The day February 11, 2024 marks the death anniversary of Jan Sangh ideologue Deendayal Upadhyaya. Remarkably, he is hailed as “an icon of social progress’ and is appreciated by the BJP leaders.
ABOUT HIS EARLY LIFE
He was born on September 25, 1916, in the village Chandrabhan (Deendayal Dham) in Mathura district. His father’s name was Bhagwati Prasad and his mother’s name was Rampyari respectively. He was brought up by his maternal uncle as his parents died when he was just eight years old.
ABOUT HIS EDUCATION
He went to high school in Rajasthan and did his 12th from Birla College in Pilani, B.A from Sanatan Dharma College, Kanpur in 1939. He joined St. John’s College, Agra for a master’s degree but was not able to complete it.
ABOUT HIS POLITICAL CAREER
. He started full-time work in the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) in 1942 and worked as a full-time ‘Pracharak.
. He met the founder of RSS, ‘KB Hedgewar’ and underwent a 40-day camp in Sangh Education and a second-year training in the RSS Education Wing.
. He started the monthly Rashtriya Dharma from Lucknow in the 1940s to aware people of the ideology of Hindutva nationalism.
. Bharatiya Jan Sangh was founded in 1951 and he became the General Secretary of the Uttar Pradesh branch. He was appointed its All-Bharat General Secretary and he remained the general secretary for 15 years.
. Later on, he was elected as the president of the Jana Sangh in December 1967. He was murdered on February 11, 1968, under strange circumstances while travelling. His body was found near the Mughalsarai railway station in Uttar Pradesh.
LITERARY WORKS
His literary works include the play “Chandragupta Maurya” and a translation of a biography of Dr. K.B. Hedgewar. He also composed a biography of Adi Shankara, the 9th-century Hindu reformer.
His thoughts were incredibly wonderful. Some of his thoughts are:
“Here in Bharat, we have placed before ourselves the ideal of the fourfold responsibilities of catering to the needs of Body, Mind, Intellect, and Soul with a view to achieving the integrated progress of Man.”
“Western Science and Western Ways of Life are two different things. Whereas Western Science is Universal and must be absorbed by us if we wish to go forward, the same is not true about the Western Ways of life and values.”
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