On May 13, Indian Express published a long advertisement on page 3. Why is this worth mentioning, other than for the fact that it’s always worth mentioning when IE gets advertising nowadays? Because of the content of the advertisement. The almost quarter-page advertisement carried the headline – “Netas attention please”. It called upon all “netas” – corrupt or otherwise not to be “scared of him(NarendraModi)” and to extend “full support to Modi in the overall interest of 125 crore Indians”.

It’s definitely worth a read.

The last paragraph particularly struck me and stayed with me for some time. This is what it said – “More you irritate/hurt feelings of the people, more the trouble you are inviting. You have misgoverned for so many years and shown your performance. Now give him a chance. This is a humble submission from the heart of saintly persons/noble souls.”Leaving aside the poor grammar and sentence construction, what struck me was the sentence “more the trouble you are inviting”. Sounds a little threatening and ominous to be coming from “the heart of a saintly persons/ noble souls”. 

So who are these saintly persons/noble souls appealing to the netasto come out in support of Modi?

The last line of the article is the clincher. “Now legal brains may target me also by cooking up bogus cases. – But I damn care. Remember, God is great watching everything and cannot be deceived. ”

–       But we DO care who this person is. The advertisement was credited to the President of PATRIOT, a registered NGO doing humanitarian services since 1985. The advertisement describes the NGO as “engaged in selfless public service relentlessly since 30 years, supported and blessed by an old, social worker, philanthropist and industrialist…who has never met NarendraModi”. Butit mentions no other details or names.

To find out who this person was I sent a mail to patriotngo@yahoo.com, the email id provided in the advertisement.

More than 24 hours have passed since then, but the PATRIOT hasn’t answered my mail. He must be a busy man -after all, he has to write these long advertisement. Despite my best efforts, I didn’t manage to find a phone number or even a website for PATRIOT.

But Google is everyone’s best friend. And while no phone number was available, I did find some articles about the NGO. This was not the first time that PATRIOT’s president had placed an advertisement in a newspaper.

In 2008, Churumuri published an article on a similar ad given by the PATRIOT to Deccan Herald.The advertisement headlined “Industries frightened in Karnataka-Turning West Bengal/Bihar way” lamented how some “some misguided individuals/organizationsin Karnataka becoming stronger in the guise of getting 100% Kannadigas employed in industries” were becoming a threat for industrial growth in the state. Perhaps one of the instances it was referring to was the Kannada Sene’s agitation against Jindal Aluminium Limited for employing less local people, a claim which was rejected by the courts. Even in this advertisement, the PATRIOT introduced himself as a“ well-known NGO, registered in the year 2000 having made extensive research on various complaints of this nature, has cautioned entrepreneurs individually and through FICCI, CII, ASSOCHAM, all Chambers of Commerce, Associations & Federations to know the reality before stepping into karnataka so long as these anti-social elements and wave of Kannadigas vs non-Kannadigas are not curbed realsing the consequences of similar mean-thinking in West Bengal during 1968 to 1974—driving away the industries followed by starvation and lawlessness massively”.

But voila, what did I spot at the bottom of the advertisement? Anaddress.President, PATRIOT (Regd), 22/12, 1st Floor, Yusuf Sarai, New Delhi 110016. I hot-footed there in the hopes of meeting the President But no such luck. Instead I found a mobile phone showroom instead. I got the contact number of the landlord and called him up. He informed me that an NGO did function from there a couple of years back but he had no information on its current location.

Not giving up hope, I returned to my online search for the elusive PATRIOT. Strangely, I found a mention of it on the website of Sitaram Jindal Foundation and another on the website of Tamil Nadu Agricultural University.Sitaram Jindal Foundation has been founded by the Managing Director of Jindal Aluminium Limited,Dr Sitaram Jindal. The Sitaram Jindal Foundation describes itself as “an independent entity and has no political, religious or commercial affiliation. It serves humanity irrespective of caste, creed, colour or religion. It does not take any financial help from government or other agencies”. Same same, but different.

The PATRIOT found a mention in the Dental Awards section of the website which was announcing awards by “a prominent foundation” for excellence in dentistry. Here’s a part of the write-up-

Read the full article here

The article on the Sitaram Jindal Foundation website discusses how dentists fool people by making patients their slave and how in reality if we take good care of our teeth, we do not need dentists at all. Thus, this call for advanced technology and research in the field of dentistry by the PATRIOT.

By now, I had learnt that PATRIOT was interested in saving “the industries”, making sure that NarendraModi gets the support of other leaders to form a government – and also the welfare of teeth. But who was this philanthropist and where did he reside? This was sounding more and more like Howard Hughes.

As luck would have it, I stumbled upon a PDF file compiled by the Agritech portal of Tamil Nadu Agricultural University where PATRIOT was listed under Indian Foundations along with other organisations like Sitaram Jindal Foundation, MS Swaminathan Research Foundation etc.

All relevant details about the PATRIOT were available-

Patriot India

4 MCD Building,

D.B.Gupta Road,

New Delhi-110 049.

Email: patriotngo@yahoo.com

http://patriotindia.in/

The website URL mentioned is invalid. But I decided to stop by the address provided, and found a shop dealing in aluminimium. It did not belong to the PATRIOT. It belonged to Om Aluminum Udyog which claims to be an“authorised dealer for Jindal Aluminium Limited”.

A worker in the shop informed me that they do receive letters addressed to an NGO named PATRIOT. But they then send them across to Jindal Aluminum Ltd’s Delhi office. Having encountered Jindal Aluminium’s name more than once in my search for the address of PATRIOT, I decided to call them once.

A not-so-friendly receptionist informed me that Jindal Aluminiumhad nothing to do with the NGO, PATRIOT. When I insisted on speaking to someone at the management level, she transferred the call to a senior official who refused to divulge his name. He did say he was unaware of any connection between Jindal Aluminium Ltd and PATRIOT. What was a little bizarre was when he asked me to mail the President of PATRIOT on the email id given at the end of the advertisement.

I have no idea how the official knew about the advertisement or the email id given at the end, when he’d first claimed that he hadn’t heard of PATRIOT. Maybe it slipped his memory and actually, like me, he too had got enchanted by the writing skills of the PATRIOT and had dropped him a mail hoping to get to know him better.

I finally called Indian Express, hoping that they could shed some light on who this advertiser was.  I was  told  that  the ad was placed with them through an ad agency and they had no information about who the president of PATRIOT was. While I’ve given up my quest for now, I still look forward to PATRIOT’S future advertisements. They certainly make for more entertaining reading than front page reports onexit poll results.

In case, you’d like to see the advertisement in print and can’t find a copy of Indian Express fret not. The Times Of India has carried the same advertisement today.

The author can be contacted at somi@small-screen.com