Anirban Ganguly
In 2016, his centenary year, it is worthwhile to remember and pay tribute to the fact that it was primarily due to Pandit Deendayal Upadhyaya’s leadership, during a challenging and crucial phase, that the Baharatiya Jana Sangh struck deep roots in the Indian political soil and spread across the country. In shaping post-independent India’s political evolution and in imparting it a distinct direction, Upadhyaya’s contribution has been unparalleled and epochal. He joins the rank of Syama Prasad Mookerjee, BR Ambedkar, Ram Manohar Lohia and Jayaprakash Narayan as leaders who envisaged and aspired to shape an alternate polity and
politics.
Yet, had it not been for the political party he worked to establish in India’s national life or for the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS), to whose vision he had dedicated himself early in life with the aim of organising and re-vitalising the Hindu samaj, Upadhyaya would have been largely forgotten, subjugated by the multiple narratives that celebrated the one ‘Pandit’, who dominated Indian politics post-independence and whose legacy has been officially celebrated and patronised for decades.
Upadhyaya was essentially a political-philosopher, who brought back into the Indian public life and public lexicon, words that described the nation as a pulsating entity – an entity which possessed an identity-soul – chiti and whose frame was infused with virat, like the physical body was infused with prana. Just as prana infuses strength in various organs of the body, refreshes the intellect, and keeps body and soul together, argued Upadhyaya, “so also in a nation, with a strong virat alone, can democracy succeed and Government be effective.” Such articulations brought back into the post-independent Indian polity, a tone that was in consonance with her intrinsic civilisational temper and worldview. While articulating the inner layers of a nation and the civilisational faith in its sacrality, one did not see Upadhyaya hesitate or become apologetic.
Yet, such a deep analysis did not evolve out of a narrow or constricted reading of political philosophy and thought. Upadhyaya’s reading and his effort and quest in trying to understand the currents of world thought and the evolution of society and mankind’s aspirations for models of society and development, was impressive as it was wide and prolific. In his comparative analysis of two thinkers “Deendayal and Marx”, one of the avant-garde thinkers of the nationalist narrative, Dattopant Thengdi (1920-2004), for example, records Upadhyaya’s readings.
It must, however, be noted that Upadhyayaji was well conversant with all the thought-currents of the West. Apart from Marxism, (and different versions of revisionists – from Eduard Bernstein to Josip Broz Tito) he was very well acquainted with the direct or indirect social experiments of Robert Owen, Joseph Fourier and Étienne Cabet; theories of Saint Simon: Socialist militancy of Gracchus Babeuf; agrarian socialism of O’ Connor; proletarian socialism of O’ Brien, ‘minority conscience’ theory of Blauqui; evolutionary socialism of Louis Blanc: The ‘self-help’ doctrine of Schulze- Delitzsch; and ‘true socialism’ of the German trio, Bruno Bauer, Moses Hess, and Karl Grun. He had also studied Lassalle, Sismondi, Lamennais and Proudhon. He had critically analysed all the pre and post-Marxian European thought-systems ranging from capitalism to anarchism and including all the varieties of ‘socialism.’
While he exposed and immersed himself in examining the realm of Western thought and civilisational alternatives, Upadhyaya “had an additional advantage of being closely acquainted with different streams of traditional Indian thought. He had fully grasped the implications of the term ‘Dharma’ which is the characteristic gift of Hindu seers to humanity.” It was this training that led him to evolve an Indian matrix of political thought through which he would ceaselessly try and evaluate, re-evaluate and
re-state the Indian position and direction.
By shaping a political philosophy that was essentially a quest to evolve a political framework and movement inspired by the Bharatiya civilisational ethos, Upadhyaya unleashed the possibilities of evolving a political discourse that was inspired by indigenous thought-roots of India. Unlike other political ideologies which had no roots in the Indian thought-evolution and which primarily derived inspiration from foreign frameworks and paradigms, the vision of integral humanism – or humanness, as propounded by Upadhyaya, sprung from the fountains of Bharatiya thought and aspirations. Post-independence, when models for India were being volubly debated often bordering on the raucous, when the dominant attitude was that of importing and grafting onto