In late 1949, communal violence again erupted in both East Pakistan and West Bengal.55 Nehru and Home Minister Patel had serious disagreements over how to handle the situation.Mookerjee sided with Patel’s stand that India take a hard line against Pakistan.Neogy, another Bengali cabinet minister, resigned from office.The evidence suggests that both Mookerjee and Golwalkar hesitated to make any final plans until the leadership struggle in the Congress was resolved.Despite basic agreement on these two points, Golwalkar still hesitated.In outlining his political programme, Mookerjee focused attention on refugee rehabilitation and economic development.He premised greater government support for the refugees and a harder line towards Pakistan.Many of the secretaries were swayamsevaks, usually pracharaks.These secretaries were responsible for establishing district, city and ward units, and for organizing the campaigns for assembly and parliamentary candidates.Within a few months, these novice politicians established an elaborate campaign machine.They were deeply concerned with communist successes in organizing students and workers.The Vidyarthi Parishad would counter communist activities on the campus, but there was no equivalent group to work in the labour field.Its greatest success was among white collar workers, though it also did well among textile and transportation workers.Capitalism exploits workers for the sake of profit and places them at the mercy of the laws of supply and demand.Communism, he argues, places excessive emphasis on material gratification, and it tends to rob man of freedom by placing all economic power in the hands of a few political figures.72 Both capitalism and communism, according to Thengadi, fail to explain man’s fundamental needs because they explain human problems in terms of material conditions rather than in terms of the deeper inner needs of each individual.Consequently, any movement that seeks to change the human condition for the better must concern itself with the psyche of man.The Bharatiya Mazdoor Sangh has consistently opposed the nationalization of industry.Placed in the larger theoretical framework, each occupational ‘family’ owns and manages its own industry.Indeed, it is based on the traditional agricultural system.He believes that ‘labourizing’ agriculture would reduce rural conflict and give the landless and tenant farmers a greater stake in rural society.This organization attempted to organize the landless, tenants, and small farmers, but with little success.On 4 March 1979 a national body of farmers, the Bharatiya Kisan Sangh, was formed.By the early 1970s, the Bharatiya Mazdoor Sangh had become assertive, if not militant.Golwalkar, with this concern in mind, invited a selected group of religious leaders to Bombay in late August 1964, to discuss ways in which the various Hindu sects and movements could work more closely with each other.Probably the major reason for its forbearance was the unwillingness of the religious leaders to challenge the government.It operated 442 hostels, orphanages and vocational schools, some 150 medical centres, and published ten journals.94The national furore aroused by the conversion of some untouchables to Islam in Tamil Nadu during 1981 prompted the Parishad to embark on one of its most ambitious projects to date.A large area of our motherland .It was also intended to strengthen Hindu solidarity.The Ganga water was distributed to Hindu temples for use in the worship of the temple deities, and over 1.5 million bottles were reportedly sold.The issue was controversial, for the site, Ramjanmabhoomi, located at Ayodhya in Uttar Pradesh, had been used as a Muslim mosque since the sixteenth century, and its conversion to a temple has been a major item on the Hindu revivalist agenda since the late nineteenth century.While this effort is clearly popular, and may result in enhanced Hindu solidarity, it almost certainly will exacerbate Hindu–Muslim tension.Muslims, who themselves are increasingly assertive, will resist.In 1982, the Mandal established the Dharma Sansad, a deliberative body of religious figures who would formulate a Hindu perspective on social and political problems.The American and Canadian units jointly publish a bimonthly magazine.The most popular programmes are the summer camps.Perhaps only Shivaji receives comparable attention.The idea for such an organization took root in the wake of the effort to create a memorial to Vivekananda.As part of the 1963 Vivekananda centenary celebrations, a committee was organized to establish a modest memorial on a small island off the southernmost tip of India, where Vivekananda is reported to have received the inspiration to take his message of advaita vedanta to the West.There was, however, opposition to the memorial from the large Roman Catholic community in Kanyakumari, a mainland village not far from the island.112 The island is also revered by Christians as the place where Saint Francis Xavier brought his mission to south India.The Government of Tamil Nadu, to forestall communal friction, refused to allow the committee to construct the memorial.Golwalkar instructed Ranade to contact prominent politicians in New Delhi who could bring pressure on Tamil Nadu to change the order.A large plot of ground was acquired not far from Kanyakumari and on it the Memorial Committee has built a complex of buildings where young men and women are trained for a lay order of Hindu missionaries.This order differs from religious orders in that the participants wear no religious garb and their training and duties are primarily educational and humanitarian.In a 1982 revision of its constitution, the Kendra decided to emphasize rural development.Accordingly, it selected three target districts in Tamil Nadu.The choice of the state of Tamil Nadu may have been influenced by the close contacts that Ranade had established with senior government figures as head of the organization.It manages thirteen schools in Arunachal Pradesh and two in Assam.Still another reason may have something to do with Ranade’s cautious temperament.In addition, his long illness, beginning in 1979 and lasting until his death in August 1982, prevented him from lobbying vigorously on behalf of the Kendra.Lakshmi Kumari, is considered a very competent organizer, but she is not a member of the brotherhood.Work began in late 1978 with 50 volunteers.Operating on the premise that the very poor will not feel a sense of community with the larger society, Deshmukh declared that the immediate objectives of his development programme were full employment and a minimum income of 2500 rupees per year for every family.120 The Uttar Pradesh experiment was judged to be so successful that Deshmukh selected three additional model districts in other states.In 1978, many of these schools were brought together into a national organization.The project grew out of the national furore that developed after the conversion to Islam of several hundred Scheduled Caste people in a small village in Tamil Nadu.That event touched off a nationwide debate among Hindus regarding ways to enhance Hindu solidarity, and thus diminish the chances for more such conversions.These missionaries were instructed to train a cadre of workers in their own areas of responsibility.125 By December 1982, the first group of 600 were given their assignments.From the Jana Sangh side, tactical considerations were surely an important reason.These senior Jana Sangh figures were charged with dual loyalties.Attending samanvaya samitis would have provided ammunition to the critics of the Jana Sangh group.But it is still an open question whether the leadership will be satisfied with a ‘little’ or with an ideologically oriented party in the Jana Sangh mould.Attending the samanvaya samiti meetings would send a strong signal that the party leaders had opted conclusively for the Jana Sangh legacy and had fully rejoined the ‘family’.Balasaheb Deoras, the present sarsanghchalak, is him self more of an activist than his two predecessors.This factor will undoubtedly continue to preserve a certain amount of autonomy for all the affiliates.The affiliates are left, within certain limits, to their own devices to mobilize support, and they have adopted a range of different strategies.Soliciting votes seemed corrupting, both for the candidates and the voters.Many believed that the use of propaganda and caste considerations would reduce the chances of the voters electing the ‘best’ candidates.Some were apprehensive that the democratic process would exacerbate the cleavages between already hostile social groups and thus undermine national integration.At its higher levels, Mookerjee had given responsible positions to prominent Hindu Mahasabha and Arya Samaj activists and to some dissident Congressmen.Associated with him was Bhai Mahavir,1 a young pracharak with little experience in politics.Generally, the swayamsevaks who joined the Jana Sangh were novices at politics and were willing to follow the leadership of experienced politicians like Mookerjee.At the first national meeting of the Jana Sangh, on 21 October 1951 in Delhi, a committee was selected to draft a campaign manifesto.The manifesto paid its homage to tradition by asking for the protection of the cow4 and for the promotion of traditional Ayurvedic medicine.It advocated generous aid to the refugees from Pakistan and a policy of reciprocity towards that country.It also proposed that India withdraw from the British Commonwealth.In short, the first manifesto was an economically conservative document which displayed a greater concern for cultural and political integration than for social and economic problems.Party leaders, anticipating success, selected candidates for 93 of the 489 parliamentary constituencies and for 725 of the 3,383 state assembly constituencies.They discovered how weak their popular support was when the votes of the first general elections were counted.The Congress, which had organizationally penetrated all regions of the country and which possessed the requisite political legitimacy to attract support, won almost 75 per cent of both the parliamentary and assembly seats.The Jana Sangh won only three seats in parliament and 35 assembly seats.It has given a good fight and gained valuable experience.’7To unify the opposition within parliament, Mookerjee initiated negotiations with members from several opposition parties and with independents.When the Jana Sangh delegates assembled for the party’s first annual session at Kanpur in December 1952, Mookerjee had succeeded in recruiting 32 members of parliament into his opposition bloc, the National Democratic Front,8 and invited them to attend the party’s annual session.At that session, Mauli Chandra Sharma was asked to continue as general secretary.Mookerjee organized a committee to mobilize national support for the Kashmir agitation.He was promptly arrested and detained.His death from a heart attack on 23 June, while a prisoner, was interpreted by many in the Jana Sangh as murder.That Golwalkar would be consulted, as a matter of course, is understandable.The swayamsevaks would expect his approval before they made a final decision on the party presidency.Chatterjee for his part informed the Jana Sangh leaders that he would have to consult the Hindu Mahasabha leadership before making a final decision.13 If he were to take over the Jana Sangh, some kind of understanding would have to be worked out between the Jana Sangh and the Hindu Mahasabha.Mauli Chandra Sharma, one of the two general secretaries, was asked to serve as acting president until a new president was chosen at the party’s next annual session in Bombay.Organiser, in its report of the session, focused attention on ‘the thin unassuming Din Dayal Upadhyaya who stood head and shoulders above all others, and who in a way dominated the whole session’.The report expressed the hope thatPt Mauli Chandra Sharma who has the difficult task of fitting himself in the place of the late Dr Mookerjee will succeed in securing the willing cooperation of the Swayamsevak Sangh [sic] workers who form the core of the Jana Sangh.To enjoy it as much as Oke obviously did struck then as rank apostasy.In any case, Sharma was unable to diminish the influence of the organizing secretaries.When the party’s general council met at Indore in August 1954 the organizing secretaries knew they had the votes in the general council to determine party policy, and they were not prepared to compromise with Sharma.Sharma also understood their mood, and he did not bother to attend the meeting, although Oke did.22 Sharma’s presidential address was read for him.The delegates were annoyed by his thinly veiled references to the Jana Sangh’s losing its commitment to ‘secular nationalism’ and ‘democracy’, and by his glowing references to Nehru’s policy towards Pakistan.They were particularly irritated by his suggestion that the party become more democratic by eliminating the position of organizing secretary.Sharma was proposing a complete reorientation of party power.Upadhyaya countermanded his order on the grounds that the Jana Sangh constitution permitted only the working committee to call a meeting of the general council.25 Realizing his hopeless position, Sharma resigned several days before the working committee met.To leave no doubt that he was out of the party, the working committee formally expelled him from the party.In this he had no scruples as to the means he employed.His death in 1963 may have spared the party a possible power struggle.With the purging of the dissidents, the swayamsevaks proceeded to reorient party priorities.Questions of national integration were still primary, but more serious attention was directed at economic and social issues.It advocated the immediate implementation of an income policy which would guarantee a minimum salary of 100 rupees per month and a maximum salary of 2,000 rupees per month.It also proposed that the government adopt a set of policies to guarantee that average minimum wages are at least 10 per cent of average maximum wages.It recommended the abolition of large landed estates without compensation.The delegates also approved a resolution proposing that untouchability become a cognizable offence under the penal code.The party was able to generate candidates from within, and it was able to assume more of the costs and responsibilities of the electoral campaign.30 The party leaders also were aware of the Jana Sangh’s relatively limited support base.

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