‘India after Independence has produced few leaders who were also political philosophers. Deendayal Ji was one of the few, and the finest.’- L K Advani
Today I am reminded of what our icon and leader Shri LK Advani said : ‘India after Independence has produced few leaders who were also political philosophers. Deendayal Ji was one of the few, and the finest.’ Indeed Pandit Upadhaya would insist on practising value-based and principled politics with the primary motivation being national interest. And it was the political philosophy of Pandit Upadhaya which has inspired and guided several karyakartas like me in our political journey. Pandit Upadhay once said: A monotonous life, lived without any purpose or direction, is not worth much.
To achieve anything big in life, you should be prepared to risk your all and take a leap of faith for whatever they believed in. And he lived by those words, as a nationalist in the true sense, even after achieving a top position in the then Civil Services entrance in 1942, he chose to not serve the colonial administration. To him serving the nation and creating a generation of patriots deserved more importance. It was to achieve these ideals in 1942, he became a full-time Pracharak of the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh, an organisation that was and is still fully committed to create dedicated patriots who will go to all lengths to serve Bharat Mata.
In 1951, when Syama Prasad Mookerji founded the Bharatiya Jan Sangh (BJS), it was Pandit Deendayal Upadhaya who was tasked with creating the structure and thought process which would go on to define the party for decades to come. Pandit Upadhaya’s dedication to his work made Dr Mukherjee claim: If I could get two or three more Deendayals, I will change the entire political map of India. After Dr Mookerjee sadly passed away in 1953, Pandit Upadhyaya led the Jana Sangh against the political giant of that timeline which was the Congress party.
The process of defeating the Congress (and creating a Congress-mukt Bharat in PM Modi’s words) reached an important phase in 1963 when the iconic leader and scholar Dr Ram Manohar Lohia visited a RSS shivir in Kanpur to stitch out an alliance. The Lohia-Deendayal duo was instrumental in providing an alternate viewpoint to the then ruling Nehruvian Congressism. This viewpoint of Pandit Upadhaya was what we know today as Integral Humanism.
The crux of this viewpoint can be seen in his words: Both from the national as well as human standpoint, it is essential that we think of the principles of Bhartiya Culture. Pandit Upadhaya identified all Indians as part of one organic whole, sharing a common consciousness of national thought. It was through Integral Humanism that we got the concept of “Antyodaya” which is the guiding principle of our governments in the state and the country.
