The 60th year of Pandit Deendayal Upadhyaya’s historic lectures that shaped the philosophy of Integral Humanism is being commemorated at a time when a BJP’s Prime Minister completes 11 years in office. Narendra Modi may not have met or heard Deendayal Upadhyaya, but he has certainly emerged as one of Upadhyaya’s finest exponents, manifesting the latter’s aspirations and hopes through his governance vision and action.

In the course of a public life that spans more than four decades, Modi must have had the opportunity to mingle with many stalwarts of the movement who were moulded and shaped by Upadhyaya. Upadhyaya, the RSS pracharak, was deputed to the newly formed Jana Sangh, as Dr Syama Prasad Mookerjee’s understudy in 1951. He went on to shoulder the burden of laying the foundation of the new political party for the next 15 years, emerging as one of the tallest leaders of the Nehruvian and the immediate post-Nehruvian era.

Modi, an RSS pracharak, was deputed to the newly formed BJP and for the next three odd decades, toiled for the new party, at various levels, till he scripted and charted out for it a historical course that is altering India’s trajectory. Deendayal Upadhyaya established the Jana Sangh as an alternate pole in Indian politics, while Modi has been successful in positioning the BJP as the pre-eminent political party in India in three decades.

These three decades were characterised and dominated by........

© News18