MORADABAD, March 8: This is one connection Priyanka Gandhi will not be proud of. The Vadra family farm in Bagarpur, 12 km from Moradabad, hosts a Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh-run school and occasional shakhas.Sanjay Manu Vadera Farm, the favourite retreat of the Vadras, has a tastefully done-up farmhouse, a swimming pool - and Saraswati Shishu Mandir - a school run by the RSS. Om Prakash Vadera, the family patriarch and the uncle of Robert Vadra, says he donated the school to the RSS in 1995. ``I am the permanent chairman of the school,'' he adds.(The family uses different spellings for their surname.)Priyanka's father-in-law Rajendra Vadra is also associated with the school. ``Rajendraji is a regular visitor to the school and a generous donor,'' says principal Naresh Kumar Singh, flipping through an album of photographs of the Vaderas at school functions.An employee of the school says that even Priyanka had visited the premises when she had come to the farmhouse before hermarriage.``After the wedding the Vaderas had organised a grand reception at the farmhouse but Priyanka could not make it,'' he adds.Among the photographs on the walls of Singh's office are that of RSS founder Dr Keshav Rao Baliram Hegdewar, and Madhav Rao Sadashiv Rao Golwarkar. Copies of Panchjanya, the RSS mouthpiece, lie prominently on the principal's table. The school has on its rolls around 270 children from nursery to class VIII from nearby villages. All teachers are committed RSS workers. In the evenings, the school premises once again come alive with children gathering there for extra-curricular activities. ``It is a chance for the Hindus to come together, play together and think together,'' says Singh. RSS shakhas are sometimes held in the school premises. On other occasions, the children and neighbouring youth hold the shakha at the Government primary school nearby. ``If we hold shakhas regularly in our own premises, the manicured grass and the carefully tended flowers will be ruined.After all, it is not always possible to keep the children away,'' says the principal.The farm is named after the sons of Om Prakash who died in separate accidents. ``Both had got good education, having studied in Sherwood, and both did not get timely first-aid following the accidents. So I thought of starting a school and a hospital in their memory,'' he says.The land had been purchased in 1982. The hospital was established in 1994, and the school a year later. ``My purpose is not to make profit. So I donated the school to RSS and the hospital to Vivekananda Charitable Trust. But I am fully involved in their working,'' says Vadera.
