rakshashas out there who want to see me finished, are you one of them?" Two statements and two questions — all for asking him out for lunch.

I assure him I am not one of the rakshashas and my mission is not liquidatory in nature but constructive. "We want to capture the essence of Gurumurthy as a person," I tell him. As we speak I realise that Gurumurthy is not parsimonious with words and lunch would be a very interesting affair, if only he would agree.

Some convincing later, he agrees and tells me that I should call him in the morning on the appointed day and fix a venue. The appointed day, morning, I call him. True to style he informs me that he will not have lunch but will be more than willing to have fruit.

"Meet me at my office at 12.30 and since I am only having fruit we can go to the Taj," he says. I heave a sigh of relief; earlier he had been insistent that he would go to a place where non-vegetarian fare was neither served nor cooked, and I hardly knew many good places like that in Chennai.

Just to ward off any hunger pangs I might feel at lunch, I also become Brahminical in my approach and have an early 11.45 meal. At 12.30, I am at "Guru & Ram", his modest office in Nungambakkam, the heart of the city.

He is going away for two days to attend an SJM meeting at Palani, a famous temple town in the state, and the train tickets are waitlisted. A couple of calls, tickets confirmed, we head out for the two-minute drive to the Taj Coromandel.

He drives a Maruti Esteem and as I sit beside him I ask him what he thinks of the traffic situation. "These are the effects of westernisation. We do not have enough roads but the cars keep rolling out," he points out.

I protest and point out that bigger and better roads are being laid, but the point is never finished as we motor into the portico of the hotel. We choose to go to "Southern Spice", the lobby-level south Indian restaurant and the hostess gives us a table where we would be left undisturbed.

Since we have decided that lunch will be a fruity affair, he settles for a fresh pineapple juice while I settle for a decidedly more lavish fruit punch.

To get the conversation going, I ask him how a person from a village near Villupuram town, about 150 kms from Chennai ended up being a chartered accountant.

"I wanted to be a lawyer, but there was this anti-Brahmin agitation of the DMK. In fact, I never even tried to become a lawyer. When I approached my relations for guidance, they laughed and said that I would be foolish even to try getting admission. Instead, I came to Chennai and I joined Vivekananada college," he informs me.

By then it is dawning on me that he still does not trust my intentions fully. It is confirmed when he suddenly asks me whether I intend to insult him when I write the piece. I tell him my that it would be a sacrilege to insult a guest and my intentions were honourable.

He's partially mollified. "Very rarely can people humiliate me. We came up with nothing and there was a time when I attended school when the family could not afford one square meal. Faith in God has helped a lot in ensuring that just because we came from a poor family I did not grow up hating the rich. When we grew up, I have been abused enough, and I realise that abuse is just a substitute for beating."

Point made, I ask him whether his views on the need for family businesses to stay together are dictated by his own family of four brothers staying together. "We shared poverty together and there is no reason for us not to share the good times together," he says.

What about his views on Hinduism? The question immediately gets him passionate and elicits some interesting if controversial observations.

"Society is an open-air university. Are you willing to be a student, is the question. I have unlearnt most of what I learnt in college. I have understood that today education makes you feel low about your own country because it is western education. Even the word secular is bequeathed to us, courtesy Christianity."

Secular, he explains, is Christian purely because it is an exclusive religion like Islam. Hinduism is not secular because it is an inclusive religion like none else, he points out. "Who welcomed the Jews, Christians, Muslims — it was us. Then they tell us we have to be secular. There is no bigger joke than this."

"Christianity and Islam both preach hatred to other religions. The Christian faith has been smashed by democracy and technology. But Islam is a frozen ideology and the problem is that it has not seen any ideological clash since the Prophet. If there has been any clash, it only has ensured that it has become more inward looking."

All this has gotten me thirsty and while I order another fruit punch along with a plate of baby corn in pepper, he settles for a fruit salad.

And how different is Hinduism, I ask him. "Hinduism is open to interpretations from all sides. We are not secular. Hinduism is sacred, where we learn to protect what is around in our environment. The absolute was never named and that is why Hinduism has 33 crore gods," he tells me.

The dose of Hinduism over, I ask him about the diatribes he waged against Rajiv Gandhi, through his columns in the Indian Express. This elicits a most unexpected reaction.

"Rajiv was definitely a good man, a nice man. The only problem was that he did not know how to position himself as a politician. He claimed that his party was corrupt, while he was not. This was a wrong move. The Bofors issue was based on corruption, and the same charge would not have stuck on Indira Gandhi. She never claimed she was honest.

"When Ramanathji told me that Rajiv was the man who would rule India for the next 20 years, I disagreed because Rajiv had claimed that he was honest. Once you enter politics, you have to compromise and Rajiv's claim about being honest was something he should not have made."

So what did he think about the man who replaced Rajiv as prime minister? "The less said about V P Singh the better. Here was a prime minister who refused to visit the displaced Kashmiri Pundits, who had become refugees in their own country."

"I told him so many times, please go see them in Delhi. But he just won't because it was politics for him. There was ethnic cleansing happening in our country, and here was V P Singh, the prime minister, refusing to acknowledge it. Rajiv was infinitely better than V P Singh."

And, of course, there is his famous enmity to Reliance. How does he react to his famous comrade-in-arms Arun Shourie's about-turn on Reliance? For once Gurumurthy is diplomatic. "I have not changed my views on Reliance. Arun has every right to change his opinion."

What dictates Gurumurthy's actions then? "Dharma and the country. Most of my activities are governed and guided by love for this great country. I am a missionary in her cause."

So why don't you join politics, I pose to him. "Mahatma Gandhi said that Brahmins should never join politics and as I said, politics makes everyone compromise. I will not compromise."

What about the SJM then? "The SJM is an opinion- making, confidence-building organisation. I am the convener and I do not get elected. The relevance is shifting to non-political religious organisations like Mata Amritanandamayi's organisation. They are the ones that create opinions. Not newspapers. Newspapers have become prostitutes," he says.

I feel constrained to protest the strong words he has used, but Gurumurthy stands his ground. He points out that today the newspaper industry is exploited and compromised. "There might be exceptions but the media has become very corrupt," he says.

So how would the chartered accountant describe himself? "I am not a typical chartered accountant. I do not do anything that a normal chartered accountant would do. I would like to think of myself as a counsellor, a consultant. People come to me with trust and some of them respect me. The Tatas and Birlas know that I cannot be bought over and they respect me for that."

The fruit disappears from the table and lunch is over. As we walk out of the hotel for the short drive back to his office, his mobile rings. "Why don't you speak to Jaswant," he tells the caller. Just another confirmation of how well networked the once-poor Brahmin is.