Rajendra Singh

Rajendra Singh (Rajju Bhaiya) (29 January 1922 – 14 July 2003), was the fourth Sarsanghchalak (Chief) of the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS), a right-wing Hindutva paramilitary organisation. He was chief of that organisation between 1994 and 2000. A physicist by profession, he was a professor and head of the Department of Physics at the University of Allahabad but left the post and joined the RSS full-time in 1966.

Early life Rajendra Singh was born on 29 January 1922, in the village of Banail, located in the Bulandshahr district, United Provinces. He was born into a Tomar Rajput family, to parents Jwala Devi and Balbir Pratap Singh. His father was an engineer in the Shahjahanpur.

Rajendra Singh completed his matriculation in Unnao. He subsequently attended the Modern School in New Delhi for a brief period before transferring to St. Joseph's College in Nainital. He later pursued higher education at the University of Allahabad, where he earned BSc, MSc, and PhD degrees.

Academic career Singh was acknowledged as an exceptionally brilliant student by C. V. Raman, the Indian physicist and Nobel Prize-winner, when he was his examiner in MSc. He also offered Singh a fellowship for advanced research in nuclear physics.

He joined Allahabad University after majoring in Physics to teach spectroscopy. He taught at the university for several years, where later he was appointed head of the Department of Physics. He was a very popular teacher of the subject, using simple and clear concepts. While in Uttar Pradesh, Singh worked with Lal Bahadur Shastri, Chandra Shekhar and V. P. Singh. This marked the first instance of a central government in India being explicitly associated with the ideology of Hindutva. However, the Vajpayee government's inability to implement key ideological objectives of the Sangh–primarily due to the constraints of coalition politics and Vajpayee’s moderate stance—led to dissatisfaction and criticism from the organisation.

In 1988, Singh praised Nathuram Godse, the assassin of Mahatma Gandhi, for his commitment to the concept of Akhand Bharat, stating "His intentions were good but he used wrong methods". However, in 1997, in a rally in which Vajpayee was present, Singh called Gandhi "among the sons of Bharat Mata", adding "He is held in reverence by the society though not decorated by the government with Bharat Ratna", in an attempt to win support from Gandhi loyalists in the Indian electorate.

In 1999, Singh attacked liberals and progressives as a "class of bastards which tries to implant an alien culture in our land".

Death Singh died on 14 July 2003 at Kaushik Ashram in Pune, Maharashtra, where he had been residing following his retirement.