The story of the RSS tribal front

RSS front with a missionary goal
16 Feb 2001, 1209 hrs IST, Rajesh Ramachandran,THE TIMES OF INDIA NEWS SERVICE

NEW DELHI: Far from being an apolitical NGO, the Vanvasi Kalyan Ashram (VKA) was founded to stop the conversion of tribals to Christianity. As much an RSS outfit as any other, the VKA, like all RSS affiliates, is organised and run by trained RSS workers.
In fact, the organiser of the recent Vanvasi Swadeshi Mela, Kripa Prasad Singh is one of the prominent RSS pracharaks - full-time unmarried missionaries of the Sangh -who have been loaned to the VKA.
According to RSS sources, in the 1950s, a Maharashtrian Brahmin, Balasaheb Deshpande, was appointed as the district tribal development officer at Jashpur (now Raigarh in Chattisgarh). Deshpande's brother was an RSS functionary close to the then RSS chief, M S Golwalkar. Thus it was but natural for Deshpande to be exercised by the activities of Christian missionaries amongst the tribals. Both the brothers met Golwalkar asking him how to put a stop to the `conversion activities'. Golwalkar asked Deshpande to quit his government job and be on his own to set up an organisation.
Deshpande, a qualified lawyer, thus began practising law in order to fund his own attempts to stop conversion. Deshpande set up the Vanvasi Kalyan Ashram, Jashpur, and opened a school for tribal children under this banner. For, he had identified that the first contact of many tribals to Christianity was when their children go to the missionary school.
Initially, the school was not a Sangh affiliate in the true sense of the term. But within five years, the Sangh acknowledged the potential of the VKA's missionary school by sending the first pracharak over, Moreshwar Ketkar. Till 1977 the VKA's activities were largely confined to Madhya Pradesh.
In that year, Balasaheb Deoras, who was RSS chief at the time, decided to make it into an all-India organisation to stop conversions to Christianity. The name was modified into Akhil Bharatiya Vanvasi Kalyan Ashram. K Bhaskar Rao who was working as a pracharak in Kerala, became the first organising secretary of the ABVKA.
Every provincial unit sent pracharaks to the affiliate and thus the anti-conversion drive caught on. Meanwhile, the tribals had been inducted into RSS training camps. Now, the RSS claims it has some tribal pracharaks.
RSS also set up a registered NGO, Vanbandhu Parishad, which funds the hundreds of single-teacher schools which have been opened up in Jharkhand some time ago. The essential theme of this work appears to be to stop the flow of tribals into the Christian fold.