Bharatiya Jana Sangh

Origins

Many members of the RSS contemplated the formation of a political party during the days of the British Raj, in an attempt to take their ideology further. Around the same time, Shyama 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.

There were two main reasons for the formation of Jan Sangh, those being the Liaquat–Nehru Pact and the ban on the RSS after the assassination of Mahatma Gandhi.

The state level units of the party were already established in Punjab, P.E.P.S.U. (Patiala and East Punjab States Union), Delhi, West Bengal, Rajasthan, Uttar Pradesh, Madhya Bharat before the party was formally founded at national level. The Bharatiya Jana Sangh was subsequently founded by Mukherjee on 21 October 1951 in Delhi under the RSS, as a "nationalistic alternative" to the Indian National Congress.

History

The first plenary session of Jan Sangh was held at Kanpur in December 1952.

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).

The strongest election performance of the BJS came in the 1967 Lok Sabha election in which it won 35 seats,

The party secured six out of seven parliamentary seats in Delhi and went on to wrest control of the Metropolitan Council and Municipal corporation.

Ideology

Main article: Hindutva

When BJS was formed, an 8-point programme was adopted.This formed the core of its ideology over the next years.

The BJS leadership fervently supported a strong policy against Pakistan and China, and were averse to communism and the Soviet Union. Many BJS leaders also initiated the drive to ban cow slaughter nationwide in the early 1960s. Establishment of full relations with Israel was also a demand in the party manifesto. Uniform Civil Code was mentioned in the 1967 manifesto which said that the party would enact UCC if it came to power.

List of presidents

In general elections

The Bharatiya Jana Sangh was created in 1951, and the first general election it contested was in 1951–52, in which it won only three Lok Sabha seats, in line with the four seats won by Hindu Mahasabha and three seats won by Ram Rajya Parishad. Shyama Prasad Mukherjee and Durga Charan Banerjee were elected from Calcutta South East constituency and Midnapore Jhargram constituency in West Bengal and Uma Shankar Trivedi from Chittor constituency in Rajasthan. All the like-minded parties formed a block in the Parliament, led by Shyama Prasad Mukherjee.

References

Sources

References

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