Political scientist and social thinker (1916-1968)
Pandit Deendayal Upadhyaya was a many faceted personality – philosopher, economist, sociologist, historian, journalist, political scientist, social thinker, educationaist, politician, writer, speaker, organiser, etc. An ideologue and a guiding force for an alternative model of governance and politics, he was an important leader of the ‘Bharatiya Jana Sangh’, the forerunner of the present day ‘Bharatiya Janata Party’ (BJP).
‘There is diversity and plurality in life but we have always attempted to discover the unity behind them”, he averred and also stressed that “the fundamental characteristic of Bharatiya culture is that it looks upon life as an integrated whole”.
Orphaned when young, he was brought up by his maternal uncle. He excelled academically, but his wish to pursue a Master’s degree in English literature was thwarted on account of a cousin’s illness. He declined to join the Provincial Services Exam because of his interest in working with the common man.
When still a college student in 1937, he came into contact with the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) and engaged in an intellectual discussion with the founder K.B. Hedgewar. Having Sunder Singh Bhandari as one of his classmates gave a fillip to his public life and he soon dedicated himself to full time work with the RSS from 1942.
In 1951, when Syama Prasad Mookerjee founded the Bharatiya Sangh, Deendayal was tasked with moulding it. Appointed soon as the all-India General Secretary, his acumen and meticulousness deeply impressed Mookerjee enough to elicit his famous remark: “If I had two Deendayals, I could transform the political face of India”. He was a man of soaring idealism and had a tremendous capacity for organisation. He started a monthly Rashtra Dharma from Lucknow in the 1940s and later a weekly Panchjanya, and a daily Swadesh.
The entire burden of nurturing the orphaned organisation and building it up as a nation-wide movement fell after Mookerjee’s death in 1953, on the young shoulders of Deendayal, who built it up, brick by brick. Well known for his idea of integral humanism, the concept deeply embedded in the Indian psyche, he favoured economic freedom and opportunities for entrepreneurship, and criticised the government of the day for stifling avenues of investment. He accused Nehru who he said, “was a socialist when it came to levying taxes, but a capitalist when it came to amassing profits”. On the other hand, he emphasised decentralisation of the economy to empower local communities to make economic and developmental choices. He did not favour big business; he preferred the Gandhian ideal of large production from small units, “manufactured by the masses for the masses”. Recently, Prime Minister Narendra Modi launched the ‘Pandit Deendayal Upadhyay Shramdev Jayate Karyakaram’, which is an attempt to create an environment conducive to industrial development while also ensuring transparency in the labour sector.
On 11 February 1968, Upadhay, aged only 51, boarded the first-class coupe of the Sealdah-Pathankot Express from Lucknow, bound for Patna. His body was found lying parallel to the railway tracks outside Mughalsarai station in the early hours of the morning. A commission appointed concluded that he had been pushed out of the compartment by unidentified thieves, struck his head against a traction pole and died. It was murder, but was it assassination? Till date, it has remained an unsolved mystery.
Needless to state, had Upadhyaya survived, there’s little doubt he would have today impacted the politics of India. As he would say, “Strength lies not in unrestrained behaviour, but in well regulated action.”