Pandit Deendayal Upadhyaya

About Deendayal Upadhyaya(1916-1968)

Early life

Birth: Pandit Deendayal Upadhyaya was born on Monday September 25, 1916, in the sacred region of Brij in the village of Nagla Chandrabhan in Mathura District.
Parents: His mother Shrimati Rampyari was a religious-minded lady and his father, Shri Bhagwati Prasad, was Assistant Station Master at Jalesar, he had lost both in his early age
Education: He later went to high school in Sikar. Maharaja of Sikar gave Pandit ji a gold medal, Rs. 250 for books and a monthly scholarship of Rs.10. Pandit ji passed his Intermediate exams with distinction in Pilani and left to Kanpur to pursue his B.A. and joined the Sanatan Dharma College. In 1937 he received his B.A. in the first division. Pandit ji moved to Agra to pursue M.A.

Other stages of life

Religious association: At the instance of his friend Shri. Balwant Mahashabde, he joined the RSS in 1937. Here he joined forces with Shri Nanaji Deshmukh and Shri Bhau Jugade for RSS activities.
His publications as journalist: He established the publishing house ‘Rashtra Dharma Prakashan’ in Lucknow and launched the monthly magazine ‘Rashtra Dharma’ to propound the principles he held sacred. Later he launched the weekly ‘Panchjanya’ and still later the daily ‘Swadesh’.
Political life:
- Along with Dr. Shama Prasad Mookerji, Deendayal convened on September 21, 1951 a political convention of UP and founded the state unit of the new party, Bharatiya Jana Sangh.
- Pandit Deendayalji was the moving spirit and Dr. Mookerjee presided over the first all-India convention held on October 21, 1951.
- Deendayal Upadhyaya was General Secretary of the Bhartiya Jan Sangh from its first Kanpur session in Dec. 1951 to its 14th Cabinet session in Dec.
- He also became president of the party in1968
Death: On the dark night of February 11, 1968, Deendayalji was fiendishly pushed into the jaws of sudden death and was found dead on at Mugal Sarai Railway yard.

Contributions

His literary works

Integral humanism

It was a set of concepts drafted by Deendayal Upadhyaya as a political program and adopted in 1965 as the official doctrine of the Jan Sangh and later BJP Upadhyaya borrowed the Gandhian principles such as
- sarvodaya (progress of all), swadeshi (domestic), and Gram Swaraj (village self rule) and these principles were appropriated selectively to give more importance to cultural-national values.
These values were based on an individual’s undisputed subservience to nation as a corporate entity.
Upadhyaya considered that it was of utmost importance for India to develop an indigenous economic model with the human being at center stage.
This approach made this concept different from Socialism and Capitalism.
Integral Humanism was adopted as Jan Sangh’s political doctrine and its new openness to other opposition forces made it possible for the Hindu nationalist movement to have an alliance in the early 1970s with the prominent Gandhian Sarvodaya movement going on under the leadership of J. P. Narayan.
This was considered as the first major public breakthrough for the Hindu nationalist movement

Philosophy of Integral Humanism :

According to Pandit Deendayal Upadhyaya, the primary concern in India should be to develop an indigenous development model that has human beings as its core focus

It is opposed to both western capitalist individualism and Marxist socialism, though welcoming to western science.

It seeks a middle ground between capitalism and socialism, evaluating both systems on their respective merits, while being critical of their excesses and alienness

Indianization of Democracy

Deendayal Upadhyaya wanted to base India’s independence on its culture. He was, therefore, not prepared to accept any widely-accepted notion in this regard blindly.
A western concept of the nation, western secularism, western democracy and various other western issues came up for comment; Deendayal was for Indianising all these concepts.
He enthusiastically accepted the concept of democracy.
Although it was established in India immediately after independence and universal franchise was introduced through the Constitution of India Deendayal was slightly apprehensive of this move in view of India’s long years of slavery.
He reached the conclusion that universal adult franchise should come after proper education.
He believed that democracy was not a gift of the West to India. Indian nationhood is naturally democratic.