The Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh lost two of its most admired leaders on Saturday.
While senior RSS ideologue and history scholar Sripati Sastry (74) died of a heart attack at his Pune residence, Sangh Parivar veteran and former Rajya Sabha member Nanaji Deshmukh (94) passed away at Chitrakoot, Madhya Pradesh.
Founder of the nation’s first rural university, the Chitarkoot Gramodya Vishwavidyalaya, Nanaji, a Padma Vibhushan awardee, had pledged his body for medical research. Suffering from age-related ailments, he had refused to be taken to Delhi for treatment.
Born in Kadoli in Maharashtra’ s Parbhani district on October 11, 1916, Nanaji had founded the Deendayal Research Institute at Chitrakoot and had undertaken exemplary social work in education, healthcare and rural self-reliance.
Sastry, a father figure for all Sangh activists, suffered from diabetes.
He had held various high posts in the RSS at the national and state level and his lectures on the RSS ideology and nationalism are considered memorable.
Born at Harihar in Mysore on June 19, 1935, Sastry came in contact with the RSS during school days. At 21, he became secretary of the Sangh’s Mysore city unit. A gold medallist in MA from Mysore University, he completed his doctoral studies from the University of Pune (UoP) in 1961.
After teaching history at Pune’s Nowrosjee Wadia College for almost 18 years, he joined the UoP’s history department from where he retired.
Fluent in many languages including Marathi, English and Hindi, Sastry was an acclaimed orator. His speech at a 1983 seminar in Pune’s Papal Seminary at De Nobili College was widely acclaimed and was published as a book on the RSS’ viewpoint on Indian Christians.
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