I wrote this article on Nanaji Deshmukh for Organiser. You
can read a version of the article below:
We are not for ourselves but for those who are exploited and
vulnerable.” Nanaji Deshmukh said and lived his entire life by this motto.
Eight years after his death, the Government of India conferred on him the
Bharat Ratna, on the eve of the Republic Day. He is the one who turned the idea
of Antyodaya into reality through Gramodaya. He was an able organiser, thinker,
revolutionary and a social architect (Samaj Shilpi). He made successful efforts
to implement the ideas of Gandhi’s Gram Swaraj, Deendayal’s Antyoday and JP’s
Sarvodaya through Gramodaya.
Born in Maharashtra he devoted his entire life to the
Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) making Uttar Pradesh his area of working as
an RSS pracharak. He was based in Gorakhpur and expanded the RSS work in
Eastern Uttar Pradesh. In 1950, he opened the first Saraswati Shishu Mandir in
Gorakhpur, which has now bloomed into over 18,000 branches across the length
and breadth of the country. He worked closely with Deendayal Upadhyay, whom he
treated like his senior even though they were of the same age. When the
magazines ‘Panchjanya’ and ‘Rashtra Dharma’ were published from Lucknow, Nanaji
Deshmukh was made its Managing Editor with Atal Behari Vajpayee as its Editor.
In 1951, the RSS loaned a team of committed swayamsewaks
under the leadership of Deendayal Upadhyay to Dr SP Mookerjee to work in the
newly launched Bharatiya Jan Sangh (BJS). Nanaji was one of the committed
swayamsewaks, and he was given the work of Uttar Pradesh where he devoted the
next 25 years of his life, taking BJS to new heights. He established
sub-divisional, district and state unit of BJS over the next five-six years.
The credit for the expansion of BJS in Uttar Pradesh should be given to the
organisational skills of Nanaji Deshmukh along with the remarkable oratory
skills of Atal Behari Vajpayee and the able navigation of Deendayal Upadhyay.
Nanaji also developed cordial relations with opposition leaders like Charan
Singh and Ram Manohar Lohia. In fact Nanaji had even brought Ram Manohar Lohia
to Jan Sangh which helped the latter to study the organisation closely. After
the mysterious death of Deendayalji, Vajpayee was given the reins of the party
and Nanaji became part of his team along with LK Advani and others.
As corruption and chaos reigned under the Indira Gandhi
regime in the 1970s, students and youth took to the streets across the country.
Jayprakash Narayan (JP) was requested to provide direction and leadership to
the movement. It was due to the efforts of Nanaji that JP agreed to steer the
agitation. Nanaji was very close to JP. Nanaji, at an event with JP, had made his
famous declaration that politicians should give up politics at the age of 60
and work for the society. Nanaji later implemented this on himself. Though he
had won the 1977 Lok Sabha election from Balrampur and he could have become a
minister in the government, he chose to renounce politics.
In order to give
shape to Deendayalji’s Antoydaya and philosophy of Integral Humanism, Nanaji
had set up Deendayal Research Institute (DRI) in 1968. For this, he received
the support of RSS second Sarsanghchalak Guru Golwalkar. Nanaji turned to rural
India to provide an alternative development model to the villages and set up
Jai Prabha Gram in Gonda where thousands of drought-stricken villages were
provided bamboo-pipe tube wells. Jai Prabha Gram was named after JP and his
wife Prabha Devi who was a long-time associate of Mahatma Gandhi. Projects were
also started in Beed and Nagpur areas of Maharashtra. In the drought-hit Beed,
Nanaji got check dams built in large numbers. In the 1980s, he decided to work
in the Chitrakoot region that stretched across parts of Uttar Pradesh and
Madhya Pradesh that suffered from acute poverty and backwardness. He built his
Ashram in Chitrakoot along the banks of Mandakini river and called it Siyaram
Kuteer. He began the task of Gramodaya with 500 villages spread in an area of
50km around this point and urged young couples to work as social architects
(samaj Shilpi) for Gramodaya. Hundreds of young people responded to his call
and started working with him.
While Nanaji brought
local villagers into his project he also managed to explain his vision to
industrial houses like Tata, Vadia, Mahindra, Goenka, Thapar and many others.
As a result, they provided support and many times even visited the project
sites at Nanaji’s request. Late President APJ Abdul Kalam often mentioned PURA
(Providing Urban Utilities to Rural Areas) as a tool to check problems of
migration and development. Dr. Kalam said that the idea of PURA came to his
mind after visiting Nanaji’s Chitrakoot project in which villages were
organised into clusters where efforts were made to provide all civic amenities.
Under Nanaji’s
guidance a Gramodaya song was composed with the lines - ‘Har haath ko denge
kaam, har khet ko paani, fir se dharti sajegi, jaise dulhan rani (Every hand
will get work, every field will get water, the earth will bloom again, like a
royal bride)’. Nanaji was convinced that the upliftment of the village would
make villagers independent and with a change in the condition of the village
and villagers, the administration and politics will also change. Hence he
inspired people to become self-reliant and emphasised minimum dependence on
government. He believed that no economic growth is possible without becoming
independent.
He talked about
making villages fully independent units where the emphasis would be on
agriculture, water resources, health, education, employment as well as
character building. He felt that this was possible only when local traditional
knowledge and technology is used along with the efforts of the villagers to
create a system.
To make agriculture
profitable, Nanaji first built check dams for water conservation. He
established Kirishi Vigyan Kendra, where research could be done to make
loss-making cultivations profitable. On the one hand he started the project
‘Nanhi Duniya’ for the education of children, and on the other, he set up
Mahatma Gandhi Gramodaya Vishvavidyalaya for higher education. This was the
first university that had been set up with rural development as its focus. To
provide health services to villagers, Aarogya Dham was set up where
arrangements were made for medical facilities of international standards and
where Ayurveda, Yoga and Naturopathy were used. As he laid great stress on
self-reliance, he also ensured the establishment of Udyamita Vidyapeeth
(Entrepreneurship Training Centre) where people could be trained in skills to
create low-investment jobs with high returns.
Taking a look at his
work in the field of social ervice, the Government nominated him to the Upper
House. For his experiments in development and self-reliance of villages, he was
also conferred the Padma Vibhushan in 1999. Prime Minister Narendra Modi said
after the announcement of Bharat Ratna on him, “Nanaji Deshmukh's stellar
contribution towards rural development showed the way for empowering those
living in our villages. He personifies humility, compassion and service to the
downtrodden. He is a Bharat Ratna, in the truest sense.” Not only did he
understand the ideas of Gandhi, Deendayal and JP, he also made them relevant to
our times and manifested them on the ground. Hence a postal stamp in 2017 to
mark the birth centenary of Nanaji thus summarised the essence of his ideas and
vision – Gramodaya will be possible only with the feeling of cooperation in our
society.
No comments:
Post a Comment