There was a certain incongruity to Kumar Mangalam Birla’s appearance last week at an RSS event, that too in the company of its sarsanghchalak, Mohan Bhagwat. There is nothing innocuous about the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh, and, therefore, it is difficult to comprehend why the tycoon was invited and, more importantly, why this very, very rich man chose to accept the invitation. Or, was it the other way round?Granted, Birla is not the first tycoon to make the pilgrimage to the Sangh’s headquarters. Ratan Tata, Azim Premji, Shiv Nadar and Rahul Bajaj have made the same journey in recent years. Also, it needs to be noted that as a businessman Kumar Mangalam Birla is widely respected and is generally not clubbed with those who are deemed to be “crony capitalists” – that clutch of “entrepreneurs” who have prospered exponentially because of their proximity to Prime Minister Narendra Modi.On the other hand, there is nothing benign about the RSS. It is regarded by many as both calculating and conspiratorial. Its top brass is not unaware that the organisation has less than a kosher reputation. For that reason, it has been striving for years to garner respectability by luring eminent personalities – like the former president of India, Pranab Mukherjee, or eminent nuclear scientist Anil Kakodkar– to share its manch. Many “eminent” public figures fall for the false temptation of influencing the Sangh’s thinking. It remains a dialogue of the deaf. The Sangh is not in the business of changing its colours.Of course, the organisation has experienced distinctly better acche din than most Indians and has acquired an elevated profile since Modi became prime minister in 2014. Those who claim to know how the wheels of power turn in New Delhi regard the RSS as the most effective and crucial extra-constitutional authority of our times. Nonetheless, the Nagpur men know that the Sangh still lacks political legitimacy beyond the BJP faithful. Hence, the need to cast the net a little wider.Kumar Mangalam Birla cannot be unaware of this matrix of conceit and calculation. Yet, he chose to share the RSS’s platform with Bhagwat. Though his name figures among everyone’s list of ten richest Indians, he is not just another businessman. He is not an Ambani nor is he an Adani. He is not a hustler. He is a great-grandson of the iconic Ghanshyam Das Birla, a karamyogi in every sense of the word and a man who played a role in laying the foundations of modern India. The post-Independence leadership regarded and respected “GD” as a valued partner in nation-building. [Kumar Mangalam could read, with some benefit, for example, Selected Works of Jawaharlal Nehru (second series, Volume 32) to learn how his great-grandfather sought Nehru’s advice before a visit to America in 1956, and how Prime Minister Nehru wrote a three-page “My dear Ghanshyamdasji” reply]Nor could Kumar Mangalam Birla be unaware of his family’s special relationship with the Mahatma. Certainly, he cannot forget that the Mahatma was shot dead by Nathuram Godse at Birla House in New Delhi. Of course, the young Birla would know that the RSS was banned by Sardar Patel for contributing to the larger atmosphere of hate in which the conspiracy to kill the Mahatma was hatched.Thus, the sight of a Birla at an RSS platform does make for a curious and uneasy tableau. Perhaps the only saving grace was that he did not join the RSS men in performing the Sangh’s traditional salute or put on its black cap. Still, no one can be sure if the Birla mascot came out of the Nagpur encounter uncontaminated. What we do have, however, is his own admission that he has met Bhagwat many times in the past, though not in the full glare of camera lights, and that each rendezvous had left him impressed.Be that as it may, the nagging question that needs to be asked is rather simple: why did Birla feel the need to put in an appearance at the RSS show at this juncture of our complicated national scene? As a businessman, does he really feel that India is on the threshold of the Narendra Modi-coined utopia known as ‘aamrit kaal’? It would be unworthy to even speculate that the Birla scion had sought Bhagwat’s intervention to ensure a level playing field in the corporate loot that is masquerading as vikas. There is a distinct unease in corporate India that some favoured fat-cats are slurping away all the cream. How the current naked display of crony capitalism squares up with Bhagwat’s invocation of ‘Bharat as a Dharm-pran’ [a spiritually rooted nation] is anybody’s guess. In any case, Bhagwat’s leverage in any kind of economic decision-making is rather limited.On his part, Kumar Mangalam Birla did talk of the importance of national capabilities and resilience. Surely, a man of his intelligence and achievements must know that building national capabilities is not a sectarian project of just the Hindus. Yet there was Bhagwat proclaiming: “We lost our preparedness. We will have to rebuild that preparedness. The Hindu bears a responsibility for Bharat.” Small-mindedness raised to such bogus grandiloquence.There is still no satisfactory answer as to why the Birla man went to Nagpur. Could it be a new compact between the Hindutva forces and the ‘national bourgeoise’, to use an old-fashioned term? A new alignment between capital and autocracy at the expense of public welfare and national purpose? Are the status quoists digging in their heels in the face of growing popular unease with the current ruling arrangements? A regrouping of forces to take on the cockroaches raising their heads? Testing times ahead for the republic.