The veteran Kerala leader continues to enjoy a huge mass following despite his statements regularly landing the BJP in awkward situations.
O Rajagopal is flanked by Shashi Tharoor and CPI(M)'s former minister Kadakampalli Surendran at a public function in Thiruvananthapuram. Photo: Supplied
If something sets apart 95-year-old Olanchery Rajagopal — better known as O Rajagopal or Rajettan — from the rest of the BJP-RSS leaders in Kerala, it is his unique ability to appreciate the talents of political rivals.
The lone BJP leader in Kerala to have ever entered the state Assembly and a Padma Bhushan awardee this time, Rajagopal has, over the years, made a habit of saying good things about the party’s rivals.
So, even as BJP cadres in the state rejoice over the Union government’s choice of the veteran leader for the third-highest civilian award this time, the party is braced for future tongue-in-cheek comments by Rajagopal praising rivals.
Such talk usually lands fellow party leaders in the state in embarrassing situations.
At the national level, Rajagopal belongs to a generation of leaders who devoted themselves to the Sangh Parivar ideology long before the Narendra Modi era — for whom personal sacrifices seldom mattered.
A successful lawyer in his native Palakkad in the 1960s, Rajagopal chose to sacrifice all personal comfort to become one of the faces of the Sangh Parivar in Kerala, though he must have sensed that the state may never become a fertile land for Hindutva politics.
Yet in all these years of aggressively championing the cause of resurgent Hindutva, including the anti-Babri Masjid movement, Rajagopal has believed in friendships transcending political affiliations.
Despite his ideology, he has showered praise on the leaders of the CPI(M), the Congress, and even the Indian Union Muslim League (IUML) while maintaining personal relationships with them.
Hardly two weeks have passed since Rajagopal praised Shashi Tharoor, the sitting Congress MP from Thiruvananthapuram. He said it would be extremely difficult to defeat Tharoor in the Kerala capital because of his grassroots-level connections and leadership capabilities.
This was a surprise, as Thiruvananthapuram is the one Lok Sabha constituency in Kerala where the BJP has been perceived as number two for quite some time, and it is there that the party hopes to score an easy victory in the fast-approaching Lok Sabha elections.
The statement thus was a rude shock for the Kerala BJP leadership, which portrays Tharoor as a migratory bird who appears on Thiruvananthapuram’s horizon only during elections.
Rajagopal with cricketer Sreekanth. Photo: Supplied
Tharoor had defeated Rajagopal in the 2014 Lok Sabha elections in Thiruvananthapuram despite the latter’s standing as a former Union minister of state for railways who was elected to the Rajya Sabha from Madhya Pradesh.
Rajagopal, who termed Tharoor an outsider with scant knowledge of local reality at the time, now praises the Congress Working Committee member as a talented person who was able to sway people’s opinion.
While sharing a stage with Tharoor, the veteran leader said he doubted anyone else would get an opportunity to win from Thiruvananthapuram soon.
Following his remarks, as the veteran BJP leader left the podium, Tharoor went to him, touched his feet, and hugged him.
When the comments courted controversy, Rajagopal justified the statement, saying he said so as Tharoor belonged to his native Palakkad; it was common among the people of Palakkad, he said, to speak well of political opponents.
In November last year, Rajagopal chose to praise Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan and his controversial cultural jamboree Keraleeyam in Thiruvananthapuram. This was when the whole Opposition, including the BJP, had boycotted what was being called a mega PR exercise by the cash-strapped state government.
Despite his ailing health, Rajagopal turned up at the inaugural of Keralayeeam, and Vijayan came down from the stage to greet him.
Rajagopal has not also said anything against the month-long Nava Kerala Sadas, in which the whole Cabinet recently travelled together in a bus and visited all state constituencies.
On several critical occasions, Rajagopal has, in fact, come out in support of Vijayan, landing the Kerala BJP in an awkward situation.
In December 2020, the veteran leader caused the party’s national leadership acute embarrassment as the lone MLA of the party in the Kerala Assembly. He chose not to oppose the resolution passed by the Kerala Assembly demanding that the Narendra Modi government repeal the contentious farm laws, which had created a national-level backlash.
BJP leader and External Affairs Minister S Jaishankar during the inauguration of a beneficiary ‘sammelan’ in the Kerala capital. BJP Kerala president K Surendran and party leader O Rajagopal are also seen (Twitter/surendranbjp)
[In the 2021 Assembly election, he chose not to contest, and the BJP candidate in his place was defeated by General Education Minister V Sivankutty of the CPI(M).]
After the end of the session, reporters surrounded Rajagopal, asking him why he supported the resolution brought by the Congress-led UDF and the CPI(M)-led LDF.
He said he had opted to go along with the consensus supporting the resolution.
The national and state leaders of the party found it difficult to explain away his action.
Soon after he won the Nemom Assembly constituency by a narrow majority in 2016, Rajagopal delivered a rude shock to the BJP with his first action as the lone party MLA in the state.
Apart from declaring that he voted for CPI(M) candidate P Sreeramakrishnan for the Assembly Speaker, Rajagopal said he was inspired by the presence of both Rama and Krishna in the name of the ruling party’s candidate. He also said Sreeramakrishnan’s charming personality inspired him.
BJP-RSS leaders struggled to explain away his behaviour back then as well, as he unquestioningly supported the rival CPI(M) and deviated from the Sangh Parivar line.
There have been instances in the recent past when Rajagopal praised Congress leaders AK Antony, Oommen Chandy, and Ramesh Chennithala, apart from PK Kunhalikutty of the IUML.
“Good things should be appreciated, no matter who does it” was his response when his participation in the Keraleeyam festival courted controversy. He added that there was no point in opposing the Keraleeyam festival, and that he didn’t know why the BJP was against it.
Political observers note that Rajagopal has always been a man of contradictions, and his plain speech has often caused more damage than benefit to the BJP.
In the recent past, he sparked a heated political debate in the state by claiming there were “adjustments” between the UDF constituents — the Congress and the IUML — and his party, the BJP, in past elections to defeat the common rival, the CPI(M).
He was responding to an allegation by then RSS think-tank member R Balasankar that there was a CPI(M)-BJP deal in the state.
The statement made the CPI(M) and Vijayan happy, and they hailed Rajagopal for revealing the alleged longtime unholy nexus.
The CPI(M) had been alleging there has been a “Co-Le-B alliance” (Congress-Muslim League-BJP alliance) against the LDF for a long time, which the latter had denied.
On the other hand, the Congress-led UDF has been accusing the CPI(M) of having a secret pact with the BJP. The Congress accused Rajagopal of always having a pro-CPI(M) tilt.
Despite all his loose talk and apolitical positions, Rajagopal remains the lone crowd-puller for the BJP in the state, and his influence remains intact even at this age.
That is why the BJP insisted on him contesting from Nemom in the last Assembly election. But Rajagopal refrained from contesting, citing his age and health.
The civilian honour this time recognises him as the longtime champion of the Sangh Parivar in the state, unsuccessfully contesting numerous elections to the Lok Sabha and state Assembly.
Though he had lost them all before the Assembly elections in 2016, Rajagopal became the reason for the BJP’s increased vote share every year. The party now claims a 15 percent share of the votes in Kerala.
Therefore, what Rajagopal has to say is given a lot of attention, especially during election time.
When a television interviewer asked him about his victory in the Nemom Assembly constituency, he said he won by cornering a significant number of Congress votes.
Perhaps the Congress felt it important that a representative of the party governing the country should be in the state Assembly, Rajagopal said.
In another interview, Rajagopal dealt the maximum damage to the BJP by praising Chief Minister Vijayan and pointing to the state’s excellent literacy rate as the reason for the BJP not becoming prominent there. The literacy made Kerala residents thinking, argumentative people, he said.
He then described the chief minister as someone who could manage things.
In the last Assembly election, he caused maximum discomfort to Kummanam Rajasekharan, the BJP candidate in Nemom, by describing the Congress candidate — K Muraleedharan — as a strong one.
Vijayan also always remembers with gratitude how Rajagopal behaved during his first government’s budget session. When the session was opened with Governor Arif Mohammed Khan’s speech, the Opposition UDF protested, raised slogans against the government, and finally walked out.
However, Rajagopal remained in the Assembly as the lone presence in the Opposition benches.
A seasoned politician known for recurring electoral defeats, Rajagopal has been contesting since 1970. There were three Assembly elections before his 2016 victory and two by-elections.
There were also three Lok Sabha polls, in one of which he was in a very close race with three-time MP Shashi Tharoor.
Rajagopal went to Parliament twice as a member of the Rajya Sabha and became a Union minister with the Atal Bihari Vajpayee government.
But he is most remembered for becoming the first BJP MLA in Kerala.
As the Union minister of state, he handled different portfolios including Defence, Law and Justice, Urban Development, Company Affairs, Parliamentary Affairs, and Railways.
Born on 15 September, 1929, to Kunnathu Madhavan Nair and O Konhikkavu Amma of Olanchery near Pudukkode in Palakkad, Rajagopal is the eldest of six children born to his parents.
He is an alumnus of Palakkad’s famous Government Victoria College. Rajagopal had undertaken his law education in erstwhile Madras, and after completing his studies, began practising law in 1956 at the Palakkad District Court.
Despite being a successful lawyer, he was influenced by Deendayal Upadhyaya and began working with the Bharatiya Jana Sangh.
The death of Upadhyaya in 1968 prompted Rajagopal to pursue his association with the Sangh Parivar more deeply.
Rajagopal was the state general secretary of the Jana Sangh until 1974. That same year, he was elevated to the post of state president — a post he held until 1977.
During the Emergency, he underwent a jail term.
After the formation of the BJP in 1980, Rajagopal served as its Kerala president until 1985.
After 1985, he occupied several positions, including the all-India secretary, general secretary, and the vice-president of the BJP.
Despite all his controversial statements, he is loved and respected by BJP cadres across the state. They always view his electoral defeats with great sympathy.
When South First reached out to him, Rajagopal termed the Padma Bhushan as a great recognition of his political life in which he considered all people with equality, fairness, and impartiality.
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