India House Hosts Birth Centenary of Pandit Deendayal Upadhyay

 

 

By Pramod Kulkarni

Houston: Stalwarts of the Bharatiya Janata Party, affiliated organizations, and guests gathered Monday, September 25 at India House to celebrate the birth centenary of Pandit Deendayal Upadhyay, who served as the Bharatiya Jana Sangh’s second president during 1967-68.

The Bharatiya Jana Sangh was the forerunner of today’s ruling party, Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP).  The celebration in Houston took place in parallel with the centenary celebration the same day in Kozhkode, Karala at the BJP’s Rashtriya Parishad (national conference).

Convener for the centenary celebration in Houston was Gitesh Desai, president of Sewa International. A 10-minute video on the life and times of Pandit Deendayal Upadhyay was screened to recall the major events in Panditji’s life

Deendayalji was born on Sept. 25, 1916 in the village Chandrabhan, now called Deendayal Dham, near Farah town in Mathura District, 26 km away from Mathura.

His father, Bhagwati Prasad, was a well known astrologer and his mother was Shrimati Rampyari. Both his parents died when he was eight years old and he was brought up by his maternal uncle and aunt.

Deendayal excelled academically and stood first in the board exam, obtaining a Gold Medal from Maharaja Kalyan Singh of Sikar. He earned his BA degree at the Sanatan Dharma College, Kanpur in 1939 and graduated in the first division.  Subsequentyly, he earned B.Ed and M.Ed degrees at Prayag and entered public service.

While he was a student at Sanatan Dharma College in 1937, Deendayalji came into contact with the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS). He met RSS founder, K. B. Hedgewar, who engaged with him in an intellectual discussion at one of the shakhas (training schools).

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, Deen Dayal took up the entire burden of building up Bharatiya Jan Sangh as a nationwide movement. For 15 years, he remained the party’s general secretary. Subsequently, Deendayalji served as the  Jana Sangh president from 1967 until his death in 1968.
During his years with the RSS and Jana Sangh, Deendayalji served as a journalist to promote the Hindutva movement. He started a monthly periodical titled Rashtra Dharma from Lucknow in the 1940s. Later, he started the weekly Panchjanya and a daily Swadesh.

Deendayalji died on February  11, 1968 at Mughalsarai in UP, under mysterious circumstances while travelling in a train.There are many conspiracy theories about Upadhyaya’s death. Balraj Madhok, another of Jana Sangh’s founding members, has said categorically on many occasions that Upadhyaya’s death was a murder, not an accident.

In his brief remarks, CG Dr. Ray said the Consulate’s participation in Panditji’s birth centenary was in keeping with the Consulate’s earlier participation in the commemoration of the birthdays of Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel and Dr. B.R. Ambedkar.

Dr. Ray recounted how his family had to flee unified Bengal after independence, and recalled how Jana Sangh’s Mookerji and Upadhyay were about the only political leaders o who spoke in support of the plight of the Hindu refugees.

The next speaker, Sunanda Vashisht, was introduced as a political commentator, who is active in the social media. Vashisht credited Pandit Upadhyay for laying the intellectual foundation for the Bharatiya Jana Sangh.

Vashisht said Upadhyaya conceived the political philosophy of Integral Humanism, as a third way of national development in contrast with the mainstream Nehruvian philosophy, which borrowed from the Western concepts of democracy and socialism, and Radical Humanism espoused by Communist Party spokesman M.N. Roy.

The philosophy of Integral Humanism is rooted in Vedic cultures and advocates the simultaneous and integrated development of the body, mind and intellect and the soul of each human being. Deendayalji visualized for India a decentralized polity with the village as the base. Vashisht identified this as as “Rashtriyata” or national development.

The third speaker was Sangeeta Dua, host of TV Houston, a You Tube news channel based in Houston. Speaking in Hindi, Dua described Deendayalji, as an “askhand madalakar”, a swayamsevak, who worked for the benefit of himself, his community, and the world. Dua spoke glowingly of Deendayalji as a journalist as well as the author of biographies of Chandragupta Maurya and Sankaracharya.

The evening concluded with a vote of thanks from Ekal Vidyalaya’s Ramesh Shah.