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Vishnu Sadashiv Kokje
Vishnu Sadashiv Kokje is a senior RSS leader and the former Vishva Hindu Parishad (VHP) president.
Vishnu Sadashiv Kokje was born at Dahi village in the Dhar district of Madhya Pradesh on September 6, 1939. He completed his schooling in Dhar, graduation (in mathematics, Statistics, and Economics) from Indore’s Holkar College and LLB from Government Arts and Commerce College, Indore. He did his post-graduation in Sociology from Christian College, Indore, and started practising law in 1964.
He practiced law for 26 years before being appointed a judge of MP High Court in 1990. He was transferred to Rajasthan high court in 1994 and worked as an administrative judge for next four years. He was the acting chief justice of Rajasthan High Court for 11 months and retired in 2001.
During the Atal Bihari Vajpayee government, Kokje was given the Governorship of Himachal Pradesh.
Kokje joined VHP in 2018. VHP was designated as a religious militant organisation by the World Factbook of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) for years. VHP is an affiliate of Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS), a far-right Hindu nationalist organisation formed in 1925 along the lines of hardline nationalist groups in Europe, which aims to create an ethnic Hindu-majority state in India. For decades, VHP has campaigned to turn India into a Hindu nation and stands accused of orchestrating numerous attacks on Muslims and Christians in hundreds of riots in various parts of the country.