Opinion How Madan Das Devi helped ABVP evolve from a student organisation to a pan-India youth movement

Born in 1942, Madan Das was the first organising secretary of the ABVP. Unlike several other student organisations, the ABVP has long graduated from a mere campus-centric student body dealing with laboratory-and-lavatory issues to a youth movement for a larger cause. Thanks to its unique style of knitting together a network of individuals, the 75-year-old organisation today enjoys huge influence in practically all walks of public life. Several prominent politicians, renowned advocates, academics and vice-chancellors, journalists and media persons have spent their formative years in the ABVP. He used to remind fellow karyakartas,“For every karyakarta, the organisation must give a sense that he is needed…People continue to remain in an organisation when they feel that they are ‘wanted’.” No wonder, Madan ji stayed in touch with many ex-ABVP workers all through his life.

The position of organising secretary is not so much about prestige, as it is a responsibility. Regardless of any constitutional authority, an organising secretary is expected to possess moral authority. Madan Das commanded this moral authority very well and, more importantly, he used it as needed. The organising secretary is supposed to rise above everything and set an example for “unattached involvement”. It is also expected that he takes everybody along, remains completely away from personal likes and dislikes and treats everybody with equanimity. Madan Das, as many have highlighted, would consider karyakartas as human beings first – with all their talents as well as limitations. For an organisation, and more particularly for an organising secretary, it is important to remember that every individual has some merit and one needs abundant patience to let that merit surface — this was Madan ji’s approach. All through his life, he remained not only steadfastly committed to this informally evolved science of organisation, routinely practised in the RSS and many RSS-inspired organisations, but also articulated the same in multiple ways. Without compromising on the basics of this science of organisation, Madan Das left no stone unturned to take ABVP to every nook and corner of the country. His relentless initial efforts over several decades made ABVP a truly all-India organisation.

During the Emergency of 1975, while the ABVP was not banned, several of its leaders were put behind bars and restrictions badly affected the organisation’s network. During that period, Madanji ensured, firstly, that the morale of workers remains intact and secondly, that the organisation continues to function. With a team of dedicated functionaries, he mobilised thousands of ABVP workers to offer satyagraha and prepared them to be behind bars for an uncertain number of months.

For a while, Madan Das was also in charge of coordination between the RSS and the BJP. In the last decade of the last century, with Atal Bihari Vajpayee as the prime minister, for the first time an RSS swayamsevak was at the helm of government. With this first-of-its-kind situation, there were many issues to sort out. Madan Das deftly handled them through his emphasis on continuous dialogue and mutual give-and-take. Notably, he was able to build informal relations with all frontline BJP, and even NDA, leaders of those days.

Madan Das was a strong votary of the scientific functional system or karya-paddhati for any organisation. He always reminded his colleagues that our sound functional system based on time-tested principles of the science of organisation has to be as sacred to us as our ideology. It was his firm belief that one can’t sacrifice organisational systems or functional procedures at the altar of ideology.

Madan Das leaves a strong legacy of applied science of organisation, evolved in the RSS and ably articulated by several senior pracharaks like him. Like the others, he too was deeply conscious of the fact that an individual first gets attracted to a movement more by the treatment he gets, with ideology coming into play only later. An ace organiser, he accepted people with their shortcomings and helped them rise above their frailties through his unconditional affection, without being preachy.

Those who indulge in mindless political criticism of RSS must understand its science of organisation. And as long as scores of committee practitioners of this science of organisation are around, the Sangh — on the threshold of its centennial celebrations —will continue to march ahead.

The writer is president, Indian Council for Cultural Relations, former national vice-president of the BJP and MP, Rajya Sabha