LETTER FROM THE EDITOR

May 16--31, 2003 - Vol. 12, No. 10

Editorial by Arabinda Ghose

The BJP and the Sangh Parivar

Dear Reader

Namaste!

The Bharatiya Jana Sangh, founded on October 21, 1951, under the leadership of Dr. Syama Prasad Mookerjee, had gone to the polls for the first general elections in early 1952 with very high hopes. The assumption was that since the leaders of the devoted workers of this party, mostly from the ranks of the R.S.S., had selflessly served the Hindus forced to leave both wings of Pakistan and had raised the Kashmir issue so forcefully, the people would vote for them massively. Nothing of this kind took place. Not a single member was elected to the Punjab and Madhya Pradesh State Assemblies, and only three members including Dr. Mookerjee himself had made it to the Lok Sabha.

This had demoralised the R.S.S. cadres considerably and the attendance at the "Shakhas", at least in Nagpur, went down to single digits. It was at this point that Sarsanghchalak Guruji Golwalkar held a one-day "chintan" meeting of about 700 swayamsewaks of Nagpur at a small village called Koradi and at day-long individual and collective meetings, had reminded the cadre about their ultimate role to make India a strong and united country. The failure at the hustings need not be taken too seriously, he had told the swayamsewaks. The result was electrifying. Suddenly the attendance at the Shakhas showed improvement and swayamsevaks sent to the Jana Sangh as also others took active part in the agitations on the Kashmir issue. The BJS got rejuvenated in no time, as it were. The death of Dr. Syama Prasad Mookerjee in detention at Srinagar was another blow to the BJS which almost crippled the two-year old party. Yet the dedication of the party cadres had brought it back from the abyss. What is more, BJS went on spreading its wings far and wide despite almost regular electoral reverses. Then, under the leadership of Atalji, Advaniji and Dr. Joshi, the BJS and later its new incarnation the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) grew into the largest political party in the country and more importantly, in the Lok Sabha. For more than five years now, the party is in power in co-operation with about two dozen parties based from Nagaland in the northeast to the Kerala Congress (M) group in Kerala.

The R.S.S. Parivar too has expanded its base in the last 78 years and there are numerous "offsprings" engaged in nation building activities all over the country and also beyond the country's borders. This has happened in accordance with the road map drown by Dr. Keshav Baliram Hegedwar in 1925. He perceived the R.S.S. as a power house producing electricity which would go to be used for lighting, heating and all the diverse purpose electrical energy can be put to. But all of them owe their origin to the power house, the R.S.S. That power house was not named the Hindu Swayamsewak Sangh by the visionary Dr. Hedgewar, but as the Rashtriya Swayamsewak Sangh.

All the branches of the Parivar have to work in unison for achieving the common goal of taking their motherland to the pinnacle of glory ("Paramvaibhava"). The recent "chintan baithak" in New Delhi saw the re-iteration of this goal, whatever be the nuances or the pronouncements of individual members and affiliate organisations.