BJP plans December 12 event to resurrect Hindutva icon Balkrishna Moonje

NEW DELHI: As part of the BJP-led Centre's attempts at resuscitating the Hindutva icons, December 12 could see for the first time in decades a public functions in the capital to celebrate the birth anniversary of Balkrishna Shivram Moonje, one of the founders of the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh.

An eye surgeon from Nagpur and a great votary of imparting military training to the youth who founded Bhonsla Military School in Nashik in 1937, Moonje's birth anniversary will see celebrations around his neglected statue near New Delhi Railway Station. The statue was installed in the 1970s when Delhi Municipality was under Jana Sangh control and Hansraj Gupta was the city mayor. Babasaheb Ghatate, a friend of Moonje and an RSS insider, had donated for the statues in Delhi and Nagpur.

PG Pathak of Central Hindu Military Education Society said, "As of now, BJP MP Meenakshi Lekhi has confirmed participation and a few senior party leaders are being approached." The highlight of the event will be a route march by students of Bhonsla Military School, Nashik and its branch in Nagpur. "Route march will be worth watching," Pathak said.

Counted among the founders of Hindu nationalism, Moonje, once in Congress, was also a mentor of RSS stalwarts KB Hedgewar and Madhav Sadashiv Golwalkar and President of Hindu Mahasabha for more than a decade in the 1920s and 30s. An acolyte of Tilak and a firm believer in imparting military training to the Hindu youth, Moonje's fascination for military training came from his first-hand experience of the Boer War that he witnessed as part of the Medical Corps. In the early 1930s, he travelled to Italy, then under fascist Mussollini, to witness how Central Military School of Physical Education and Balilla and Avanguardisti, organisations were run.

Bilaspur-born Moonje parted ways with Congress in the early 1920s and had a bitter fallout with Gandhi whose principles of non-violence and secularism he abhorred.