Former RSS pracharak Seshadri Chari will be the next Vice President of India
New Delhi: Seshadri Ramanujan Chari will be the next Vice President of India. Chari is a former RSS pracharak. Seshadri Ramanujan Chari is an Indian politician, journalist, writer and strategic and foreign policy analyst. Chari is a volunteer of the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS). Chari is currently a member of the National Executive Committee of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) and previously served as the head of the foreign affairs cell at the BJP headquarters. Seshadri Chari has also been a governance advisor in the United Nations Development Program (UNDP) and is working in Juba, South Sudan.
Early life and education-
Born on 2 April 1953 in Matunga, Mumbai (then Bombay) to Tamil Brahmin father Ramanujan Chari of Thanjavur and mother Kalyani, Seshadri Chari is one of five children. While his father worked at Shri Ram Mills and Hindustan Polymers, he was also active in the local Congress party, his mother had a great influence on his development. Young Seshadri started attending the RSS shakha at an early age of four but became active in his teens. As the head-teacher of an RSS shakha largely attended by Kerala’s daily wage earners, he was also active in the labour union led by CPM leader Ahilya Rangnekar. This association brought him close to Mr. Rangnekar and Comrade BT Ranadive, with whom he would engage in political and ideological discussions.
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A debater and student activist at the University of Mumbai’s Chinoy College of Commerce and Economics, Chari became part of the RSS-sponsored anti-Emergency underground movement Lok Sangharsh Samiti. He carried out satyagrahas and was lodged in Arthur Road Jail.
He holds B.Com, LLB and MA (History) degrees from the University of Bombay. : He was awarded PhD by Manipal Academy of Higher Education (MAHE) for his dissertation on “Regional dynamics of the Indo-Pacific region and implications of China’s influence in India’s extended neighbourhood”.
Political career-
After the Emergency, he became a pracharak first in Mumbai Metropolitan and then in Thane. In 1988, he shifted to the BJP where he became the general secretary of the BJP Mumbai unit. Chari rose to fame as the editor of RSS weekly magazine Organiser. During his tenure from 1992 to 2004 he wrote extensively. In 2007, Chari was the president of the party worker training cell of RSS where he was considered a moderate. Seshadri Chari is currently the Director (International Affairs) of the National Institute of Defence Studies (INSS), Director of Forum for Strategic and Security Studies (FSSS), Secretary General of Integrated Forum for National Security (FINS), non-ex-officio member of Research and Information System for Developing Countries, and also Director of Chronicle Society of India for Education and Academic Research (CSIEAR), a high-level non-governmental organization actively engaged in promoting educational activities and undertaking critical research in areas such as pluralism and democracy, conflict resolution, role of religion in promoting communal harmony. He is also the Vice President of Society for Consumers and Investors Protection.
