The Brotherhood in Saffron Read online

  Unable to recruit any nationally recognized politician, the general council of the Jana Sangh met at Allahabad in August 1953 to choose an interim president. Mauli Chandra Sharma, one of the two general secretaries, was asked to serve as acting president until a new president was chosen at the party’s next annual session in Bombay. Deendayal Upadhyaya now had sole executive authority over the party’s organizational structure. Even before Sharma’s assumption of the presidency, Upadhyaya had played a more active role in the day-to-day work of the organization than Sharma, who had a family and a law practice in Delhi.

  When the annual session met in January 1954 it was clear that the very energetic general secretary, who could rely on the support of the RSS cadre, had a firm control on the levers of power within the party. Because the delegates were unable to find a suitable national leader to serve as president, they had no choice but again to turn to Sharma. However, the evidence suggests that the RSS cadre had deep reservations about him. Organiser, in its report of the session, focused attention on ‘the thin unassuming Din Dayal Upadhyaya who stood head and shoulders above all others, and who in a way dominated the whole session’. The report expressed the hope that

  Pt Mauli Chandra Sharma who has the difficult task of fitting himself in the place of the late Dr Mookerjee will succeed in securing the willing cooperation of the Swayamsevak Sangh [sic] workers who form the core of the Jana Sangh. Let Pt. Mauli Chandra Sharma carry them with him and build a great edifice on these foundations.15

  Sharma could not win the confidence of the RSS cadre in the party, in large part because of differences with them regarding the powers of the party president. Sharma expected to function with much the same independence as Mookerjee; however, he had neither Mookerjee’s national reputation nor his charismatic appeal among the RSS cadre. Moreover, there was a group of young swayamsevaks, like Upadhyaya, who during the preceding two years of full-time work in politics, had developed greater political self-confidence and expected to have a major voice in decision making.

  The tension between Sharma and the RSS cadre surfaced when Sharma refused to accept a draft list of names for the working committee that was drawn up by Upadhyaya. The Jana Sangh constitution gave the president the right to choose his own working committee, and Sharma decided to substitute some of the nominees with his own men.16 His choice of Vasantrao Krishna Oke infuriated many of the RSS cadre. Oke, a pracharak, had not received permission from the RSS leadership to join the working committee. Indeed, the RSS leadership had ordered him to leave politics entirely and resume his RSS work.17 According to Eknath Ranade, at that time a member of the RSS executive, Oke not only broke RSS discipline, but he was in revolt against it. According to Ranade, Oke had proposed that the RSS disband on the grounds that the Jana Sangh could carry out the task of national rejuvenation more effectively than a non-political association like the RSS.18 Sharma later claimed that he was unaware of the RSS high command’s decision to remove Oke from politics until several months after the Bombay session.19 Yet, he did not remove Oke from the working committee, even after discovering the views of the RSS high command.

  For the traditionalist RSS leadership, democratic politics was a necessary though somewhat immoral activity. To enjoy it as much as Oke obviously did struck then as rank apostasy. To suggest the dissolution of the RSS confirmed the heresy.20

  Soon after the 1953 Bombay session, Sharma and Oke tried to recruit a large number of non-RSS party workers, as well as to solicit funds from wealthy businessmen.21 Sharma claims that he tried to raise money to finance the expansion of the party’s organizational base. It is not clear if he meant to displace the organizing secretaries, most of whom were pracharaks, but had he succeeded in raising the money and in recruiting non-RSS workers, this option would have been open to him. In any case, Sharma was unable to diminish the influence of the organizing secretaries.

  When the party’s general council met at Indore in August 1954 the organizing secretaries knew they had the votes in the general council to determine party policy, and they were not prepared to compromise with Sharma. Sharma also understood their mood, and he did not bother to attend the meeting, although Oke did.22 Sharma’s presidential address was read for him. The delegates were annoyed by his thinly veiled references to the Jana Sangh’s losing its commitment to ‘secular nationalism’ and ‘democracy’, and by his glowing references to Nehru’s policy towards Pakistan. They were particularly irritated by his suggestion that the party become more democratic by eliminating the position of organizing secretary. Sharma was proposing a complete reorientation of party power. The organizing secretaries, most of whom were former RSS pracharaks, constituted the steel frame of the party. They supervised the day-to-day work of the local units; they were the major communications link between the different levels of the party; they played a major role in the choice of officers in the organization and of candidates for party tickets; and they enforced compliance with executive decisions.23 It was this authority system which prevented Sharma from developing an effective faction within the party and which ultimately forced him to resign.

  There were, however, some units in which the non-RSS element was dominant. As the RSS cadre tightened its control over the party organization, the covert distrust between them and the non-RSS participants developed into overt hostility. One prominent example of the dispute was in the Delhi unit of the party: The Delhi general council had a non-RSS majority, and the RSS cadre intended to take control of it. Guru Vaid Dutt, a well-known Hindi writer and the president of the Delhi State Jana Sangh unit, charged the RSS leadership with dictating party policy, and he resigned.24

  The RSS cadre also moved to take over the national party organization. With this objective in mind, Deendayal Upadhyaya scheduled a meeting of the working committee at Delhi on 7 November 1954. Sharma hoped to avert the anticipated purge of party ‘rebels’ by ordering the general council of the party, which had a non-RSS contingent, to meet at Delhi in early November. Upadhyaya countermanded his order on the grounds that the Jana Sangh constitution permitted only the working committee to call a meeting of the general council.25 Realizing his hopeless position, Sharma resigned several days before the working committee met. To leave no doubt that he was out of the party, the working committee formally expelled him from the party. Organiser informed its readers that Sharma ‘suffered from a fatal flaw of an insufferable self-aggrandisement—even at the cost of the party. In this he had no scruples as to the means he employed. Soon it became clear that he was hardly the man to lead a great and growing organisation.’26 The working committee replaced Sharma with S. A. Sohani, RSS sanghchalak of Berar.27 With Sohani’s accession to the presidency, the RSS cadre had virtually absolute control of the organizational wing of the party. From 1954 to 1967, RSS pracharak Deendayal Upadhyaya was general secretary, and it was the general secretary who exercised executive power in the party.28 The RSS cadre maintained their control through the network of organizing secretaries who both serve as gatekeepers of admittance into the organization and manage advancement up the party hierarchy. The only possible challenge to this system might have come from Dr Raghu Vira, a renowned linguist from Madhya Pradesh elected party president in 1962. Raghu Vira, a Congress member of the Upper House of parliament when he bolted from the ruling party in 1959 because of differences with India’s China policy, was welcomed into the Jana Sangh as a national political figure who might make the party more respectable. His death in 1963 may have spared the party a possible power struggle.

  There is no evidence that the RSS leadership orchestrated the actions of their pracharaks in the new party, though they were surely kept informed about what was happening in the party. The purging of the party dissidents was an attempt to create a decision-making structure more compatible with that of the RSS itself, not to impose the will of the RSS leadership on the party. Indeed, the traditionalist RSS leadership did not want to take responsibility for running the party.

  With the purging of
the dissidents, the swayamsevaks proceeded to reorient party priorities. Questions of national integration were still primary, but more serious attention was directed at economic and social issues. The 1954 Indore general council session, at which the purge was initiated, voted for a new economic manifesto which significantly shifted the party’s orientation on economic issues.29 The manifesto called for an addition to the Indian constitution to include as a new right the guarantee of a job; it proposed worker participation in the ownership and control of industry; and it supported labour’s right to strike. It advocated the immediate implementation of an income policy which would guarantee a minimum salary of 100 rupees per month and a maximum salary of 2,000 rupees per month. It also proposed that the government adopt a set of policies to guarantee that average minimum wages are at least 10 per cent of average maximum wages. It recommended the abolition of large landed estates without compensation. The delegates also approved a resolution proposing that untouchability become a cognizable offence under the penal code.

  THE 1957 AND 1962 GENERAL ELECTIONS: DEVELOPING AN ORGANIZATIONAL BASE

  The Jana Sangh went into the 1957 general elections with a far clearer grasp of the electoral process and a less conservative set of policy guidelines. A candidate’s ability to finance his own campaign was no longer the major criterion for selection, as it had been in 1951–52. The party was able to generate candidates from within, and it was able to assume more of the costs and responsibilities of the electoral campaign.30 The party leaders also were aware of the Jana Sangh’s relatively limited support base. Table 2 shows the performance of the Jana Sangh in various parliamentary and assembly elections from 1952 to 1971–72.

  Table 2: Jana Sangh Electoral Performance in Parliamentary and State Assembly Elections

  Note. See Appendices C and D for statistics for all states and union territories in which the Jana Sangh contested parliamentary seats.

  Despite their limited experience in politics, the RSS cadre in the party was able to organize an effective campaign. Indeed, they were able to mobilize even more support for Jana Sangh candidates than in the 1951–52 elections. The party’s percentage of the parliamentary vote increased from 3.06 in 1952 to 5.93 in 1957, and to 6.44 in 1962. Its percentage of the assembly vote increased from 2.76 in 1952 to 4.03 in 1957 and 6.07 in 1962. It won 4 of the 487 parliamentary seats in 1957 and 14 of the 494 parliamentary seats in the 1962 elections. Its assembly representation increased from 51 in 1957 to 119 in 1962. Tables 3 and 4 detail the performance of the Jana Sangh in various assembly and parliamentary elections in selected states and Union Territories from 1952 to 1975.

  The party’s strength continued to be concentrated in the Hindi-speaking states, especially Uttar Pradesh, Madhya Pradesh, the Union territory of Delhi, and the Hindu-majority cities of Punjab, areas in which the RSS had already established a firm base of support in the 1940s. In Uttar Pradesh, the Jana Sangh’s percentage of the parliamentary vote doubled from 7.29 to 14.79 between 1952 and 1957. It won two of the state’s 86 parliamentary seats and 17 of the 430 assembly seats in 1957, and increased its parliamentary representation to 7 and its assembly representation to 49 in 1962. The party started out from an urban support base in Uttar Pradesh, as it did in most other states, but it made a concerted effort to build up support in rural areas. Voting statistics demonstrate that it succeeded in attracting considerable rural support.31 In addition, the 1959 municipal elections in Uttar Pradesh’s five largest cities demonstrated that the party was able to mobilize significant urban support.32 The Jana Sangh won 56 of the 296 seats in those municipal elections, emerging with the largest party representation in Lucknow, the state’s capital, and with the second largest party representation in the other four cities.

  Table 3: Jana Sangh Performance in State Assembly Elections in Selected States/Union Territories

  Table 4: Jana Sangh Performance in Parliamentary Elections in Selected States/Union Territories

  In Madhya Pradesh, the party won no parliamentary seats in 1957, though it did receive 13.96 per cent of the total popular vote. In 1962, the Jana Sangh increased its percentage of the vote to 17.87 per cent and won three of the state’s 36 seats. The party’s performance in the state’s assembly constituencies was even more impressive. With 9.88 per cent of the total assembly vote in 1957, it won 10 of the 288 seats. In 1962 it received 16.66 per cent of the vote and 41 seats. Most of the Jana Sangh’s support came from the western Madhya Bharat region of the state. Approximately half its seats in both 1957 and 1962 were from this region. Madhya Bharat is the most urbanized and industrialized part of the state;33 it is also in this region that the RSS had its strongest support.34 In the first general elections, the Hindu Mahasabha was the second largest party in the region, winning 2 or its 11 parliamentary seats and 11 of its 99 assembly seats from there. The Jana Sangh took its place as the major competitor of the Congress party in the Madhya Bharat region.

  The Jana Sangh also performed relatively well in Rajasthan in 1957 and 1962.35 Despite the fact that the party’s percentage of the parliamentary vote increased from 3.67 in 1952 to 11.10 in 1957, the Jana Sangh could win no seats there. It did manage to win one parliamentary seat in 1962, though its percentage of the vote declined slightly. After losing many of its 11 assembly representatives between 1952 and 1957 as a result of the party’s anti-landlord policy, the Jana Sangh returned to the 176 member assembly in 1957 with 6 representatives. The party’s percentage of the assembly vote almost doubled in 1962 and it won 15 seats. In the first two assembly elections, the Ram Rajya Parishad, representing Hindu orthodoxy, performed much better than the Jana Sangh, winning 24 assembly seats in 1952 and 16 in 1957. After the 1962 elections, the Parishad ceased to be a viable political force in the state. Its role as the major opposition party passed in 1962 to another conservative party, the newly formed Swatantra Party. The leadership of both the Parishad and the Swatantra Party rested on the Rajput aristocracy. The Jana Sangh built a stable base of support in the eastern districts,36 particularly in the south-eastern districts of Kota division, which border on Madhya Bharat. To a certain extent, the Jana Sangh strength in that region derived from the support extended to it by former ruling families; but more importantly, this region had a strong RSS organization which provided the resources required for party building.

  Punjab was something of a disappointment to the Jana Sangh. The party started out with a support base among the urban Hindu middle-class voters, but was never able to make an electoral impact among the Sikh majorities in rural areas. The party won no seats in Punjab’s state assembly or parliamentary constituencies in 1952.37 In the 1957 assembly elections, it won five seats, all urban, and increased its percentage of the vote from 4.01 to 7.47 per cent. While the party’s percentage of the assembly vote increased slightly in 1962, its representation dropped to four, in an 86 member assembly. Though the Jana Sangh could poll only a very small percentage of the rural—largely Sikh—vote in either election, it was able to poll approximately a quarter of the urban vote.

  The RSS had an urban base in Punjab even before partition, and it was further strengthened by the large number of Hindu refugees who poured into the state between 1947 and 1949. Emotional policy issues hampered the Jana Sangh’s efforts to expand beyond the Hindu community. The Jana Sangh’s opposition to equal status for Punjabi and Hindi strengthened its appeal to the Hindi-speaking voters in the northern districts of the state where the Sikhs outnumbered the Hindus. But this policy alienated the Sikh voters who wanted Punjabi to be placed on at least an equal status with Hindi. The Jana Sangh also supported the creation of a Maha Punjab (greater Punjab) that would include the Hindi-speaking mountain area to the east.38 On both issues the party’s stand coincided with the influential Arya Samaj, a Hindu revivalist group which manages a network of schools, charitable institutions, and temples in the state.39 However, the RSS leadership, fearful that a Sikh separatist movement would grow if Punjabi were not given some official recognition, adopted
a conciliatory policy towards the Punjabi language. For example, while on tour of Punjab in 1960, Golwalkar appealed to the Hindus in the state to accept Punjabi as their mother tongue. He even suggested that the state be declared a unilingual Punjabi-speaking state.40 Soon after Golwalkar concluded his tour, the state working committee of the Jana Sangh rejected his proposal for a unilingual state. Instead it resolved that both Hindi, in Devanagari script, and Punjabi, in Gurmukhi script, serve as joint official languages.41 This considerable shift in policy was undoubtedly influenced by the stand of the RSS. The legislative wing of the party, more responsive to the will of its Hindi-speaking constituency, took a far less conciliatory stand and strongly rejected Golwalkar’s pleas for Punjabi.42

  The Jana Sangh performed better in those southern districts of Punjab which in 1966 became part of the new state of Haryana. It won two of the 60 assembly seats in 1952 and received 6.12 per cent of the total vote there. Almost doubling its percentage of the vote in 1957, the Jana Sangh picked up two additional assembly seats. In 1962, it further increased its percentage of the assembly vote and won four seats. While the party received greater rural support in Haryana, it was a largely urban party in both parts of undivided Punjab. In 1962 the party won three of the 20 parliamentary seats from Punjab, all three from the Haryana region. It received almost one-fourth of the total parliamentary vote in the Haryana region, over double the 11.39 per cent the party received in those northern districts which were to remain within Punjab after the division of the state.