Former long serving RSS chief in Goa, Subhash Velingkar, at home with his dog Lauki… “I sent my children to study in a Marathi medium school, my neighbors Salvador and Caitan also studied in Marathi schools. I’m not for Goa joining Maharashtra!”

LIFE is full of ironies. Between what is and what could be there’s oftentimes a narrative of betrayal and pain and this is one such narrative. I realized this even more keenly after a recent conversation with long serving educationist and former Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) chief Subhash Velingkar.
It is well worth going a down memory lane with him for he is an acute observer and articulate too. Not for nothing was he the mentor of late chief minister of Goa, Manohar Parrikar. It was an RSS team led by him which groomed Manohar Parrikar with very little available funds at that time. All the money they spent was meticulously accounted for Subhash bab tells me when the BJP was seeking to come to power in Goa.
Today, Subhash Velingkar is a disillusioned man as far as the BJP in Goa is concerned and he is in the company of many who stand with him. The BJP has not lived up to the RSS’ sanatan philosophy of dharma but has instead compromised its moral values to stay in power wrongly. One person, Manohar Parrikar, is responsible for it, says Subhash Velingkar.
For the nitty gritty of how power destroys and destroys absolutely we must someday read the autobiography or biography of Subhash Velinkar. That is if he ever gets down to writing it! Commanding enormous respect both in Hindu and Catholic Goa between which there was once a lot of harmony and affinity, he says, “We come from the same DNA!” If we see a divided Goa today it is first because of the Congress government and the situation was compounded by Manohar Parrikar, who played the Catholic card to perfection.
In the process he forgot the foundation of his own roots, respecting neither opinion nor the togetherness the RSS swears by, according to Velingkar, “I wanted to meet Manohar during his last days (he passed away on March 17, 2019) but the BJP coterie around him wouldn’t let me meet him. They didn’t let even his own brother meet him!”

But Subhash Velinkar continues to live walking down the straight and narrow pathway of the RSS and its sanatan dharma. He says the RSS has been wrongly portrayed across India. Actually, India is the essence of democracy and in no other country were minorities as happy as in India. None wanted to live in Pakistan or Bangladesh!
Listening to him talk in a measured way one wonders if he had sought political office earlier on he could have made a difference to Goan politics? I cannot help but agree with Subhash bab that the truth is when we do not think and grow up at home in our mother tongue, the language and culture which comes with it gets lost, we are the losers. Subhash Velinkar lives his life with the courage of his convictions, caring about what is morally correct, for the betterment of past, present and future…he is an educationist first and still believes that primary education should be in the mother tongue of children and government grants should go to only primary schools teaching in the mother tongue of the children.
What he says has a bearing on the Goa we live in nowadays. What is ironic is that he has constantly played a key role in promoting others while he himself stepped back from wielding the reins of power to make the changes he wanted to see happening…any conversation with Subhash Velinkar makes me wish he had won electoral power a long time ago! He would have made for a far-seeing politician — unlike his one-time favorite student, Manohar Parrikar, who had no scruples compromising with the values of the RSS philosophy — and so we have today’s BJP which for Subhash bab is worse than the Congress ever was.
Many in Goa say Subhash Velingkar would have been the ideal person for the education portfolio in Chief Minister Pratapsingh Rane’s Cabinet – he would have at the very least made sure that primary education was promoted to further the cause of Goa’s mother tongue which is Konkani, also Marathi for historical reasons…in principle, any mother tongue of the people of this country. It’s a long, fascinating, complex and convoluted love-hate relationship between mai-bhas Konkani and maushi-bhas Marathi in Goa! With the fight resolved as it were when English become the mistress in a marriages of political convenience.
Seventy years plus Subhash Velingkar continues to live near the Mahalakshmi temple in Panaji in this distinctive blue house overlooking a lane which is short, narrow and chok-a-blok with parked cars and scooters. It easy to talk to him on the first floor square verandah of his home in the company of pet dog Lauki. I think he is one of the few in Goa who has as much of an inside out as outside in understanding of how Goan politics has evolved, how in the post-Liberation years it has corrupted and turned shallow.
He speaks fluently in English and comes across as a teacher to the core of his soul. The BJP may have parted ways with him bitterly over Manohar Parrikar’s non-compliance to RSS values but Subhash Velinkar is a never say die man. No matter how much he has been wronged, despite the government of the day inflicting its ire on him vis-à-vis any political ambitions it thinks he may be nursing, he keeps himself alive and positive on the side of a brighter future for Goa and India in the long run!
And so the narrative continues as he commands and consolidates respect from the bulk of the RSS cadre in Goa.

In a freewheeling conversation with TARA NARAYAN:

My early life….
I WAS born on October 7, 1948 in this house where I am living. I have a very limited family on my father’s side for he too was an only son, he had no sisters or brothers. My mother too was an only daughter in her family. So, I have few relatives. I was born and bred in Panaji near the Mahalakshmi temple. My wife Sushma passed away last year and I have four children…my dog’s name? I think it is my granddaughter who named my dog Lauki! Actually, my father and mother came from Veling (near Mardol), about 36 years ago they shifted to Goa and three families had formed the math in Veling.
You can say our families were involved in the freedom movement as part of the Azad Gomantak Dal sevak, it was founded by Vishwanath Lawande, Narayan Hari Naik, Dattatraya Deshpande, Prabhakar Sinari and others associated with Azad Bhavan at Porvorim. My father Bhaskar Velingkar had been arrested, beaten up, released for there was no proof. He visited his friends in jail and gave them a water melon in which was hidden an hacksaw blade…the three prisoners managed to use the blade to cut through the doors to escape!
Those days many were quietly in the movement for freedom from colonial rule. I remember Flaviano Dias whose house my father had later fled for refuge in Girgaum in Bombay which served as Congress House. Those years of the freedom movement `Jwala’ pamphlets were published and distributed to enlighten people about the slavery of the Portuguese regime.
For 12 years I didn’t see my father, I was six years old when he went off to Bombay and he returned by steamer only after Goa was liberated. I was 17 when I went to receive him to bring him back home, he hugged me, I remember that. In Bombay he had worked for a penicillin factory but you can say I am a tailor’s son, for that was his family’s profession.
But my mother’s grandfather Ramchandra Salgaocar was in the building construction business. He built 14 theatres in Goa which included National theatre in Panaji. My own paternal grandparents, my father had lost them in childhood and I never saw them.

My education…..
I WAS educated in the Marathi medium at the Mushtifund school upto 4th standard, 5th to 9th I attended Portuguese Lyceum school. In those days after 9th standard one went for further studies to India or Portugal. But Goa was liberated in 1961. Those days there were only two institutions: the Lycium and Escola Technique Elemente de Goa. I did two years of vocational training in carpentry — if tailoring had been offered I’d have studied that for it was my father’s profession.
At that time there was no backup of English, it was all in Portuguese. In between I took tuitions from Shantaram Vengurlekar, he was my teacher in Marathi and I was a first ranker. He also taught me English till SSC, he was the only teacher back then for teachers of English were not available. He taught me basic things and I passed 8th and was not confident in my English exams, so I went to Progress High School near Church and repeated my 9th and 10th coping with English. I also schooled at a Santa Cruz convent, the Parochial High School up to 11th standard SSC; whoever failed were re-examined here.
For some time I was studying secretly without telling my grandfather! Only two students passed in 10th standard, Cecelia Fernandes, she was promoted for want of a few marks, so I was the only clear rank holder. After People’s High School I went on to Dhempe College to graduate in Arts , BA.

My marriage….
I FELL in love early with a girl while in SSC but our parents didn’t want it as it would be an inter-caste marriage. In the end I had to elope with her to Bombay to get married at a place down Bhim Jheevanji lane at Girgaum and it cost me only Rs35! There were only four of us, me and Sushma who would be my wife, and two friends. My family disapproved our marriage because while we were from Gomantak Maratha Samaj she was from Kshatriya Maratha which is upper lower class!
We started out living in rented homes beginning at Fontainhas for a year. I was unemployed. My paternal grandfather had given me two motorcycles, I rented them out. Later on my parents accepted the marriage for I was their only son and they loved me. My wife Sushma Toraskar became Sarita Velinkar and we went on to have our four children Rajendra, Gauri, Sailesh, Geeta. Rajendra or Raju my eldest son lives in Margao and has two sons; Gauri has a daughter and son, Sailesh who lives with me is single, Geeta became Signapurkar after marriage, no children, she’s an assistant director with the Agricultural Department.

It was a merry-go-round of jobs for a while…..
MY first job was as sub-editor at daily Marathi language Navprabha for a year. But my passion and ambition was to be a teacher. I had appeared for Bank of India interview at Dhempe College and out of 1,600 candidates I was fortunate to be one of the 30 selected. I got my letter of appointment at Bank of India at Vasco. Meanwhile an advertisement had appeared for teachers for the Sharda Durga High School in Bicholim, English medium. I took that job!
But in the class it was terrible. Vasant Tomke with Subhash Salkar and Harish Chandra Naik were doing this school as a social service. I decided to help out because I preferred to teach at Sharda Durga instead of doing banking which was not my field. This was in sometime 1971. I was here for 11-a-half years of pukka teaching as assistant teacher on a salary as per government rules at Rs161 and after first year graduated to Rs421.
Later I moved to New English High School at Mandrem which Ramakant Khalap had started and he invited me to be headmaster. I had just one condition, don’t interfere in my appointment of staff and in my RSS work. We had many first generation learners coming out from this school, 40 percent were Catholic students and we enjoyed very good relations in those days. Students did very well academically with results of first batch 94%! And Pernem in those days was considered backward.

So we come to my RSS association and political leanings…
I joined the RSS as a 14 years old boy in 1962 with the first shaka opening at the Mahalakshmi temple itself. Through my jobs I took my RSS life seriously and my wife never complained although I was often away for long periods, my work entailed quite a bit of travelling and I was never at home even on Saturdays or Sundays. In 1971-1972 I was second-in-command and had to go everywhere. Our ideal of the BJP or formerly Jana Sangh is drawn from the biography by Dal Thegal. The RSS has several wings and the BJP was its political wing.
During the Emergency in 1975 we in the RSS wanted to get the freedom fighters together to stage a satyagraha but we were arrested because the Congress invoked MISA! I was in jail for 10 months at Aguada. Throughout my wife supported me and she herself was a familiar face with all our friends in the movement and she contributed by forming women’s wings wherever we went. She had her own personality.
I stood for Panaji bye-elections in 2019….
I LOST but I am not worth 516 votes! I’m worth at least 2,500 to 3,000 but the BJP manipulated the elections with its usual tricks. Actually we (Goa Suraksha Manch) have contested on three occasions, once with Aravind Bhatikar and again with Anand Shirodkar but couldn’t get more than 200 to 300 votes.

My achievements…
MY life’s achievements? I was not satisfied only earning money. I prefer to earn people! The students I taught became my assistants in social work and after I was out of RSS. Apart from the Goa Suraksha Manch earlier I have now established Bharat Mata Ki Jai which is a strictly non-political organization.
For me education must be wholesome, there must be Bharat in education, this is the main tragedy. Every education should be culturally oriented and it upsets me when some people are happy when Pakistan wins over India and light firecrackers! This is not loyal to mother country. Our version of RSS is always Bharat Mata Ki Jai. TB Cunha was the father of Goan nationalism, it’s not religious. Dr Julio Menezes was equally responsible for Kranti Din. I believe people’s power should be absolute. In a true sense 90 percent of the RSS is with me although we have no office for Bharat Mata Ki Jai.
At primary level at least we have this principle of promoting mother languages (this is in the 8th Schedule of the Constitution). Even if 99 percent of people say no to it I will not support them for this is scientific and has to happen for the good of the country. Do you know Sanskrit is the language medium most suitable for IT education?
Today I am satisfied that I’ve been able to contribute towards generation next. Yes, my son Sailendra Velingkar is part of the Bharat Mata Ki Jai and so are 18 students of mine including Avadhut Kamat and others.

Bharat Mata Ki Jai is my own social organization started in 2017…
I started Bharat Mata Ki Jai to continue the fight to ensure all children in India learn their mother tongue (as in Kerala, Tamil Nadu, West Bengal, see how proud they are of their mother tongue, every country be it Japan or Russia have their own mother language, we in Goa are enslaved by English).

The future as I see it….
Truth will prevail! I see my organisation Bharat Mata Ki Jai expanding like anything, we already have 113 branches in Goa and we’ve added a branch in Dodamarg. You can say the RSS shaka are re-born and we no longer care about the BJP going to the dogs! BJP is more corrupt than Congress. The Congress molested the identity of our country! We know it all, people know it, the BJP even makes money out of covid. God save the BJP!
The RSS has many wings and the political wing which formed the BJP was founded on the ideals of Deen Dayal Upadhyaya. He said if a party becomes corrupt and no longer serves the interests of the public, disown it, replace it, float a new party, and even if that is corrupt, start again another party. When Manohar Parrikar split us he took only 10 percent of the RSS with him interested in power and money. The remaining 90 percent is with us. We have also lost hope with the MGP also not coming up to our expectations.

I begin my day….
With yogasana, padmasana, anilom velom and breakfast of whatever my housekeeper has cooked. I have no regrets because whatever the RSS way of life is just a system to follow. I don’t repent.