16-31 Mar, 2010 - Bharatiya Janata Party

Nanaji, as I knew himBy S. GurumurthyHe was at the vortex of a powerful anti-Congress waveNANAJI”, which is howNana Deshmukh wasknown in the political andsocial circles he dominated foralmost six decades, is no more.Many, who were inspired by himin politics and outside, saw andknew him as a towering idealist;his admirers and friendsexperienced and rated him as agreat political strategist.Joining the RSS at a youngage and becoming its pracharak(full-time volunteer), he wasundoubtedly a great organiser. Hehad intimate friends in high placeseverywhere. He was acceptedfrom a very young age beyondhis organisational fraternity. Hewas equally at ease with both thenoble Bhoodan movement ofVinobha Bhave and the gutterpolitics of Delhi. He had friendseven in the garrisons of hisadversaries. When JawaharlalNehru had banned the RSS in1948, Nanaji Deshmukh, like manyRSS workers, began organisingthe underground movement. Fromwhere? Believe it or not, from thehouse of Rafi Ahmed Kidwai, aminister in Pandit Nehru’sgovernment. It was publicknowledge that Nehru regarded RSSas his arch enemy and had evendeclared that he would not give aninch in India for the Bhagwa (theflag of the RSS) to fly. Still Kidwai,a great friend of Nehru and a ministerin his cabinet, had no issues keepingNanaji in his house and more —allowing him to organise undergroundactivities. This speaks ofMarch 16-31, 2010 7the magnetic personality of theyoung Nanaji, who must then havebeen in his twenties!My association with NanajiDeshmukh started with myIt was the Ramnathji-Nanaji duo that persuadedJayaprakash Narayan toagree to lead the Biharmovement in 1974, whichchanged the political pictureof the country. The Biharmovement was one of thegreatest movements in thehistory of free India.friendship with Ramnath Goenka.Ramnathji and Nanaji were not onlygreat friends, they both thought andfelt similarly about the country. Themutual trust and admiration thatthey had had was rooted wholly intheir love of the motherland, totallydevoid of any kind of personalinterest. The Nanaji-Ramnathjicombine had no goal other than whatthey thought was the nation’s good.Ramnath Goenka had shaped TheIndian Express not just as anewspaper, but an active partner withall nationalist forces in the cause ofthe country, setting the agenda forpolitical and social discourse.Ramnathji never knew what fearmeant. Nor did Nanaji. And thesetwo courageous persons couldeffortlessly inject many others ofhigh relevance, journalists orothers, with fearlessness. It wasthe Ramnathji-Nanaji duo thatpersuaded Jayaprakash Narayanto agree to lead the Biharmovement in 1974, which changedthe political picture of the country.The Bihar movement was one ofthe greatest movements in thehistory of free India.An incredible incident madeJayaprakash Narayan agree to theplea of Nanaji and Ramnathji tolead the movement against IndiraGandhi. I came to know of this inlate 1980s, when at a dinner in theExpress Towers in Bombay I askedNanaji and Ramnathji how theybrought JP into the movement.Nanaji described the thrilling andunbelievable episode. A historicmeeting of Ramnathji, Nanaji,Achyut Patwardhan, the hero of the1942 underground movement andRamdhari Singh Dinkar, a great Hindipoet, took place sometime in 1973 inThe Indian Express Guest House inBangalore. The four of them beganinsisting that JP should lead themovement as Indira Gandhi hadbecome highly autocratic and hadbegun destroying the institutionalframework of democracy, includingthe judiciary and bureaucracy.Incidentally, Dinkar was one of thegreatest friends of the Nehru family