-Anant Seth
Aashad shukla tritiya (18-June -1931) marks the Jayanti of Swargeeya Sri Kuppahalli Sitaramayya Sudarshan, the fifth Sarsanghachalak of the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS). Born in Raipur in 1931, Sudarshan ji started attending RSS Shakha at the tender age of nine. He served as RSS Pracharak for six decades and became its Sarsanghachalak in the year 2000 succeeding Sri Rajendra Singh. An Engineer by qualification, Sudarshan ji was known for his emphasis on physical fitness and intellectual sharpness. His friends’ circle included Diplomats, Scientists, Vedic Scholars, Environmentalists and Economists espousing the Swadeshi cause.
Sri Ratan Sharda, in his book RSS: Evolution from an Organization to a Movement, describes Sudarshan ji as a feisty leader with a keen interest in physical fitness and intellectual pursuits. In his another book Secrets of RSS: Demystifying The Sangh, Ratan ji observes that Sudarshan ji was an outspoken polyglot with sharp intellect and great clarity of thought and that he was someone who stressed upon self-sustaining rural economy, sustainable consumption and espoused scientific Hindu way of personal, social and national life. Sri Sharda further adds in that book that Sudarshan ji’s signal contribution was to bring back unapologetic reasoned aggression to Hindutva philosophy. He presented Hindutva in a scientific manner and explained how it alone could respond to challenges of environmental degradation, civilizational clashes and related issues plaguing India and the world.
One of the lasting influences on Sudarshan ji was of senior RSS pracharak Sri Eknath Ranade. It was Eknath ji who inspired Sudarshan ji to take up RSS work fulltime. Sudarshan ji became a pracharak immediately after completing his Engineering. He was formally appointed as an RSS pracharak on 23rd June, 1954. He wanted to restore the glory of Hindu Dharma and would often say that time is very near when Hindu society would unshackle the colonial mind-set and acquire its destined place in the comity of nations.
In film-maker Lalit Vachani’s documentary The Men in the Tree, Sudarshan ji elaborates on the significance of recruiting young swayamsevaks: “Children are prone to habit formation. In childhood, they are also influenced by their environment. They are moulded in that environment. From infancy stage to childhood stage, children are very retentive and malleable and prone to learning good habits. What you teach them has a lasting impact in their minds. That is why we get children into shakhas from childhood.”
He was the one who laid the ideological foundations of at least three key issues on which the current political regime is placing renewed emphasis: Citizenship Amendment Act, Atmanirbhar Bharat and Act-East Policy. It was Sudarshan ji, along with the co-founder of Swadeshi Jagran Manch Sri Dattopant Thengadi, who put forward the ‘Swadeshi’ model of Economics which is being reflected today in Modi Government’s Atmanirbhar Bharat initiative. According to Devendra Swaroop, a senior RSS thinker who worked very closely with him, Sudarshan ji himself studied swadeshi science and technology very closely in every part of the country.
As a Pracharak in the North-East, he made it a point to learn Bengali and Assamese. He could deliver lectures fluently in both these languages. He studied in-depth the activities of Church and exposed them. He perceived the illegal infiltration of Bangladeshi Muslims in India particularly in Assam as an ‘attack’ from across the border of a new weapon called Population Jihad. It was Sudarshan ji who told the countrymen and especially the Assamese people that while the Muslims coming from Bangladesh were illegal immigrants, the Hindus coming from there were refugees. Sudarshan ji played a key role in ensuring that the movement started by Asom Gana Parishad against illegal immigrants from Bangladesh did not turn against Bengali Hindus.
Sudarshan ji himself handed over the mantle of Sarsanghchalak to the current RSS Sarsanghchalak Sri Mohan ji Bhagwat , in 2009. Sudarshan ji passed away, at the age of 81, on 15th of September, 2012.
