Despite the loftiness of the Sangh’s anti-corruption rhetoric, however, even Bhagwat has a somewhat equivocal record on malfeasance. The Sangh leadership has an established tradition of throwing the floor open to informal question-and-answer sessions at the end of most meetings. At one baithak in Alappuzha, Kerala, in late 2012, Bhagwat was asked a question on the Koodankulam nuclear power station and why the RSS was not part of the agitation. He replied that the demonstrations against the plant started when construction was nearly complete, and that Christians were leading the protests. The answer piqued KV Biju, then the SJM’s co-convenor for south India, who had been part of the agitation since 1989, soon after the project was announced. (Biju is now the organising secretary of the Swadeshi Andolan, a rival to the SJM.) He told Bhagwat that he had been misinformed. At that point, the meeting was called to a close and Bhagwat asked Biju to join him backstage. Biju said that when he explained in detail the history of protest against the nuclear plant, Bhagwat told him that he had been unaware of it. Biju’s exchange with Bhagwat after the Alappuzha meeting took place at about 3 pm. “Around 9.30 that night, Bhagwati Prakash Sharma”—the SJM’s national co-convener—“telephoned me and asked me to step down from the SJM.” Three days later, the veteran RSS leader Ranga Hari told Biju that he should meet the sarsanghchalak again and apprise him of corruption in the SJM. For about a year, Biju and an SJM organising secretary named Appala Prasad had been campaigning against the SJM core committee member and former national convener P Muralidhar Rao. They had produced documents to prove that Rao had used SJM funds to buy property in the name of his wife, Pratibha, and a cooperative society he headed. Biju told me that when he asked the RSS national executive member Madan Das Devi about who approved the purchase, Devi admitted that Rao had not taken any consent. (When I emailed Rao for comment, he wrote back saying he had left the SJM in December 2008; when I pointed out that the transaction took place in 2010, he didn’t respond.) Biju took the issue to the national joint convener of the SJM, S Gurumurthy, who promised to take action but then ignored the matter. Then, at the RSS national executive meeting in Chennai, Biju spoke with Bhagwat, who he said assured him they would meet again to discuss the allegations. Biju sent two reminders to Bhagwat about their appointment. He soon got a call from the then RSS joint general secretary KC Kannan. Biju told me Kannan said to him, “You want to meet the sarsanghchalak to flag the issues in the SJM, right? He knows about all those issues and has said that he is not going to interfere in such matters.” Rao was finally forced to repay the money, but only after months of protest.
Posted on: Thu, 01 May 2014 12:38:17 +0000
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