Deendayal Upadhyaya

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Deendayal Upadhyaya
Joint postage stamp issued by India and South Africa, 2018
10th President of Bharatiya Jana Sangh
In office
December 1967 – February 1968
Preceded byBalraj Madhok
Succeeded byAtal Bihari Vajpayee
Personal details
Born(1916-09-25)25 September 1916
Nagla Chandraban,
Agra University (BA)
Known forIntegral Humanism[1]

Deendayal Upadhyaya (25 September 1916 – 11 February 1968) was an Indian politician, a proponent of

swadeshi (self-sufficiency).[4]

Early life

Upadhyaya was born in 1916 in the village of Nagla Chandraban, now called Deendayal Dham,in

Sanatan Dharma College, Kanpur. In 1939 he moved over to Agra and joined St. John's College, Agra to pursue a master's degree in English literature but could not continue his studies.[10] He did not take up his MA exams due to some family and financial issues. [11] He was came to be known as Panditji for appearing in the civil services examination, wearing the traditional Indian dhoti-kurta and cap.[12]

Career

Upadhyaya had come into contact with the RSS through a classmate, Baluji Mahashabde, while studying at Sanatan Dharma College in 1937. He met the founder of the RSS,

swayamsevak of the RSS essentially because ‘his discourse reflected the pure thought-current of the Sangh’.[13]

Upadhyaya started the monthly Rashtra Dharma publication from Lucknow in the 1940s, using it to spread Hindutva ideology. Later he started the weekly

Panchjanya and the daily Swadesh.[14]

In 1951, when

Syama Prasad Mookerjee founded the BJS, 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. For 15 years, he remained the outfit's general secretary. He also contested by-poll for the Lok Sabha seat of Jaunpur from Uttar Pradesh
in 1963 bi election when Jansangh MP Bramh Jeet Singh died, but failed to attract significant political traction and did not get elected.

In the 1967 general elections, the Jana Sangh got 35 seats and became the 3rd largest party in the Lok Sabha. The Jan Sangh also went onto be a part of the Samyukta Vidhayak Dal, an experiment of having non-Congress opposition parties as a coalition to form governments in multiple states This brought the right and the left of the Indian political spectrum on one single platform.[15] He became president of the Jana Sangh in December 1967 in the Calicut session of the party. His presidential speech in that session focused on multiple aspects right from the formation of coalition government to language.[16] No major events happened in the party during his tenure as the president that ended in 2 months in February 1968 due to his untimely death.

Upadhyaya edited

Panchjanya (weekly) and Swadesh (daily) from Lucknow. In Hindi, he wrote a drama on Chandragupta Maurya, and later wrote a biography of Shankaracharya
. He translated a Marathi biography of Hedgewar.

In December 1967, Upadhyaya was elected president of the BJS.[17]

Philosophy

Integral humanism was a set of concepts drafted by Upadhyaya as a political program and adopted in 1965 as the official doctrine of the Jan Sangh.[18]

Death

On 10 February 1968, Upadhyaya boarded a late-night train from Lucknow to Patna, which made several stops along the way. Upadhyaya was confirmed to have been seen alive at Jaunpur, shortly after midnight. The train briefly stopped at Varanasi around 01:40 am before proceeding on to Mughalsarai; on arrival at 2:10 am, Upadhyaya was not aboard.[17][19] At approximately 2:20 am, his body was located outside the Mughalsarai train station, nearly 750 feet from the platform. A five-rupee note was in his hand.[17]

The Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) investigation team determined that Upadhyaya had been pushed out of the coach by robbers just before the train entered Mughalsarai station.[19] A passenger travelling in the cabin adjoining Upadhyaya's reported seeing a man removing files and bedding from it. This man was later identified as Bharat Lal.[17] The CBI arrested Lal and his associate Ram Awadh and charged the pair with murder and theft.[17] According to the CBI, the men stated that Upadhyaya had caught them attempting to steal his bag and threatened to call the police, so they pushed him from the train.[19] The men were acquitted of the murder charges. Lal was convicted of the theft, but appealed to the Allahabad High Court.[17][19]

The murder remains officially unresolved. Many people believed the murder to be politically motivated, and felt that the CBI had not handled the case correctly.

Y.V. Chandrachud of the Bombay High Court to lead a single-person inquiry into the facts of the case.[17] His findings were published in 1970.[21] According to Chandrachud, the CBI's investigation had produced an accurate picture of the death as a spontaneous incident resulting from an interrupted theft. He found no evidence of political motivation.[17]

In 2017, Upadhyaya's niece and several politicians demanded a fresh probe in his murder.[22]

Legacy

Bust of Deendayal Upadhyaya
Statue of Deendayal Upadhyaya

Since 2016 the BJP government under Prime Minister

freedom struggle".[25] The Deen Dayal Research Institute deals with queries on Upadhyaya and his works.[26]

In 2018 a newly constructed cable-stayed bridge in Surat was named Pandit Dindayal Upadhyay Bridge in honour of him.[27]

On 16 February 2020 in Varanasi, Narendra Modi opened the Pandit Deendayal Upadhyaya Memorial Centre and unveiled a 63-foot statue of Upadhyaya, his tallest statue in the country.[28]

See also

References

  1. ^
    ISBN 9780691006710. Archived from the original
    on 4 September 2009.
  2. ^ Dutta, Prabhash K. (21 September 2017). "Who was Deendayal Upadhyay, the man PM Narendra Modi often refers to in his speeches?". India Today. Retrieved 9 February 2021.
  3. ^ "Points about Deendayal Upadhyay". IndiaToday. 25 September 2018. Retrieved 16 February 2020.
  4. .
  5. ^ Bhardwaj, Ashutosh (14 March 2016). "What Deendayal Upadhyaya wrote on tolerance, mob rule and autocracy". The Indian Express. Retrieved 24 April 2024.
  6. ^ ]
  7. ^ Sahasrabuddhe, Vinay (24 September 2016). "With Focus on Vikas, Deendayal Upadhyaya Went Beyond Public vs Private". BloombergQuint. Retrieved 24 February 2022.
  8. ^ Prabhash K Dutta (21 September 2017). "Who was Deendayal Upadhyay, the man PM Narendra Modi often refers to in his speeches?". India Today. Retrieved 26 November 2018.
  9. ^ "Pandit Deendayal Upadhyaya". rajasthan.bjym.org. Archived from the original on 7 June 2019. Retrieved 7 June 2019.
  10. ^ "End of an Era". deendayalupadhyay.org. Retrieved 26 November 2018.
  11. ]
  12. ^ Anand, Arun (25 September 2020). "Who killed Deendayal Upadhyaya? It's a 50-year-old question". ThePrint. Retrieved 9 February 2021.
  13. .
  14. ^ "Deendayal Upadhyaya". Bharatiya Janata party. Archived from the original on 21 September 2014. Retrieved 12 September 2014.
  15. ^ "Deen Dayal Upadhyaya, a swayamsevak, was pitchforked to lead Jana Sangh at a critical juncture in party's history", indianexpress.com, 25 September 2019, archived from the original on 12 April 2020
  16. .
  17. ^ a b c d e f g h i j Noorani, A.G. (2012). Islam, South Asia and the Cold War. Tulika Books. Retrieved 5 June 2018.
  18. ISBN 9780691006710. Archived from the original on 4 September 2009. Retrieved 19 October 2018.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: bot: original URL status unknown (link
    )
  19. ^ a b c d Pandey, Deepak K. (25 May 2015). "Probe murder of Deendayal Upadhyaya afresh: Swamy". The Hindu. Retrieved 5 June 2018.
  20. ^ "Unsolved midnight murder mystery of Deendayal Upadhyaya at Mughalsarai Junction". www.timesnownews.com. 5 June 2018. Retrieved 8 October 2022.
  21. ^ a b Husain, Yusra (11 February 2018). "Blood on the tracks: A journey that led to a fatal destination". The Times of India. Retrieved 8 October 2022.
  22. ^ "Cong asks for fresh probe into Deendayal Upadhyay's death". DNA India. Press Trust of India. 11 August 2017. Retrieved 5 June 2018.
  23. ^ a b Chatterjee, Manini (25 September 2017). "Manufacturing an icon – The Deendayal Upadhyaya, one of the university is also name in Sikar. blitzkrieg". The Telegraph. Archived from the original on 8 November 2017. Retrieved 5 June 2018.
  24. ^ Bindu Shajan Perappadan (19 June 2014). "Deen Dayal Upadhyaya Hospital to become a medical college-cum-hospital". Retrieved 23 March 2018.
  25. ^ "SP, BSP oppose renaming of Mughalsarai railway station". LiveMint. PTI. 4 August 2017. Retrieved 5 June 2018.
  26. ^ Kang, Bhavdeep (6 October 2014) Who is this man who features in every Modi speech? News.Yahoo.com
  27. ^ "Pandit Dindayal Upadhya Bridge". Surat Municipal Corporation. Retrieved 24 May 2020.
  28. ^ "PM Modi Launches, lays foundation stone of 50 projects worth Rs 1,254 crore in Varanasi". TribuneIndia. 16 February 2019. Retrieved 17 February 2020.

External links