RSS praises Rao for Ayodhya 'inaction'

'True Chanakya of politics'

Late PV Narasimha Rao may have been shunned by his own party, the Congress, in his later life and even after his death, but the former Prime Minister has found many admirers outside his own political fold, namely in the Rashtriya Swaymsevak Sangh (RSS).

While former Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee, gave Rao credit for being the initiator of the Pokhran nuclear tests that the National Democratic Alliance government under Vajpayee later conducted, the RSS Sarsanghchalak KS Sudershan praised Rao as the true Chanakya of Indian politics.

In an obituary in the RSS publication Panchjanya, Sudershan said although secularists and Congressmen blamed Rao for "inaction" when kar sewaks stormed Ayodhya, Rao's inaction was not "without reason".

While Sudershan did not elaborate on these reasons he hinted that there were some political calculations made, but under the pressure from secularists and minority community members, he could not follow through and had to dismiss four Bharatiya Janata Party-led state governments.

"He had to ban our organisation under pressure, but we never held it against him and always shared cordial relations with him," said Sudershan in his article.

Most of all, Sudershan said Rao's greatest contribution to history would be not sending the Central Reserve Police Force (CRPF) men into the Babri Masjid-Ram Janmabhoomi till "the idol of Ram was installed in the sanctum sanctorum of the complex and a temporary structure had come up."

While Rao had been accused of peddling "soft hindutva" during his premiereship, his co-option in the RSS, arises more out of the fact that the Congress appeared to be "rejecting" Rao due to his not being a Nehru-Gandhi family member.

BJP chief LK Advani had, in a previous interview, called Rao "as great a Prime Minister as Lal Bahadur Shastri". The Sangh Parivar has made no secret of its love for first Home Minister Sardar Vallabhai Patel.

It has always asserted that the Sardar had been wronged by a Nehru-loving Congress and denied his rightful place in history as the one man who kept the nation together by deftly handling the accession issues of princely states.

The RSS admiration for Rao falls into the same pattern of anti-Nehru-Gandhi family politics, where Congressmen shun-ned by their own find space in the Parivar.

In fact, Panchjanya carries a full page of obituaries on Rao as if to atone the oversight of Congressmen, who, with the sole exception of Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, had little or nothing to say about Rao.