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Balasaheb Deoras - Current Topics in TOI - Times of India

Posted By ashok (ashokvc@giasbm01.vsnl.net.in)
19 June 1996

Title : Balasaheb Deoras
Publication : Times of India
Date : June 19, 1996

BALASAHEB Deoras was nominated RSS sarsanghchalak
by his
immediate predecessor, Madhav Sadashiv Golwalkar, but it
was Hedgewar, founder of the Sangh, that Balasaheb
Deoras
identified himself with. Sensing this, Golwalkar himself
had often introduced the young Deoras as Hedgewar's true
heir. Golwalkar was venerated and glorified as a thinker-
philosopher; Deoras, on the other hand, was not known for
any special ability to theorise and postulate.

And yet, Deoras was more of a political animal than
either Hedgewar or Golwalkar. It was Deoras who
masterminded the RSS's spectacular growth, stepped up the
activities of its many adjuncts and astutely used the BJP
as the sangh's political front Deoras realised early on
that on Hindu unification hinged the sangh's ultimate
goal of Hindu rashtra. He also knew that this would
remain a pipe dream if the sangh did not break free of
its rigid moorings.

It is thus that the RSS speedily diversified into such
areas as tribal welfare, flood and famine relief, trade
union activities, co-operative banking and education.
If the innumerable schools that came up under the brand
name, Saraswati Shishu Vihar, inculcated Sangh thoughts
and philosophy in young minds, the politicisation of the
Akhil Bharatiya Vidyarthi Parishad, the student wing of
the Jana Sangh/BJP, helped push the JS-RSS into the
mainstream. The ABVP quickly spotted the potential of
the JP-led total revolution movement. The JP-ABVP
collaboration not only gave the RSS respectability of the
kind it had always craved for, it also earned for the
Jana Sangh a berth in the Janata Party government in
1977.

The pragmatism of the man is evident in other areas as
well. He knew when to retreat just as he knew when to
attack. For instance, he fully understood the pitfalls of
confronting the government in power. He wrote twice to
Indira Gandhi during the Emergency in an attempt to make
peace with her. It was only because it elicited a cold
response that he made opposition to the Emergency a
mission in itself. Deoras pressed for a pact with Mr V.P.
Singh in 1989, knowing the proposal did not meet with the
approval of Mr L.K. Advani who resented Mr Singh's
refusal openly to associate with the BJP. That Deoras
was, in fact, the clever one was proved when the BJP
emerged from the experience with far more votes and seats
than it had bargained for.


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