Deendayal Research Institute
War over successor to Nanaji

Even though the nonagenarian Nanaji Deshmukh formally quit politics in 1978, he continued working on building the Deendayal Research Institute, an RSS affiliate. Deshmukh’s failing health has triggered a battle to take over the vast empire controlled by the institute.

BY Arun Anand

His list of 'friends' cut across social, political and economic fortifications—former prime ministers, incumbent and former chief ministers of several states, including non-Bharatiya Janata Party-ruled ones, and some of India's top industrial families. His list of followers is huge, their combined power calculated in megatonnes—and as glamorous as Jeh Wadia, scion of the Nusli Wadia group -apart from serving bureaucrats and middle-level BJP politicians and other non-Congress outfits.

Nonagenarian Nanaji Deshmukh, a few years short of an eventful century old, quit politics formally in 1978. But he has gone on to virtually build an empire under the aegis of the Deendayal Research Institute, which many still consider to be a 'Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) inspired' organisation.

In the RSS official records, a six-line introduction to the Institute goes: “In the memory of Late Shri Deen Dayal Upadhyaya, Deen Dayal Shodh Sansthan was established in 1972. After his early intellectual activities, under the chairmanship of Nanaji Deshmukh, its rural reconstruction activities have got special impetus. Apart from Gonda district of Uttar Pradesh, holistic development projects are being run by the sansthan in one district each in Maharastra, Orrisa and Bihar. Chitrakoot Gramodya Vishwavidyala in Madhya Pradesh is another important project of the sansthan.” Sources say that in all these 'enterprises, the Institute owns assets that run into at least a few hundred crores of rupees. Its office is stacked in a multistoreyed building at New Delhi's Rani Jhansi Road, just opposite 'Keshav Kunj', the RSS headquarters. In fact, the Institute's geographical location, ironically enough, is an indicator of the organisation's proximity to the Sangh Parivar, in more ways than just spatial. The bigger problem that today faces the Institute is that, with Nanaji not in the pink of health, there is a behind-the-scenes tug-of-war going on, with possible 'successors' girding up for battle to claim Nanaji's substantial legacy. The loudest in this rattling of swords is Yadav Rao Deshmukh who, although not in the prime of health either, is considered to be the closest to Nanaji. Deshmukh has been playing second fiddle to Nanaji for no less than two decades, and is known to have been of some significance in doing the spadework for preparing the ground on which the Institute stands so firmly today, says an Institute old-timer.

Deshmukh also has a positive image within the RSS and the backing of many in the Sangh Parivar. But sources also say that there are many in the Institute that envision Bharat Pathak, one of Nanaji's close aides for more than a decade, as a more logical successor. Pathak, a former Akhil Bharatiya Vidyarthi Parishad (ABVP) leader, spends most of his time in Chitrakoot, a district located on the Madhya Pradesh-Uttar Pradesh border where Nanaji's 'dream project' of rural renaissance, spanning more than 500 villages, is being implemented. "The objective of the Institute is to make 500 villages self-reliant by 2009," says an official. "The first phase is for 80 villages and the target is January 26, 2005." President A P J Abdul Kalam had addressed a large gathering of Institute volunteers and officials at Chitrakoot on October 6. Impressed after having visited the Udyamita Vidyapeeth at Chitrakoot, he again praised the Institute, Nanaji and the Institute's projects on October 21 while speaking at the 52nd National Film Awards Function at Vigyan Bhavan in New Delhi. "Compliments like [this] from the First Citizen of our country have been rare for any of our projects," says a senior RSS pracharak, "and we are happy about it."

These compliments are hardly rare: Socialist stalwart Jai Prakash Narayan was present at the inaugural of the Institute's first major project in 1977 at Gonda in Uttar Pradesh. Nonetheless, as Nanaji said recently, he had “experimented” first at Gonda, but it was in Chitrakoot in the 1980s that he had became optimistic of the enormous possibilities of the ‘total revolution' that had once held promise of changing the very face of the nation.“Chitrakoot was particularly symbolic for me since it was the meeting place of Bharat and Lord Rama, after he insisted on going into exile,”says Nanaji. “Unlike today's politicians, neither of these two great giants of the past hankered [after] power.” Nanaji is one of the most respected and revered functionaries of the Sangh Parivar; unlike most of the other Sangh Parivar organisations, the Institute remains autonomous in its functioning, although the 'consultation' process, so much a self-proclaimed characteristic of the saffronites, between Institute functionaries and their RSS counterparts continues. But, say Sangh sources, the final decisionmaking rests in Nanaji's hands and not RSS chief K S Sudershan. The reason behind this unfettered freedom and autonomy is Nanaji's organisational skills. In an amazingly short period of less than three decades—a small turn of the clock in terms of a political outfit with national ambitions—he turned this organisation from a small gaggle of idealists into a mammoth multi-crore organisation. The list of the important projects run by the Institute indicate the organisation's worth: The problem lies in the fact that no one is willing to officially reveal how many fingers it has in how many pies—senior functionaries say that Nanaji alone has the complete picture.

Sources in the Sangh Parivar say that although the RSS might not have a say in the running of the Institute, it will have to take over the organisation in case Nanaji doesn't make a decision well in time. The RSS will then have to treat the Institute as any other Sangh organisation as far as appointments to the top echelons are concerned. The viewpoint is fast emerging within the Sangh Parivar that a worthy successor to Nanaji should not only have the (Right) ideological bearings but also the 'professional' acumen and qualification to run this humongous organisation. Oddly enough, these clashes and intersections of suggestions and analyses have been going on within the Sangh Parivar for the past couple of years, but no one has dared to raise the issue openly, since publicising internal issues "goes against the tradition of the Sangh Parivar", says a senior RSS functionary.

But, adds another senior RSS functionary who has been associated with the Institute in the past and still keeps a close watch on it, "Yes, we have to be ready with a plan—and we are ready with it in this case, too."