His 98th birth anniversary falls on September
Gandhi of Jana Sangh and BJP
By Amba Charan Vashishth
For Bharatiya Jana Sangh (BJS) – and its later
avatar Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) –
Pandit Deendayal Upadhyay holds the same position of love and reverence as does
Mahatma Gandhi for the Congress. While the name, fame and electoral utility of
Gandhiji for Congress seems to be waning and his portraits adorn only on
ceremonial occasions, no BJP function is today complete without Upadhyay’s
pictures overseeing every party programme and function.
Gandhiji came off a well-off family, Upadhyayji
was born in an ordinary one. The latter lost his parents too early and was
brought up by his maternal uncle. Simplicity in life dawned to Gandhi after he
jumped into India’s freedom movement; it was very much in Upadhyayji’s bringing
up and genes.
Gandhiji always loved to travel in a third class
railway compartment; so did Deendayalji. In train he would utilize his time
reply to karyakartas's letters in his own hand. Once when RSS sarsanghchalak
Golwalkar, popularly known as Guruji,
made him to sit in a first class compartment to discuss something, the first
thing he did on alighting was to contact
the Station Master (SM) to pay the difference in fare between third and first
class ticket. The SM told him, “Panditji, you’re the first person to be so
honest to volunteer to make such a request in my long career”.
Simple living, high thinking
Gandhiji adopted a life of simplicity by choice;
Deendayalji inherited simplicity and maintained it till the last. He always
wore a dhoti-kurta. Even when he became the national general secretary and,
later, national president of BJS it brought in no change in his demeanour. He
would carry an ordinary cloth bag with a few holes in it. When a follower
offered to bring a new one, he remarked, "The holes in this bag are too
small to let my clothes trickle out".
From his simple looks and habits it was difficult
to fathom that the bespectacled ordinary looking person was that great an
intellectual. He impressed everyone who came in contact with him for his
qualities of head and heart.
Any means of conveyance – a tonga, a cycle
rickshaw – was convenient and comfortable for him. He was happy even as a
pillion rider on a motorcycle.
He would not mind helping spread durries and dust
the floor at the function venue even when he was a national general secretary.
Deendayalji was never after office or election.
Office was always thrust on him by the love of the party leaders and
karyakartas. The party rank and file wanted that Deendayalji contest the
by-election for the Jaunpur Lok Sabha seat in Uttar Pradesh in 1963. Though
reluctant yet he ultimately bowed to the collective wish of the party and
contested. The Congress candidate against him was a Rajput who made appeal for
votes on caste lines. BJS karyakartas suggested to Deendayalji that like
Congress candidate, he too should retaliate by making a similar appeal to his
own community of Brahmins. He got furious. He said he would prefer to lose the
election rather than making a casteist appeal. He also threatened his
supporters that if they indulged in that, he would retire from the election.
As a saintly man like Gandhiji, he took the ups
and downs in his life in a stride. He was never unusually happy or sad at
anything. He attended the next morning's RSS shakha after losing the Jaunpur
election as if nothing had happened. He said, "My opponent proved more
successful in conveying his message to the people than me".
In another election when a BJS candidate got
defeated, he remarked, "Our man has been defeated but the party has moved
forward. It has spread its message to more and more people".
Simple like a child
A karyakarta Kailash Sarang sent invitations to
many leaders, including Deendayalji, for his younger brother's marriage. He was
surprised when Deendayalji rang up from railway station to tell that he had
come for the baaraat. He got his hair cut and his clothes ironed.
"When I have come to join a baaraat", he told smilingly,
"I should look like a baaraati". Knowing that Deendayalji had
come to Bhopal, senior BJS leader Kushabhau Thakre wanted to avail himself of
his presence and convened a meeting of MP MLAs in the evening. When Thakreji
told him, he jocularly said, "Thakreji, neither did you went in for a
marriage nor did I. So we can't
appreciate the importance of the occasion. You fix the meeting tomorrow. I cannot miss joining the baaraat.
"
Kind hearted
Once Deendayalji was travelling in a railway
compartment. A poor boy asked an officer sitting nearby whether he could polish
his shoes. The officer asked whether he had a cloth to clean his shoes. On his
saying "no", the officer refused. While reading a newspaper
Deendayalji kept his ears open to the talk. As the boy was going out, Deendayalji
asked him to stop. He pulled out a towel from his bag, tore it and gave one
piece to the boy saying, "Polish the sahib's shoes". After polishing
when the boy came to return the cloth, he asked him to keep it so that he
doesn't lose work next time.
Once he got his hair-cut from a roadside barber.
He told a curious karyakarta smilingly, "The barber had no customer and I
had no time."
Strict disciplinarian, yet human
Deendayalji was a hard task master and a strict
disciplinarian. Once in 1959-60 it was
decided to nominate members of the Standing Committee for Delhi Municipal
Corporation. A senior BJS leader Lala Harichand was adamant that he should be
nominated. In the alternative he threatened that he would defy the party by
contesting the election. When Deendayalji came to know of it he wrote to Vijay
Kumar Malhotra, "How long we would be able to keep people into our fold by
paying such a price?". When Malhotra conveyed this feeling of Deendayalji,
he immediately regretted his stand and decided to go by the party's decision.
Ugly scenes in Parliament and State assemblies are
the order of the day today but were rare those days. In March 1966 tempers in
the Madhya Pradesh assembly ran so high that a provoked Pandharirao Kridutt MLA
threw a chappal in the house. This condemnable incident put BJS in the dock.
The matter was reported to the central party. Deendayalji, then general
secretary, took a very serious note of it and said it should never be repeated.
At the same time there was need to avoid a sense of guilt. He said Kridutt was
a very sensible man and it was equally necessary to go into the circumstances
which provoked him to resort to this extreme step. This changed the mood of
dismay in the party.
Pioneer of coalition governments
Deendayalji was the pioneer of the concept of
coalition governments in the country. When in the 1967 general elections to
State assemblies, Congress lost majority in a number of States, after an
open-minded discussion with leaders and karyakartas he gave a go-ahead to BJS
to join the Samyukta Vidhayak Dal governments. He said in this way his party
would get an experience in running governments.
Defined corruption
Deendayalji defined corruption as "equal to
shortage of commodity multiplied by government regulation".
Friend with Lohia
Even though Dr. Ram Manohar Lohia and Deendayalji
subscribed to different political ideologies, yet a great sense of bonhomie
prevailed in their relations. It was Dr. Lohia and Deendayalji who jointly
demanded that India and Pakistan should form a confederation to end the
persistent hostility between the two countries.
Integral humanism
He felt that neither communism nor capitalism
could be the panacea for the Indian society's ills. suited the Indian
conditions of life nor could they solve India's problems. He therefore
enunciated his own theory of Integral Humanism in which the central figure of
the country's development plans was the human being. He gave an impetus to the Antodya concept of
development without distinction of caste, creed and sex. When BJS leaders
Bhairon Singh Shekhawat in Rajasthan and Shanta Kumar in HP headed the Janta
Party governments in 1977, they gave this concept a practical shape with
excellent results.
Foreign
tour
During his visit to USA, he impressed one and all,
left an indelible impact. He addressed
students of Negro College at Austin University in Texas. He also addressed India-US friendship Society
for one hour and for one hour he participated in a question-answer session. The
Texas city council granted him an honorary citizenship of the city.
An American lady enquired of Deendayalji's host:
“Who are the persons in Upadhyayaji’s family?
He told her that Upadhyayaji is not married and has no family. At this
Deendayalji smilingly intervened, “No , no. It’s not like that. I too have a
family and that is very large”.
When the lady came to bid farewell to Deendayalji
she told him, “From now onwards I am also a member of your large family”.
Couldn't speak about himself
Mr. L. K. Advani once narrated that when working
for the weekly Organiser he requested
Deendayalji to write a weekly column 'Political Diary' narrating his
experiences of his tours all over the country. For some time he did but then
all of a sudden he stopped expressing his inability to do so. Mr. Advani explained
that the obvious reason was that while writing this piece he had to use the
word "I" numerous times and it was this what he detested.
Vocracious reader
Deendayalji was a voracious reader. At a time he
kept two-three books open for reading. When he got tired of one, he would shift
to the other.
He was also a good writer, equally at east with
Hindi and English. He wrote two books –
“Samrat Chandragupta” and “Jagat Guru Shankaracharya” which not only have
commitment to the goal but also a vision and philosophy of life. This has been
explained very beautifully in these two books.
Same end
Both Gandhiji and Deendayalji met the same kind of
death, almost – crucified for their
convictions for the sake of the nation: Gandhiji fell to the bullets of a
self-righteous individual who did not see eye to eye with Gandhiji's thought
and action. Deendayalji met a brutal death at the hands of a desperado whose
motive, political or criminal, could not be ascertained even 36 years after his
death.
Deendayalji had never been an MP or MLA. Nor did
he ever hold any public office. Yet, like an ajaatshatru who had no enemy, he
enjoyed so much love, affection and respect in the heart of everyone that
Parliament made an exception to pay him a homage, unanimously.
Guruji paid a very impassioned tribute,
"Deendayal chala gaya, sab kuchh chala gaya"(I have lost Deendayal, I
have lost everything). ***
