The Rediff Special /

'Raju Bhaiyya's refusal to follow through his convictions comes from that essential timidity of scientists'

K N Govindacharya, once an RSS pracharak, now general secretary of the BJP and a key figure in the Swadeshi Jagran Manch, smiles, but won't say, except that, "We made life difficult for Enron." Devendra Swaroop Aggarwal, a former history teacher at the Delhi University, an RSS pracharak for more than a dozen years, an earlier editor of the RSS's Hindi weekly, Panchjanya, and a member of a new, little-advertised RSS cell analysing all its past experiences in the cultural, political and social fields, won't take such a question, saying, "It is speculative," but he admits, while remarking that "Raju Bhaiyya is very open-minded," that, "He is not very assertive by nature."

But would Thengdi have allowed the Enron deal to go through if he were to be RSS chief? 'Very unlikely," says another upcoming RSS functionary, reluctantly. He confirms, too, still more half-heartedly, that Thengdi, in Rajinder Singh's place, would not have permitted the erstwhile BJP governments in Gujarat and Madhya Pradesh and its coalition regime with the Shiv Sena in Maharashtra to proceed with the Narmada dam. "That would have been Golwalkar's position also," says another RSS member. "Raju Bhaiyya, on the other hand, takes the view that being RSS chief gives him no real authority to interfere in the functioning of governments."

This would be an entirely fair argument on an issue in which, perhaps, several thousand people will not be critically affected one way or another. But on a matter like the Narmada dam, where the oustees face a future which is grey, and the dividends to such backward areas of Gujarat as Saurashtra from the dam are insubstantial, it is difficult to be positionless.

It is stranger when you consider that, personally, Rajinder Singh is opposed to the dam, and that, taking no one's word for it, he has himself perused nearly every scientific-sociological study of consequence to reach that stand. Why doesn't Singh then, follow his conviction like Thengdi does, or as Golwalkar did? Does the collective leadership in the RSS, set in the place apparently by Golwalkar believing no one person after him (and certainly after the early death of Deendayal Upadhyaya) could guide the destiny of the RSS, constrain him? Or is it the fact of having been a scientist, and still one in thinking, have something to do with this? Perhaps, both.

Singh was a physicist of considerable promise at Allahabad University in the 1930s and 1940s before he joined the RSS full-time. It is often the norm in such organisations as the RSS to over-rate their top leadership, but Singh's reputation in his field of work, spectroscopy, stands independent of this.

Singh was a student of Meghnad Saha [Below left], who discovered the famous Saha Ionisation Formula in astrophysics. Saha was much older, of course, and believed, like the Nobel laureate, C V Raman, and Prafulla Chandra Ray, another outstanding physicist, that India ought to develop its own science and that its scientists ought to be social.

Shaha was close to Jawaharlal Nehru and helped him with planning (P C Mahalanobis was his classmate at the Presidency College in Calcutta) but disagreed with Nehru's adoption of the western thought of science which sequesters it from society. Saha's conviction made him contest the first Lok Sabha election and in Parliament he opposed Nehru on science policy. There was bitterness and disillusionment. Saha was soon committed, and died shortly after, and all attempts to socialise science ended with him.

"Had Saha succeeded," says an RSS member, "the course of science in India would have been different. But he failed. The impact of it was deep. It drove scientists right up back to their ivory towers and made them timid, shy of social interaction, and fearful of politics. Since it was Rajju Bhaiyya's guru who had failed, the hurt of it should have been deeper."

"And then, the RSS has never taken up the issue of science. Rajju Bhaiyya has never been treated as a scientist-activist either. But since he remains a scientist by orientation, I think his refusal to follow through his convictions comes from that essential timidity of scientists. He has a firm personal view on most matters. But he will not enforce it. He is individualistic like a scientist. And, in that sense, he remains, perhaps, a swayamsevak who has not made the grade to being a sarsangchalak."

Kind courtesy: Sunday magazine

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