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Sri Dattatreya Bapurao (alias Dattopant) Thengadi (born November 20, 1920) is recognized by scholars as philosopher and visionary. He is a great orator and a learned author. Shri Thengadi has been a Pracharak of the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) for nearly five decades and is the founder of the Bharatiya Mazdoor Sangh (the biggest labor union in India today), the Bharatiya Kisan Sangh and the Samajik Samarasata Manch. At the age of fifteen, he was the president of the Vanar Sena at Arwi in Wardha district of Maharastra, his birth place. While yet a student of law in 1942, he came under the influence of Shri Guruji Golwalkar. Among the other major influences in his life is his association with Dr. B. R. Ambedkar and Pt. Deendayal Upadhyaya.
As Pracharak of RSS, Shri Thengadi spent some years in Kerala, Bengal and Madhya Pradesh and was actively associated with the founding of the Akhil Bharatiya Vidyarthi Parishad (ABVP) and with the Bharatiya Jana Sangh in its early phase. Shri Thengadi’s stint in INTUC (the labor wing of the Congress) and in the Postal and Railway workers’ union (under the Communist Party) gave him an opportunity of acquiring first hand knowledge of problems of laborers : experience which culminated in the founding of Bharatiya Mazdoor Sangh by him in 1958. He has been considered as the think tank of Sangh Parivar activities. He is well known among karyakartas for his acumen and clarity in thought and action.
Shri Thengadi was a member of Rajya Sabha for a term. In 1969, He visited Soviet Russia and Hungary as member of a parliamentary delegation; in 1977 he went to Switzerland as a delegate to an ILO conference and also to the Second International Anti-apartheid Conference at Geneva. In 1979, he was invited to Yugoslavia by the Trade Union there to study that country’s labourization, and also by the USA to study the American trade union movement. The same year he also visited Canada and Britain on invitation. In 1985, Shri Thengadi led a Bharatiya Mazdoor Sangh delegation to china on the invitation of the All- China Federation of Trade Unions. He subsequently attended the Tenth Regional Conference of ILO at Jakarta, Indonesia, the same year, and also visited Bangladesh, Burma, Thailand, Malaysia, Singapore, Kenya, Uganda and Tanzania. More recently he participated in the Fifth European Hindu conference held at Frankfurt, Germany, in August 1992, and World Vision 2000 in USA.
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