Pradeep Kaushal profiles the zealous torchbearers of the Vishwa Hindu Parishad, the men who hold the key to the country’s commitment to secularism

AS A five-year-old, the VHP had already found a role for itself; in 1969 it organised the ‘‘return’’ of 176 Christian families of Thirunnelveli district of Tamil Nadu. Later, in 1981, the storm generated by the mass-conversion of Hindus to Islam at Meenakshipuram provided the VHP the ideal breeding ground. As Kanchi Kamakoti Shankaracharya Jayendra Saraswathi and Acharya Vishweshwar Teerth fanned out in the countryside to ‘‘save’’ Hinduism, the VHP followed in their footsteps.

The turning point in its history came when a dharma sansad of various Hindu sects decided in 1984 to launch an agitation for ‘‘the restoration’’ of the Ayodhya, Mathura and Kashi shrines to Hindus. In one stroke, the VHP, long overshadowed by its elder sibling, the Jana Sangh alias the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), shot into the centrestage.

Headquartered at Sankat Mochan Ashram in a suburb of New Delhi, the VHP has about 17 lakh members. The apex body, the board of trustees, has 250 members, 175 from India and 75 from abroad. The board of trustees, who meet at least once a year, choose the office-bearers and the 76 members of the executive.

The Margdarshak Mandal of 240 religious leaders plays an advisory role at the central level. The same model is replicated in the states. While the president and the working president play important roles in decision-making, the organisational network is controlled by the general secretary, an RSS pracharak.

Each state has a president, a secretary and an organising secretary deputed by the RSS. The 1,700 RSS pracharaks control the organisation, besides running the 28 ‘service wings’ covering education, health, self-reliance, social and casual sectors.

ASHOK SINGHAL
Working President

The man responsible for making the VHP a household word. He was the brain behind the Ramjanmabhoomi movement, which brought the BJP from the political margins to the centrestage. After this blazing entry, all it took was L K Advani’s rathyatra and shrewd seat adjustments with regional satraps later for the BJP to sit at the Centre and cash in on the VHP’s hard work. Logically, then, the BJP’s rise should have been paralleled by an upswing in Singhal’s fortunes. But that did not happen; the consequent bitterness is evident in Singhal’s comparisons between Vajpayee and Ravan and also in his recent acrimonious war of words with the Prime Minister. But friends and foes alike respect Singhal’s adamantine resolve; the current struggle for the Ayodhya temple is his baby, and Singhal could not have made it clearer that even a fratricidal war between the VHP and the BJP would not shake his determination.

The 75-year-old RSS pracharak, who has a bachelor’s degree in metallurgical engineering from the Institute of Technology, Benaras Hindu University, started life as the scion of a prosperous business family in Allahabad. Somewhere along the way, he joined the RSS and worked at Allahabad, Saharanpur and Kanpur before being made the prant pracharak for Delhi and Haryana. In 1980, he was deputed to the VHP, and became its joint general secretary. Though the BJP lotus refused to flower for him, in the VHP, his rise was remarkable. He became the general secretary in 1984, and later the working president.

For all the controversies he has raked up and covers he has made, few know that Singhal has a melodious voice; a trained classical vocalist, his guru was the legendary Pandit Omkar Nath Thakur.

PRAVIN TOGADIA
General Secretary

If Singhal was the VHP’s first face, Togadia is the face of the future. Far more articulate and brash than Singhal, Togadia is a permanent fixture on television panel discussions. He is a master at flummoxing professional politicians. But that is not his only calling; as general secretary of the Parishad, he controls the entire organisational network of the VHP, including the 1,700 pracharaks. It is quite a remarkable climb for the man who, till five years ago, was general secretary of the Gujarat state VHP. Till then, his only claim to fame had been his arrest, ordered by then Gujarat chief minister Shankersinh Vaghela, for an alleged attack on and stripping of Atmaram Patel, a state minister, during a public meeting addressed by Vajpayee. Nothing came of the case, however, because of a lack of evidence against Togadia.

But then, Togadia is used to things going his way. Once renowned as a cancer specialist in Ahmedabad, he abandoned the scalpel for the trishul and engineered the emergence of the VHP as a force to reckon with in Gujarat. It is his legacy that is bearing fruit in the state today.

ACHARYA GIRIRAJ KISHORE
Senior General Secretary

The bearded, sandal-smeared acharya, the senior general secretary of the VHP, looks more of a sadhu than the ‘‘socio-religious’’ votary that he calls himself but Giriraj Kishore has earned a formidable reputation of being a bombastic loud mouth. Whether it is justifying the demolition of the 16th century Babri Masjid in 1992 — when he said the ‘‘450-year-old stigma on the face of India had finally been removed’’ — or even candidly admitting that inflammatory and provocative speeches were made on the day of the demolition, or goading VHP men to defy the Supreme Court order and storm the makeshift temple last year, forcing even Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee to admit to a security lapse, the acharya has stuck to his guns.

The former school teacher (perhaps he got the prefix acharya from 0his first profession) who went on to become school principal owes his dizzying rise as leader of the Hindutva brigade to the late Rajmata Vijayraje Scindia of Gwalior. Giriraj Kishore was a teacher in Morena, in the erstwhile Scindia kingdom, and the late Rajmata, a devout VHP sympathiser, who once courted arrest with thousands of kar sevaks in 1990 in Uttar Pradesh, saw talent in the former and encouraged him to the top post.

There have been times when Giriraj Kishore has turned his own utterances on its head and thought nothing of it. For instance, soon after Roop Kanwar sati hit the headlines, Giriraj Kishore went on record to say that the Hindu dharma had no space for sati. Years later, the practice, abolished by William Bentinck in 1828 — and now being assiduously revived by the VHP during its ‘Hindu Centenary Year’ — the acharya is defending the practice by saying that ‘‘there is nothing wrong if a woman who cannot bear the separation from her husband opts to join him in his funeral pyre’’. The VHP leader also said the revival of sati would not be out of tune with the VHP’s ideology of establishing a Hindu Rashtra.

Giriraj Kishore has led the VHP campaign against Christian missionaries, demanding they leave India for ‘‘converting Hindus forcibly’’. He has blamed Congress president Sonia Gandhi for the increase in conversions, thus alluding to her Christian roots, and described the ghastly murder of Christian missionary Graham Staines and his two sons as a reprisal for his Christian acts. ‘‘Leprosy was a cover’’, he had thundered then, in a reference to the Staines’ pioneering work in leprosy camps. ‘‘There were no leprosy patients.’’ Instead, he said, the evangelist had angered the local Santhal tribe by holding forest camps that brought together young men and women to ‘‘eat, drink and be merry’’.

VEERESHWAR DWIVEDI
Media Relations Officer

The low-profile, soft-spoken VHP spokesman is an RSS pracharak, but quite unlike most of his colleagues, is always willing to listen to an opposite viewpoint and even concede a point. Of course, all this is off the record! Needless to say, he is at home with the media.

However, this should not be surprising as anyone who knows Dwivedi also knows he is a trained journalist, having started off as a sub-editor with the Hindi daily Dainik Jagran. Once he joined the RSS, he quit his job to join the RSS Lucknow-based monthly Rashtradharm as its editor. His predecessors in the post included Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee. In fact, Dwivedi was among the key RSS functionaries who oversaw Vajpayee’s campaign in successive Lok Sabha elections.

Later, after he proved his managerial skills both at the magazine as well as campaign manager, the RSS put him in charge of publicity of the Sangh for the entire Uttar Pradesh state zone. In 1992, when the then chief minister Mulayam Singh Yadav cracked down on the Sangh Parivar, Dwivedi was among the first to be arrested.

Deputed to the VHP by the Sangh, Dwivedi today oversees its media relations. Alongside, he edits the VHP mouthpiece Hindu Vishwa, a Hindi fortnightly.

VISHNU HARI DALMIA
Non-Working President

The non-working president of the VHP is just a figurehead. Sethji, as he known, is not supposed to carry out any executive function — he owes his place primarily to his monetary clout and social status — but he tries to find a place for himself somewhere between Singhal and Togadia. He succeeds occasionally, at VHP functions and big press conferences or during visits to dignitaries.

Owner of a string of industrial units, he is the chairman of Dalmia Dairy Industries Ltd, GTC Industries and Sree Meenakshi Mills Ltd. A devout Hindu, the sandalwood tilak-sporting Dalmia has built a huge temple complex at Mathura. The Dalmia Charitable Trust run by him maintains two schools back home in Chirawa in Rajasthan, while another trust provides healthcare to people in Surajgarh in the desert state. A third body, Hanuman Prasad Poddar Smarak Samiti runs a hospital in UP.

BHUPENDRA KUMAR MODI
VHP Overseas chairman

The founder-chairman of ModiCorp is a self-claimed ‘‘devout futurist’’, a spiritual entrepreneur. In his corporate avatar, Modi prides himself for his focus on ‘‘customer delight’’ and his unshakeable ‘‘faith in human potential’’. ModiCorp has interests in IT, document processing, telecommunications, cellular telephony and internet services. Perhaps Modi will be remembered for revolutionising the Indian office scenario when he ushered in Xerox technology in the country with Modi Xerox.
Modi has spread his zeal for the propagation of Hindutva through the Modi Foundation and through major networks which he has assiduously cultivated, whether as chairman of the Indian Chapter of the Asia Crime Prevention Foundation, or through his nomination as co-ordinator for the UN-sponsored World Peace Summit of Religious and Spiritual Leaders. He is also the Chairman of HinduNet Inc and vice-president of the Maha Bodhi Society of India. He has authored dozens of books ranging from Hinduism: The Universal Truth to Performance: A Manager’s Challenge, which has earned him awards like the British-Japan Friendship Association Award for World Peace and the Escorts Book Award.

It has not always been a smooth ride for Modi as overseas president of the VHP, and there have been instances when he has ruffled feathers of other religious groups. At a workshop organised by the World Buddhist Cultural Foundation, of which he is executive president, on ‘Conformity between Hinduism and Buddhism’, Thai monks were first horrified to learn that names of several notable monks were borrowed without permission and presented as supporters of the conference; they boycotted the meet as soon as they realised the WBCF represents a Hindu attempt to ‘‘swallow up’’ Buddhism.

Perhaps Modi will be remembered for his lavishness as a host whether at a business conclave or hosting a divine millennium eve party. Visitors to Varanasi remember the enormous throne, bedecked in bright orange carnations and large enough for over 100 people, which was set afloat in the ‘holy waters’ of the Ganga on the eve of the new millennium. For three days, this floating throne was the site of divine darshan, satsang, sandesh, bhajan, pravachan, aarti, puja and millennium pledges and was graced by the likes of the Dalai Lama and Ashok Singhal and singer Anuradha Paudwal.

Illustrations by: Ajit Kumar