Author: Vinita Deshmukh
Publication: The Indian Express
Date: August 3, 2003
URL: http://www.indianexpress.com/archive_full_story.php?content_id=28822
Introduction: Pune's Kaushik Ashram,
the late Rajju Bhaiyya's last home, is where the Sangh sends its pensioners
Former Rashtriya Swyamsevak Sangh
chief Rajendra Singh, popularly known as Rajju Bhaiyya, died here on July
14. And Rajju Bhaiyya's predeccesor Balasaheb Deoras lived here for four
years. This is no fancy address that the saffron brotherhood gives to its
famous faces but an old age home in a middleclass neighbourhood of Pune.
Founded in 1984, Kaushik Ashram
was built as a retirement home for RSS members who had spent their life
serving the cause, choosing organisation over marriage and other such everyday
attachments. It was the property of late Dadasaheb Apte, the first general
secretary of the Vishwas Hindu Parishad, who donated it to the RSS in 1978.
Diwakar Pande, one of Kaushik Ashram's
trustees and the housekeeper, is reluctant to call it an old age home.
''You can call it a home of the RSS family. Please don't call it an old
age home where unwanted and abandoned senior citizens are generally sent.''
At present only five members live
in this 11 room house. In keeping with RSS routine, the open backyard is
shakha space, reserved for morning prayers and exercises. And while the
interiors of the home are plain enough, Kaushik Ashram does have a VIP
room. Till the other day, this was where Rajju Bhaiyya stayed.
Babanrao Petkar was an RSS pracharak
in Nashik and is, at 89, the senior-most resident of Kaushik Ashram. He
explains the unegalitarianism of a VIP room, ''We had to have something
special in this room, since so many celebrity visitors used to come.''
He rattles of the names of regular visitors to Rajju Bhaiya - L. K. Advani,
Narendra Modi, Murli Manohar Joshi. Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee
and the Shankaracharya of Kanchi too came calling.
And the VIP room is fancy, by Kaushik
Ashram standards-wooden panelling, a television set, plush sofas and a
special bed. ''Balasaheb (Deoras) also used to stay in this room,'' recalls
Petkar, ''so it has become the VIP room.''
While the stream of visitors has
thinned since Rajju Bhaiyya's death, the RSS veterans draw some satsifaction
from the Sangh's growth. In their lifetime it has moved from fringe to
mainstream.
Manohar Pant Dongre, 80, used to
be a journalist in Hindustan Samachar, a newspaper once published by the
RSS. Today those years of struggle are only memories, ''When Guru Golwalkar
was suffering from cancer and was admitted to the Tata Memorial Hospital
in Mumbai, not a single politician visited him. How times have changed.
There was queue of politicians for Rajju Bhaiyya's funeral.'' M.S. Golwalkar
was the RSS chief from 1940 till his death in 1973.
Inmates of Kaushik Ashram lead a
regimented life. Whether it's Anna Ghayal, aged 81 and a pracharak since
1947, or Mukundrao Gore - formergeneral secretary of the Bharatiya Mazdoor
Sangh and at 66 the youngest member of the Kaushik Ashram family, the RSS
old guard are early risers.
They are up at 5.30, spend their
day reading or watching television - from mythological serials to sports
programmes to, of course, news. Like in any Indian household, a good part
of the day is spent discussing politics.
Strange, about the only equivalent
of Kaushik Ashram would be a commune for CPI or CPI(M) veterans. The Party,
like the Sangh, looks after its own.