October 11, 2025 marks the 109th birth anniversary of Nanaji Deshmukh, a veteran social leader of post-Independence India who designed a new model of rural development through his experiments in the remote township of Chitrakoot in the erstwhile state of Madhya Pradesh.

Nanaji’s dedication to usher in social change through cultural rootedness, fieldwork, and far-sightedness earned him the title of ‘Rashtra-rishi’.

Conferred with Padma Vibhushan in 1999, and later duly acknowledged as a Bharat Ratna by the entire nation in 2019, Nanaji Deshmukh was a quintessential pracharak who devoted the second half of his life to the idea of ‘gramodaya se rashtrodaya’, i.e., rural upliftment for the upliftment of the nation.

A dharmic politician who played a pivotal role in establishing the foundations of the Bharatiya Jana Sangh, he was amongst the first lot of pracharaks loaned out to Dr. Syama Prasad Mookerjee by the second Sarsanghchalak of Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh, Guruji Golwalkar, to work in the political domain. Over a period of two decades, he strengthened the hold of the fledgling political party across various parts of Northern India, and later was central to mobilising the movement of Jayaprakash Narayan against the Indira Gandhi regime. The build-up of JP’s resistance led to the imposition of Emergency, which was again staunchly opposed by JP, Nanaji, and the RSS volunteers.

This resistance movement finally culminated in the fall of Indira Gandhi’s regime and led to the Janata Party-led coalition government coming to power at the Centre.

Nanaji was instrumental in knitting this coalition government and proved his credentials as an “organiser par excellence", as remarked later by Arun Jaitley. While paying homage to Nanaji, L. K. Advani had mentioned that he would be remembered as an “inventor of coalition politics and also for value-based politics".

Whether one appreciates his role in fundraising as the treasurer of Bharatiya Jana Sangh, or his short stint as a parliamentarian, one realises that Nanaji donned many hats during his political career and yet remained anchored in an ethical framework of politics.

At the pinnacle of his political trajectory in 1977, after being elected from the Lok Sabha constituency of Balrampur (Uttar Pradesh), Nanaji refused to accept a ministerial berth in the Morarji Desai government despite being a central force of the Janata Party. His humble political demeanour decisively asserted itself when, at the age of 65, he decided to retire from active politics in 1980 after the formation of the Bharatiya Janata Party.

The remainder of his life was sacrificed at the altar of the nation for the development of ‘graam’, the basic unit of Bharatiya social life. He had displayed a remarkable streak of being an institution builder early on in his life, when he initiated national publications including ‘Rashtradharma’ and ‘Panchjanya’, and started the first Saraswati Shishu Mandir in Gorakhpur in 1949. His institution-building capacity attained its full potential much later in the sacred geography of Chitrakoot.

Nanaji Deshmukh’s approach towards rural development and the upliftment of rural societies is a unique model worthy of emulation across the length and breadth of our nation. He devised a methodology that identified the fundamental social unit of family as the focal point to be harnessed for transforming villages, the building blocks of the Bharatiya rashtra.

To realise the vision of Pt. Deendayal........

© News18