Half a century ago, a great man left us with an idea to think on it and expand its definition and scope. It is now our responsibility to bring those ideas to serve humanity
Anurag Thakur
“The colonized is elevated above his jungle status in proportion to his adoption of the mother country”s cultural standards,” says Frantz Fanon in his seminal book Black Skin, White Masks. It is a great book which provides scientific insight into how colonialism impacts the psyche of the inhabitants of the colony. India has been no different. More than 800 years of foreign rule has definitely made the Indian mind wonder at the ‘greatness’ of everything foreign; though we are now seeing a changing trend amongst Indian youth, who have started appreciating everything Indian.
Part of the reason for this revival goes to the efforts by nationalist forces to maintain a unique identity for India. And the foremost of the thinkers for this movement was Pandit Deendayal Upadhyaya. He was born on September 25, 1916 in in the sacred region of Brij in the village of Nagla Chandraban in Mathura District. But, the young Deena was deprived of parental love very soon in his life; He lost his father Shri Bhagwati Prasad when he was less than three years old and his mother before he was eight. That, however, did not deter Deena from providing his younger brother great love and he took care of all his needs. But alas! his younger brother contracted smallpox and even he died, leaving Deena all alone in this world.
Panditji, despite all these losses, was a brilliant student. It was from Sikar in Rajasthan that Panditji matriculated and stood first. Appreciating his academic brilliance, Maharaja of Sikar gave Panditji a gold medal, Rs 250 for books and a monthly scholarship of Rs 10. After Panditji passed his Intermediate exams with distinction from Birla College Pilani, he left for Kanpur for pursuing his B.A. and thus joined the Sanatan Dharma College. In 1937 he passed his B.A. with first division. Despite being selected in Provincial Services Exams, he did not join administration, but entered public life, where he would spend the rest of his life in the service of mother India. Later he moved to Prayag to pursue B.T. and successfully completed it.
The turning point came in Panditji’s life when he met RSS founder K B Hedgewar. He eventually became a full time Pracharak for RSS. Later, with Syama Prasad Mookerjee, he founded Bharatiya Jana Sangh, the forerunner of Bharatiya Janata Party. Dr Mookerjee famously remarked, “If I had two Deendayals, I could transform the political face of India”
It was during this important epoch in nationalist awakenings when Panditji developed the doctrine of ‘Integral Humanism.’ Several so-called progressive cartels have tried to paint this doctrine as exclusivist, only exposing their parochial mindset. They seem to suffer from the Black skin, white masks syndrome. Panditji was convinced that for a country like India, rooted in thousands of years of heritage and knowledge, Western ideologies like Individualism, or Socialism or Communism can never take roots in India. Therefore he proposed Integral Humanism as a socioeconomic doctrine for India, which had citizens at the centre of all activities.
Panditji was opposed to the excesses of the two contrasting western models of capitalism and socialism. However, he was for the right proportion of both of them. Moreover, he was also open to Western Sciences. Integral Humanism has its roots in the ancient Indian school of thought-Advaita. The doctrine emphasises on developing body, mind, intellect and soul. Leaving even one aspect of any of those will not create a ‘complete’ individual which will in turn keep the society incomplete. To the dismay of some ‘liberals,’ many of Gandhiji’s thoughts were similar to those of Panditji’s and they are there for everyone to compare.
In an interview on All India Radio, legendary Communist hero Che Guevera subtly conceded that for a country like India with ‘an old philosophical heritage’, war (Read, violent communist revolutions) were not the Indian spirit. This raises some important questions: Was there a need for India to blindly accept western ideas, merely because our colonisers had impressed upon our mind that all things Indian are inferior, even wrong? Shouldn’t India have its own idea of what it should be and how it should be?
Today the world is undergoing a churn once again. Because, there seems to be some lacunae in the ideas of capitalist individualism from America and socialism from Europe and Asia. Billions of dollars have been spent in wars and millions have died in ideological battles fought around the world, and yet, there seems to be no end to it. We see the rise of automation as a new global challenge with different reactions from different quarters. Income inequality is at its all-time high as are temperatures and weather extremities. United Nations has developed Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) as a possible solution to deal with these problems which have the potential to change the face of Earth. In these, tough times, Integral Humanism can be an antidote to the diseases plaguing humanity. It asks the citizen to first love their nation and then expand it into a universal love for society and Earth.
Half a century ago, a great man left us with an idea to think on it and expand its definition and scope. It is now our responsibility to bring those ideas into this ever-changing world and serve every last human standing. This will be, doing our bit to make India a World Guru and the world, a better place.
(The writer is Member of Parliament (Lok Sabha) from Hamirpur, Himachal Pradesh)
