CHAPTER II THE GENESIS OF THE BHARA TIYA JAN AT A...

CHAPTER II

THE GENESIS OF THE BHARA TIYA JAN AT A PARTY

The emergence of the Bharatiya Janata Party is one of the most

significant phenomena in contemporary Indian politics. From being a minor

political party with just two seats in the 8th Lok Sabha in 1984, it has been able

not only to increase its tally in the subsequent Parliamentary elections, but also

to become the ruling party at the Centre in alliance with some regional political

parties. Electoral successes of the Party become quite evident from the following

Table:

Table 2.1

Performance of the BJP in the Lok Sabha Election (1984-1999)

Year No. of Seats Won Percentage of Votes

1984 2 7.4

1989 85 11.4

1991 120 20.1

1996 161 21.34

1998 180 25.6

1999 182 23.07

Source: A G Noorani, The R S Sand the BJP: A Division of Labour, p.65.

From Table 2.1 it is seen that from 2 seats and 7.4 % votes in 1984 the

BJP won 182 seats and 23.07 % votes in 1999, the year in which the BJP- led

alliance came to power at the centre and remained in office for the full term of

five years.

Apart from its electoral successes, the BJP as a political front of the

Rashtriya Swayam Sevak Sangh (RSS) has assiduously promoted the ideology

of Hindutva which marks it out as a Hindu Communal Party. 1 The inroad made

Problems and prospects of the BJP in West Bengal 0 14

by Hindutva in recent years in the political firmament of the country represents

the most formidable challenge to the secular bases of the Indian Republic and

endangers the well being of not only the minorities but also the vast sections of

the Indian people. 2 The aim of the Hindutva ideologues, represented by the

RSS and its affiliates, is to make India a Hindu Rashtra. 3

This has been echoed in the BJP's Election Manifesto of 1996. It has

been clearly stated in the Manifesto :

The BJP is committed to the concept of one nation, one people, one

culture - our nationalist vision is not merely bound by the geographical or

political identity of India, but defined by our ancient cultural heritage.

From this belief, flows our faith in 'Cultural Nationalism' which is the core

of 'Hindutva'. 4

The Manifesto goes on to say further:

Hindutva is a unifying principle, which alone can preserve unity and

integrity of our nation. It is a collective endeavour to protect and re

energise the soul of India; to take us into the next millennium as a strong

and prosperous nation. Hindutva is also the anti-dote to the shameful

efforts of any section to benefit at the expense of others. We hold that by

recognising the limitless strengths of cultural nationalism can the nation

be moulded. 5

The slogan of 'Hindutva' and 'Hindu Rashtra' has thrown a challenge

before the secularists. The so-called Sangh Parivar comprising the Bharatiya

Janata Party, Viswa Hindu Parishad, Bajrang Dal, Bharatiya Mazdoor Sangh,

Akhil Bharatiya Vidyarthi Parishad etc. under the stewardship of the RSS, have

described the secularists as pseudo secularists and called themselves the real

secularists. They have even demanded a debate on the true meaning of

secularism.

To them, "Hindutva is not a communal concept as alleged by pseudo

secularists." 6 Rather, it is the Islamic Organizations, which are, by nature,

communal. So, the struggle against communalism means the struggle against

Islamic communalism.

For a proper understanding of the emergence and nature of the BJP, it is

necessary to look at its concepts of Hindutva and Hindu Rashtra in a historical

perspective. According to A G Noorani, "The BJP is, in truth, heir to one of the


two communal movements that existed long before Independence - the Hindu

Mahasabha." 7 The BJP formally came into existence in 1980 but the fact cannot

be denied that it is the direct descendant of the Bharatiya Jana Sangh (BJS).

Hindu Mahasabha is the political ancestor of the Jana Sangh, and the RSS the

organisational and ideological forerunner. Hindu Mahasabha was first formed in

Punjab in 1907 and then it was given an All-India shape in 1915 as a response

to both the Muslim League and the Indian liberals.

As Hindu-Muslim tension got intensified between 1921- 23, the dormant

Hindu Mahasabha formed in 1915 as a forum for protection of a variety of Hindu

interests was revived. 8 Hindu leaders called a national meeting at Benaras in

August 1923 to give a rebirth to the Hindu Mahasabha and a broad spectrum of

the Hindu community attended this meeting. Pandit Madan Mohan Malaviya, a

spokesman of Hindu revivalism in the United Provinces, said that the major

objectives of the session were "to devise means to arrest the deterioration and

decline of Hindus and to effect the improvement of the Hindus as a community." 9

In theory, the Mahasabha was a forum within the Congress, in which the

members could express Hindu views and work for the protection of Hindu

interests, but in such a manner as not necessarily to be anti-Muslim.

Nevertheless, the Mahasabha members expressed their strong opposition to the

separate. electorates granted to the Muslims through the Lucknow Pact of

1916.10

But in the late 20s, the Mahasabha set on a separate path signalling the

end of the Mahasabha being 'an adjunct of the Indian National Congress' and

the beginning of "an All India Hindu Organization with a strong, independent,

bold and clear-cut policy, taking up matters which concerned the whole Indian

Community and judging them primarily from the Hindu point of view."11 Presiding

over the Ajmer Session of the Mahasabha in 1933 Bhai Paramanand said,

"Hindustan is the land of the Hindus alone, and Musalmans and Christians and

other nations living in India are only our guests. They can live here as long as

they wish to remain as guests." 12

The appointment of V D Savarkar as the President of the Hindu

Mahasabha heralded the beginning of a new phase in the history of the


Organisation. 13 Savarkar's decision to transform the Organisation into a political

party had important repercussions on the party, affecting its relationships with

other political organisations and colonial authorities. 14 In his definition about the

aims and goals of the Organisation Savarkar said, "The Mahasabha is not, in the

main, a Hindu Dharma Sabha but is pre-eminently a Hindu Rashtra Sabha and is

a Pan-Hindu organisation shaping the destiny of the Hindu nation in all its social,

political and cultural aspects." 15

With a view to consolidating the Hindus he raised the slogan - 'Hinduise

politics and militarise Hindudom.' 16 Establishment of 'one state, one nation and

one culture' was his battle cry against the Muslims' demand for Pakistan. 17 He

even went to the extent of saying that if the Mussalmans are to live in India "they

must live here taking for granted Hindustan as the land of the Hindus, and no

one else" 18 As regards 'who is a Hindu ?' Savarkar, in his book Hindutva, (In

Bengali) argued:

A Hindu ... is he who looks upon the land that extends from the Indus

to Seas, as the land of his forefathers, he, who inherits the blood of

that race whose first discernable source could be traced to the Vedic

and which on its onward march assimilating much that was

incorporated and ennobling much that was assimilated, who has

inherited and claims as his own the culture of that race ... and who

above all addresses this land as his holy land - the land of his

prophets and seers, of his godmen and guru, the land of piety and

pilgrimage. These are the essentials of Hindutva .... 19

But the Muslims or Christians, even those who are converted, though shared a

common culture and a common homeland with the Hindus, could not be

regarded as Hindus because although they consider Hindustan as the fatherland

they are not prepared to accept it as their holy land. Their holy land is far off in

Arabia or Palestine. Not only that their love is also divided. 20 It is very wei!

known that Savarkar started his career as an active fighter against imperialism

but the tragedy is that he ended up as a theoretician of Hindu communalism.

Thus, it can be said that the Mahasabha began its career as a protest against


the Muslim League; it grew up as an appendage to the Congress and declined

into a bigoted communalist organization.

RSS's relations with the Hindu Mahasabha were found to be mutually

fruitful for quite some time. In 1931, Baburao Savarkar, who had founded a

Tarun Hindu Sabha as the youth wing of the Mahasabha, got his organization

merged with the RSS. As the Mahasabha lacked trained cadres of its own, it,

too, had started considering RSS as an extension of its politics in the sphere of

the youth. 21 The Delhi session of the Hindu Mahasabha (1932) passed a

resolution praising the activities of the RSS and putting emphasis on the need to

spread its network throughout the country. 22 In the same year, the Mahasabha

leader Bhai Parmanand extended a special invitation to Hedgewar, the first

Sarsanghcha/ak of the RSS, to grace the Karachi session of the Hindu Yuvak

Parishad and the RSS leader was thus able to build a bridge with youth groups

in Sindh and Punjab. 23

V D Savarkar, after his release from jail in 1937, came as a help to

enhance the prestige of the RSS in Maharashtra by demonstratively visiting and

lecturing at Shakha meetings. 24 "In 1940, Shyama Prasad Mukherjee, prominent

Mahasabha leader, addressed a Lahore RSS Shakha and declared that the

organisation was the one silver lining in the cloudy sky of lndia."25 It cannot be

denied that it was for the Mahasabha that the RSS could spread its tentacles in

Hindi-speaking northern India, today the principal grazing field for itself and its

affiliated organizations.26

In spite of these mutually beneficial relationships there were also points of

tension in the relations between the RSS and the Hindu Mahasabha on the issue

of the RSS's entering into politics. It is well known that Hedgewar refused to

transform the RSS into a political organization.27 He wanted RSS "to remain

primarily 'cultural', pursuing more long term goals through quiet but sustained

physical-cum-ideological training of cadres." 28

The relations between the RSS and the Hindu Mahasabha started getting

worse after Golwalkar succeeded Hedgewar as Sarsanghcha/ak. "Golwalkar's

saintly style and his apparent disinterest in politics convinced some

Swayamsevaks that the RSS had become more concerned with other worldly


implications of character-building than with its national political implications.

Links between the Hindu Mahasabha and the RSS were virtually severed." 29The

fact, which cannot be denied is that, "The RSS grew under his leadership, but

remained on the periphery of Indian politics as a militant Hindu group with a

growing reputation for complicity in communal riots." 30

RSS was banned by the Government of India after the assassination of

Gandhi by Nathuram Godse, an active member of the RSS. Guru Golwalkar, the

then RSS Chief, engaged him in negotiations with the Government to get the

ban lifted. On 24 September 1948, Golwalkar wrote to Nehru that no evidence,

which could link RSS with the murder of Gandhi, existed. 31 On the same day, he

wrote Patel, "If you with government power and we with organized cultural force

combined, we can eliminate this menace (communism). I am intensely worried at

the waves of victory of that foreign 'ism' which are sweeping our neighbourhood

countries." 32 Nehru wrote back that the government had a 'mass of information'

by which it could be proved that the RSS was 'anti-national', 'often subversive'

and 'violent'. 33 But Golwalkar denied the charge and emphasised the non

political nature of the RSS.

Contrary to Golwalkar's contention, the fact is that the RSS leadership

was seriously thinking of a political role for itself. Correspondence between the

then Home Minister, Patel and Golwalkar proved this as they centred primarily

on the political intentions of the RSS. 34 Patel, in a letter, proposed that "RSS

men carry on their patriotic endeavour only by joining the Congress and not by

keeping separate and by opposing." 35

The ban on the RSS was lifted on 12 July 1949, as it agreed to adopt a

written constitution, maintain regular registers of members, not to admit minors

without parental permission and work openly and in the cultural field only. "The

RSS was formed in 1925 but in the decades that have elapsed, there has been

no change in the content or style of its teaching. The periodic bans on it have not

curbed its activities and it has operated extensively in civil society, spreading its

tentacles deep and wide among large sections of urban middle and lower-middle

classes in different parts of India. Through 'cultural' and 'educational' work, the

RSS has been steadily spreading the ideas of Hindu communalism over the last

Problems and prospects ofthe BJP in West Bengal 0 19

seven decades." 36 It may be noted here that the number of RSS Shakhas in

1975 was 8500. In the post-emergency period when the Sangh joined the Janata

Government that number jumped to 10,000 within two years. By 1982 Shakhas

had doubled to 20,000 essentially because the RSS was able to use its influence

during Janata rule. In 2001, the RSS had 41,382 Shakhas. In 2005, the RSS had

48,794 Shakhas. 37 Again, according to Ram Madhav, an RSS spokesman, "The

RSS had a target of crossing 50,000 Shakhas in 2005". 38

As regards the political role the RSS was contemplating to play in the

post-ban period, it should be stated that in the pre-independence period the role

played by the RSS in the political sphere was not in the interest of the national

freedom movement and as it kept itself far aloof from the anti-British movement

and was busy fomenting communal riots as part of the 'Divide and Rule' policy of

the Britishers, it could not have felt the need for a political party. But after

independence, things got changed. India adopted the principle of secularism. At

that time the need for a communal political party was felt by the RSS and

responded to the call of Dr S P Mukherjee for support in forming an alternative to

the Congress which, Dr Mukherjee felt, under the leadership of Nehru, followed

policies aimed at appeasing Pakistan and the Muslim minority in India to the

detriments of the Hindus. As the RSS was barred to enter into politics by its

constitution under Article 4, it decided to permit its Swayamsevaks to work for

the new party in their individual capacities. Thus, a new party, Jana Sangh was

born in 1951 under the leadership of Dr Shyama Prasad Mukherjee about which

it is correctly said that the Jana Sangh emerged from a combination of a party

less leader and a leaderless party (RSS). "It's stated objectives were to

challenge the communist influence and to adopt highly rightist stand on issues

like education, land reforms, economy and foreign policies. Both the RSS and

the Jana Sangh jointly campaigned for making of nuclear bombs, complete

accession of Kashmir to India through military might and compulsory military

training etc. They also propagated that the communists were anti-national and

their policy of dividing the Hindu community in the name of class struggle was

highly harmful for Hindu nationalism." 39


For 25 years since its inception the Jana Sangh had functioned as a

"Hindu nationalist party but made little inroads outside a small section of the

Hindi belt and done well only as part of all opposition combines (both in 1967

and 1977) but not on its own or on the basis of its ideology". 40

Table 2.2

Electoral performance of the Jana Sangh during 1952- 77

Year No. of Seats Won Percentage of Votes

1952 3 3.06

1957 4 5.93

1962 14 6.44

1967 35 9.41

1971-72 22 7.35

1977 93 -

Source: Marxbadi Path, No. 4, May 1999, p. 54

From the above, it is seen that the electoral performance of the Jana

Sangh as a political party was not very encouraging except in 1967 and 1977. It

was also not able to throw any major challenge to the domination of the

Congress Party. "During the Nehru-era the Jana Sangh and its creator RSS

could not at all influence the mind of the Indian people owing to their theoretical

and ideological weakness against Nehruvism." 41 "That is why the Jana Sangh

had to remain satisfied with only three seats in the first Lok Sabha Elections." 42

"In fact, except the theory of Integral Humanism of Deen Dayal

Upadhyaya and that of Hindutva and Hindu Rashtra of V D Savarkar and M S

Golwalkar, there was nothing with which the RSS or the Jana Sangh could fight

Nehruvian ideology" 43 "Besides, people were not familiar with these writings." 44

Above all on 30 January 1948 when Gandhi was assassinated by Nathuram

Godse, an active member of the RSS, who subsequently associated himself with

the Hindu Mahasabha, the entire nation virtually came to witness the ugly

communal faces of the RSS and the Jana Sangh. 45 Even when Indira Gandhi

was the Prime Minister they did not have the courage to raise the slogan of


Hindu Rashtra, perhaps due to the influence the former Soviet Union had upon

the ruling Party. 46

However, on 26 June 1975, emergency was declared by Mrs Indira

Gandhi and a number of organizations including the RSS were banned. In the

year 1976 India was declared a 'secular' state by the 42nd Amendment to the

Constitution of India. 47Under those circumstances, the foremost duty of the RSS

and the Jana Sangh leaders was to defeat Mrs. Indira Gandhi and her party in

the upcoming election with a view to doing away with the Soviet influence upon

Indian politics and thus to keep their own existence in tact. 48

On the eve of the 1977 General Elections, the Jana Sangh merged itself

into the Janata Party which swept to power on the strength of the anti

emergency wave. 49 But the Janata experiment did not last long because of the

basic contradictions between its constituents which came to be manifested in

ugly personal bickerings and factional fighting. 50 Not only that in the days to

come the differences acquired an ideological colour over what became known as

the 'dual membership issue' when the erstwhile Jana Sangh contingent refused

to break its ties with RSS. 51 "On 19 March 1980, the Janata Party's Central

Parliamentary Board adopted the principle that no legislator or office bearers of

the party should take part in the daily activities of the RSS, a decision later

endorsed by the party's National executive". 52 But the Jana Sanghis argued that

the RSS was a 'Cultural Organization' and being members of it had nothing to do

with their political identity. As a result of all this, "the Jana Sangh group finally left

the Janata party leading to the fall of the first non-Congress government formed

at the Centre". 53 "In that opportune time with a view to removing the stink of

communalism from its body the leaders of the Jana Sangh changed the name of

their party. Thus emerged the BJP in April, 1980". 54


References

1. Manini Chatterjee, BJP's Rightwing Communalism: The Political Face of Hindutva,

p. 2.

2. Ibid.

3. Ibid.

4. Election Manifesto, BJP, 1996, p. 15.

5. Ibid.

6. Organiser, 3 February 1991.

7. A G Noorani, BJP: 'Child of RSS and Heir to Hindu Mahasabha', Mainstream,

27 July 1991, p. 16.

8. W K Andersen and S D Damle, The Brotherhood in Saffron, The Rashtriya

Swayam Sevak Sangh and Hindu Revivalism, p. 28.

9. Ibid.

10. Craig Baxter, Jana Sangh: A Biography of an Indian Political Party, p. 10.

11. Quoted in Ibid., p. 17.

12. Quoted in Nimai Pramanik, 'The politics of Hindutva and Hindu Rashtra in

contemporary India' in Sobhanlal Datta Gupta (ed.) India: Politics and Society

Today and Tomorrow, p. 143 .

. 13. Social Scientist, vol. 27, Nos. 7-8, July-August 1999, p. 50.

14. Ibid.

15. lbid.,p.51.

16. V D Savarkar, Historic Statements, Bombay 1967.

17. Nimai Pramanik, op. cit., p. 143.

18. Urbashi Dhamiya, 'Hindutva as Nehru and Savarkar saw it', Telegraph, June 1991.

19. V D Savarkar, Hindutva (in Bengali), pp. 115 - 16.


20. Ibid.

21. Tapan Basu et al. Khaki Shorts- Saffron Flags, p. 23.

22. Ibid.

23. Ibid.

24. Ibid.

25. Balraj Madhok, Protrait of a Martyr: Biography of Dr Shyama Prasad Mookerji, pp-

28-29

26. Tapan Basu et al. op.cit., p. 24.

27. J A Curran, Militant Hinduism in Indian Politics, A Study of RSS, pp. 18-19.

28. Tapan Basu et al. op. cit.

29. W K Andersen and S D Damle, op.cit., p. 93.

30. A G Noorani, The RSS and BJP- A Division of Labour, p. 6.

31. W K Andersen and S D Damle, op. cit., p. 52.

32. Ibid.

33. Ibid.

34. Ibid.

35. Ibid.

36. Manini Chatterjee, op. cit., p. 22.

37. Tehelka (An English Weekly News Magazine) 30 April2005, p. 14.

38. Ibid.

39. Aneek, March-April 2000, p. 47.

40. Manini Chatterjee, op cit., p. 4.

41. Nimai Pramanik, op.cit., p. 140.

42. Ibid.

43. Ibid.


44. Ibid.

45. Ibid.

46. Ibid., pp.140-41.

47. Ibid., p.141.

48. Ibid.

49. Manini Chatterjee, op. cit., p. 4.

50. Ibid.

51. Ibid.

52. Bruce D Graham, 'The challenge of Hindu Nationalism : The Bharatiya Janata

Party in contemporary Indian politics' in Peter Ronald de Souza and E Sridharan

(ed.) India's political Parties, p.158.

53. Manini Chatterjee, op. cit.

54. Nimai Pramanik, op. cit., p. 141.

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