Bharatiya Jana Sangh
Bharatiya Jana Sangh was an Indian right wing political party that existed from 1951 to 1977 and was the political arm of Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh, a Hindu nationalist volunteer organisation. Later Jana Sangh succeeded by Bharatiya Janata Party.[1]
Origins
After 1949, members of the right-wing Hindu nationalist Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) began to contemplate the formation of a political party to continue their work, begun in the days of the British Raj, and take their ideology further. Around the same time, Syama Prasad Mukherjee left the Hindu Mahasabha political party that he had once led because of a disagreement with that party over permitting non-Hindu membership.[2][3][4] The BJS was subsequently started by Mukherjee on 21 October 1951[5] in Delhi, with the collaboration of the RSS, as a "nationalistic alternative" to the Congress Party.[6]
The symbol of the party in Indian elections was an oil lamp and, like the RSS, its ideology was centred on Hindutva. In the 1952 general elections to the Parliament of India, BJS won three seats, Mukherjee being one of the winning candidates. The BJS would often link up on issues and debates with the centre-right Swatantra Party of Chakravarti Rajagopalachari. After the death of Mukherjee in 1953, RSS activists in the BJS edged out the career politicians and made it a political arm of the RSS and an integral part of the RSS family of organisations (Sangh Parivar).[7]
References
- ↑ Donald Anthony Low, ed. (1968), Soundings in Modern South Asian History, University of California Press, pp. 372–, GGKEY:6YPJXGZBWJQ
- ↑ Urmila Sharma & SK Sharma 2001, p. 381.
- ↑ Kedar Nath Kumar 1990, pp. 20–21.
- ↑ Islam 2006b, p. 227.
- ↑ "Founding of Jan Sangh". www.bjp.org. Retrieved 25 January 2019.
- ↑ Sharad Gupta; Sanjiv Sinha (18 January 2000). "Revive Jan Sangh -- BJP hardlines". The Indian Express. Archived from the original on 12 October 2013. Retrieved 11 October 2013.
- ↑ Kanungo, Pralaya (November 2006), "Myth of the Monolith: The RSS Wrestles to Discipline Its Political Progeny", Social Scientist, 34 (11/12): 51–69, JSTOR 27644183