Senior RSS Pracharak M.A. Krishnan, popularly known as M.A. Sir, passed away on September 29 at Amrita Institute of Medical Sciences (AIMS) in Kochi, Keralam. One of the senior-most Sangh Pracharaks in the State, M.A. Sir’s mortal remains were brought to the RSS office, where he had lived for decades, for public viewing. The mortal remains will be taken to his ancestral home on the morning of September 30 for the last rites.
He belonged to the generation of legendary Pranth Pracharaks K. Bhaskar Raoji, Renga Hariji, P. Madhavji, P. Parameswarji, A.V. Bhaskarji and R. Venugopalji.
He was the founder of Balagokulam and Tapasya, the Kerala chapter of Sanskar Bharati. In fact, Sanskar Bharati was incepted several years after Tapasya was founded. Tapasya was started during the dark days of the Emergency.
M.A. Sir was born in Aivarkala, Kollam district, in 1929. When he joined Sanskrit College in Tiruvananthapuram in 1947, he joined the Sangh when P. Parameswarji was the Mukhya Shikshak. After passing Mahopadhyaya from the Sanskrit College, Bhaskar Raoji sent him to Vazhoor, Kottayam, to teach Sanskrit in a school there.
Simultaneously, he started a Sangh sakha there. After a year, he came out as a Sangh Pracharak in 1954. Thereafter, he worked as Taluk Pracharak and Zilla Pracharak in Kottayam, Kollam and Alappuzha.
In 1964, Bhaskar Raoji sent M.A. Sir to Kozhikode to take over as the editor of “Kesari”, the Sangh-inspired Malayalam weekly. Until then, “Kesari” was considered a Swayamsevak’s journal. But M.A. Sir converted it into the cultural and dharmic weekly of Keralam. He continued in that position until 1990.
In the meantime, he shouldered the responsibilities of Pranth Boudhik Pramukh and later Pranth Prachar Pramukh. When he was in Kozhikode with the “Kesari” assignment, he, along with P. Madhavji, contacted several great souls and brought them to the perennial Sangh Ganga. Senior Congress leader K. Kelappaji, alias Kerala Gandhi, was one among them. He started Balagokulam as a ‘Balagokulam page’ in “Kesari”.
Later, weekly classes were started. After the lifting of the Emergency, Shobhayatras were started on Janmashtami Day. Weekly Dharmik classes and Shobhayatras were his brainchildren.
Even though Balagokulam was started in Kerala, eventually it became a national organisation and Janmashtami Shobhayatras are carried out in major cities in Bharat.
At the same time, it spread to all continents and various countries in Africa, Europe, the US, the Middle East and the Far East.
Tapasya was designed as an art-cultural-literary movement with a nationalistic outlook. It became a platform for artists, writers and cultural leaders. Later on, it became a national organisation called ‘Sanskar Bharati’.
In the year 2000, Balagokulam got membership of the Global Network of Religions for Children (GNRC), the international forum of NGOs for teaching children religious lessons.
