Let us all remember the architect of an ideal ideology ‘Integral Humanism’ on his birth anniversary: Pandit Deen Dayal Upadhyay

Mumbai, September 25: One of the concrete pillars of Bharatiya Jan Sangh, the glory of Indian Politics in the era of 60s and 70s, he is none other but Pandit Deendayal Upadhyaya. The believer of democracy and good governance, Upadhyaya was highly respected and a dignified leader of the Jan Sangh. Today we stand together on Panditji’s birth anniversary that used to stand against corruption.

 

Going back through his journey of life, a mindful leader was born on Monday, September 25, 1916, in the sacred region of Brij in the village of Nagla Chandraban in Mathura District. His father was a well-known astrologer. An astrologer who studied his horoscope predicted that the boy would become a great scholar and thinker, a selfless worker, and a leading politician - but that he would not marry.

However, Pandit Upadhyaya was well-qualified with a knack for curiosity and learning. He attended his high school education in Sikar where the Maharaja of Sikar gave Pandit a gold medal, Rs 250 for books and a monthly scholarship of Rs 10. During that time, the sum of the stated amount was a huge fortune for a middle-class family. As he grew up, he decided to complete his graduation from Kanpur’s Sanatan Dharma College. At the request of his close acquaintance, Balwant Mahashabde, he joined the RSS in 1937 from where he started his golden road to social service. In fact, Pandit Upadhyaya was so intellectual that he wanted to complete his M.A too but could not go further after the death of his beloved cousin sister, Rama Devi.

Still gathering all his strength and perseverance, he continued his courageous path to developing a better future for India, Pandit Upadhyaya joined forces with Nanaji Deshmukh and Bhau Jugade for RSS activities. In the 1940s, he also started a monthly Rashtra Dharma from Lucknow, to spread the ideology of Hindutva nationalism. Later, he also started a weekly Panchjanya and a daily Swadesh. All his publications contained content of nationalism to connect people with each other.

In 1951, when Syama Prasad Mookerjee founded the Bharatiya Jana Sangh, Deendayal was seconded to the party by the RSS, tasked with moulding it into a genuine member of the Sangh Parivar. He was appointed as General Secretary of its Uttar Pradesh branch, and later the all-India General Secretary. After Mookerjee's death in 1953, the entire burden of nurturing the orphaned organisation and building it up as a nationwide movement fell on Deendayal. For 15 years, he remained the outfit's general secretary.

Panditji’s philosophy: Pandit Deendayal Upadhyaya wanted India to become a progressive nation. His beliefs were rooted in the timeless Indian existence yet he was not a fundamentalist. He conceived the political philosophy of ‘Integral Humanism’. His philosophy of Integral Humanism, which is a synthesis of the material and the spiritual, the individual and the collective, bears eloquent testimony to this. He visualised for India a decentralised polity and self-reliant economy with the village as the base.

Deendayal Upadhyaya was convinced that India as an independent nation could not rely upon Western concepts like individualism, democracy, socialism, communism or capitalism and was of the view that the Indian polity after Independence has been raised upon these superficial Western foundations and not rooted in the traditions of India's ancient culture. He was of the view that the Indian intellect was getting suffocated by Western theories, which left a "roadblock" to the growth and expansion of original Bharatiya (Sanskrit: "of Bharat" [India]) thought.

All we can say is that we lost a leader who had all his visions straight and focused. Today, India’s scenario would have been completely different, devoid of Western culture, only if Pandit Deendayal Upadhyaya Ji would’ve lived. Importantly, he is remembered in all our memories today and will always stay as the Jan Sangh leader as he was.

Today the whole nation pays a tribute to the concrete pillar of positive politics.