Hindutva, Hindunasjonalisme og Bharatiya Janata Party En ...

Kapittel 7. Appendiks
A.
BJP TODAY
March 1--15, 2005 - Vol. 24, No. 6
Humanism, Viewed Integrally
By Sudheendra Kulkarni
Post-independence India has not produced many political leaders who were also
philosophers in their own right. Sadly, even those who were first-grade philosopherpoliticians
have not received the attention they deserve. Nowhere perhaps is this truer
than in the case of Pandit Deendayal Upadhyaya, the principal organiser and guide of the
Bharatiya Jana Sangh, which, in 1980, re-emerged as the Bharatiya Janata Party. The
BJP continues to revere him as its ideological guru. Indeed, its constitution enshrines
"Integral Humanism", his chief philosophical work, as the "basic philosophy of the party".
2005 marks the 40th anniversary of Pandit
Deendayal Upadhyaya's historic four-part
lecture series on 'Integral Humanism' delivered
in Bombay on April 22-25, 1965.
One does not have to be a BJP supporter to
realise the greatness and enduring value of this
work, which is a collection of four lectures that
Deendayalji delivered in Bombay on April 22-
25, 1965. What strikes any unprejudiced
reader of this treatise is its mind-expanding
power. In a short space of 32 pages, its author
illumines the vast expanse of the Bharatiya
Darshan, presenting a seamless elucidation of
almost all the fundamental issues that political
philosophers of all times have grappled with.
Its additional attraction is its simplicity. In the
great tradition of Indian seers, Deendayalji's
style is so unpolemical and unadorned that it is
difficult to believe that it was employed by the
leader of a party that per force had to work in a
confrontationist ideological environment.
The obscurity that surrounds "Integral
Humanism" is rather perplexing. After all, the
BJP is one of the two principal poles in Indian politics today. Under the leadership of Atal
Bihari Vajpayee, it also provided one of the best governments at the Centre. Still, its
basic philosophy has attracted little scrutiny from academic and political circles. In
mainstream media debates, "Integral Humanism" is so unfamiliar a phrase as to make
one wonder whether it is a victim of deliberate black-out.
Deendayalji was a remarkable political leader, so unlike leaders of his era or the times
that followed his death on February 11, 1968, in a mysterious case of murder while
travelling in a train. He was more a teacher than a mass mobiliser. His leadership lay in
the power of his intellect and, more so, in the strength of his ethical influence on the
people around him. Ideology and idealism were inseparably woven into his personality
which, like Mahatma Gandhi's, radiated sincerity.
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