THIRUVANANTHAPURAM: While Sangh Parivar organisations celebrate RSS ideologue P Parameswaran’s navathy (90th birthday) with year-long programmes, the protagonist is more focused on the state’s changing political landscape.
Parameswarji - as he is addressed- believes hard work has started yielding results. Given the effort the BJP and the Sangh Parivar has put in, he says there is a perceptible change. “A Hindu nationalist wave is sweeping across the state,” he says.
One of the tallest figures in the Parivar, Parameswaran is not only the state’s most revered ideologue but a social philosopher, thinker and an orator par excellence too. His nearly 70-year-long public life has left an indelible mark on every sphere he has trod on. His initiation into social work as an RSS ‘Pracharak’ immediately after graduating in History (Hons) from University College, Thiruvananthapuram, was just the beginning of a long journey. In 1957, he was entrusted with the task of building the Bharatiya Jan Sangh in Kerala as its state organising secretary. In 1968, he became the national general secretary and later the vice-president. During the Emergency, he was arrested and imprisoned from 1975 to 77.
Though Parameswaran had a phenomenal growth in the Jan Sangh hierarchy, the social thinker and philosopher in him had always been inclined to return to more meaningful and enduring work with stress on inner engineering to change the psyche of the society.
The ugly turn of events in the Janata Parivar prompted him to quit party politics and to put his foot firmly on the social platform. By 1977 itself, he was made the director of the Deendayal Research Institute in New Delhi, a grass root level social institution founded by Nanaji Desmukh. He remained in the post for four years.
“In 1982, he realised it was time for him to return to Kerala as he was deeply worried about anti-national forces sowing the seeds of anti-nationalism by inciting communal passion and by brainwashing the youth,” recollects K Raman Pillai, former BJP state president.
A new organisation, Bharatheeya Vichara Kendram, was set up to effectively intervene and counter the attack on Indian culture and nationalism with its focus on national reconstruction.
His long association with Vivekananda Rock Memorial, Kanayakumari, in various capacities saw the Kendra spreading its activities across the country. Currently, he is the President of the Vivekananda Kendra.
On the current political scene, he says, “Whenever national forces make an upsurge, they (CPM) try to depict it as the growth of regressive forces as they only want their party to survive. Now, they depend on power. Without power, they cannot survive as communism and Marxism have already ceased to be ideologies for the future. In the modern world, such unscientific ideas have no relevance.”
While being in the midst of social, political and cultural activities as a true leader, he retained a poetic and philosophic mind. Initiated to the Ramakrishna Mission by Swami Agamananda, a social reformer and founder of the Advaita Ashram, Kalady, Parameswaran enlarged his inner realm with profound knowledge in the philosophy of the Vedas, Upanishads and the Gita. His strong footing in the oriental philosophy of the Vedas made him adept at analysing the pitfalls of western philosophy and, at certain points, its shallowness.