1. Early life and education

2. RSS and Jana Sangh

3. Philosophy

4. Death

5. Legacy

6. See also

7. References

8. External links

Early life and education

He was born in 1916 in the village of Nagla Chandraban, now called Deendayal Dham, near the town of Farah in Mathura District, 26  km away from Mathura. His father, Bhagwati Prasad Upadhyaya, was an astrologer and his mother Rampyari Upadhyaya was a homemaker and religious Hindu. Both his parents died when he was eight years old and he was brought up by his maternal uncle.^[1] His education was under the guardianship of his maternal uncle and aunt. He went to high school in Pilani Jhunjhunu, Rajasthan where he matriculated.{{citation needed|date=October 2017}} He did Intermediate at the Birla College in Pilani. He did his B. A. at the Sanatan Dharma College, Kanpur in 1939. He joined St. John's College, Agra to pursue a master's degree in English literature but dropped out. He then joined Rashtriya Swayamsewak Sangh as its full-time worker, called Pracharak.^[2]

RSS and Jana Sangh

While he was a student at Sanatan Dharma College, Kanpur in 1937, he came into contact with the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) through his classmate Baluji Mahashabde. He met the founder of the RSS, K. B. Hedgewar, who engaged with him in an intellectual discussion at one of the shakhas. Sunder Singh Bhandari was also one of his classmates at Kanpur. He started full-time work in the RSS from 1942. He had attended the 40-day summer vacation RSS camp at Nagpur where he underwent training in Sangh Education. After completing second-year training in the RSS Education Wing, Upadhyaya became a lifelong pracharak of the RSS. He worked as the Pracharak for the Lakhimpur district and, from 1955, as the joint Prant Pracharak (regional organizer) for Uttar Pradesh. He was regarded as an ideal swayamsevak of the RSS essentially because ‘his discourse reflected the pure thought-current of the Sangh’.^[3]

He started the monthly Rashtra Dharma from Lucknow in the 1940s. The publication was meant for spreading the ideology of Hindutva nationalism. He did not have his name printed as editor in any of its issues. Later he started the weekly Panchjanya and the daily Swadesh.^[4]

In 1951, when Syama Prasad Mookerjee founded the Bharatiya Jana Sangh, Deendayal was seconded to the party by the RSS, tasked with molding 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 for Lok Sabha from Uttar Pradesh, but failed to attract significant political traction and did not get elected.

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.

Philosophy

Integral Humanism was a set of concepts drafted by Upadhyaya as political program and adopted in 1965 as the official doctrine of the Jan Sangh.^[5] Upadhyaya borrowed the Gandhian principles such as sarvodaya (progress of all), swadeshi (Indianisation), 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 the nation as a corporate entity.

Golwalkar believed in the concept of Organicism, from which the Integral Humanism was not very different. In Integral Humanism, Golwalkar's thoughts were supplemented by appropriating major Gandhian principles and presented a version of Hindu Nationalism. The objective of this version was to develop the image of Jan Sangh as a pro-developmental and spiritual image that favors equality in society. The creation and adoption of these concepts helped to suit the major discourses in the Indian political arena of the 1960s and 1970s. This highlighted efforts to portray the Jan Sangh and Hindu nationalist movement as a high profile right fringe of the Indian political mainstream.

Upadhyaya considered that it was of utmost importance for India to develop an indigenous economic model with a 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.^[6]

Death

In December 1967, Upadhyaya was elected president of the Jana Sangh. In the evening of 10 February 1968, at Lucknow he boarded the Sealdah Express for Patna. The train reached Mughalsarai at about 2:10 AM but Upadhyaya was not found on the train.^[1] He was murdered under mysterious circumstances on 11 February 1968 while traveling. His body was found near Mughalsarai railway station in Uttar Pradesh^[7][8] 10 minutes after the train arrived. His body was lying near a traction pole 748 feet from the end of the platform of Mughalsarai station where the train halted. He was clutching a five-rupee note in his hand. He was last seen alive at Jaunpur after midnight.^[9]

The CBI investigation team claimed that Upadhyay had been pushed out of the coach by robbers just before the train entered the Mughalsarai station.^[12] A passenger named M.P. Singh traveling in the adjoining cabin of the same coach had seen a man (later identified as Bharat Lal) enter Upadhyaya's cabin at Mughalsarai and walk off with his file and bedding.^[9] CBI later arrested Bharat Lal and his associate Ram Awadh in the case and charged them with murder and theft. As per CBI, they confessed to pushing Updadhyay out of the train after he caught them stealing his bag. Upadhyaya had threatened to report them to the police. However, the two accused were acquitted of the murder charges for lack of evidence.^[10] Bharat Lal alone was convicted of the theft of the belongings of the deceased. He appealed to the Allahabad High Court. The sessions judge had remarked in his judgment that "the offence of murder not having been proved against the accused, the problem of truth about the murder still remains".^[9]

Over 70 MPs demanded a commission of inquiry to uncover the truth. The Government of India agreed to this promptly and appointed Justice Y.V. Chandrachud of Bombay High Court as the sole member of the commission.^[9] Justice Chandrachud reported his findings "That Shri Upadhyaya was pushed out of the running train when he was standing near the door of the I Class compartment of the F.C.T. Bogie"; that he dashed against the traction pole and "died an instantaneous death"; and the injuries on his body were caused in a single transaction and were such as could not have been caused inside the compartment. Justice also held that the murder "was accompanied by an immediate theft, which shows that the two are part and parcel of the same transaction." Finally, the judge observed: "I can say with a certain amount of confidence that nothing that has come before me can support the accusation that there was any politics in Shri Upadhyaya’s murder. Undoubtedly, he had political rivals but his death is the rash and extempore handiwork of mere thieves." The CBI he said had conducted the investigation with care and objectivity.^[9]

In 2017, Upadhyay's niece and several politicians have demanded a fresh probe in his murder.^[11]

Legacy

Since 2016 the BJP government under Prime Minister Narendra Modi named several public institutions after him.^[12][13] In Delhi, a road/marg has been named after Upadhyaya.

In August 2017, the BJP state government in UP proposed renaming of Mughalsarai station in honour of Upadhyaya as his dead body was found near it.^[12] Opposition parties protested this move in the Parliament of India. The Samajwadi Party protested with a statement that the station was being renamed after someone "who had made “no contribution to the freedom struggle".^[14]

The Deen Dayal Research Institute deals with queries on Upadhyaya and his works.^[15]

See also

• Deen Dayal Upadhyaya Grameen Kaushalya Yojana
• Deen Dayal Upadhyaya Gram Jyoti Yojana
• Deen Dayal Antyoday Upchar Yojna
• Pandit Deendayal Upadhyay Indoor Stadium

References

External links

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