WHEN DR. LOHIA MET PANDIT DEENDAYAL UPADHYAYA

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Sunday, March 23, 2014 was the birth anniversary of Dr. Ram Manohar Lohia. I visited the Parliament House Central Hall to pay floral homage to Dr. Lohia, one of the most eminent personalities of India’s freedom struggle and socialist movement. He was arrested as many as 25 times during the Freedom Movement.

I entered Parliament in 1970, first as a member of the Rajya Sabha. Dr. Lohia passed away three years earlier, in 1967 at the age of 57. My own acquaintance and interaction with Dr. Lohia began when I was a journalist working for the Organiser. It was he who said to me that Muslims generally feel hostile to the Jana Sangh because you talk about Akhand Bharat. My response was: “I wish you were to meet Pandit Deendayal Upadhyaya and hear him explain the Jana Sangh’s interpretation of Akhand Bharat.”

A meeting did take place between the two leaders, a meeting that became a significant event in the history of our party and made the two great leaders issue a historic statement on what Jana Sangh meant by Akhand Bharat! This joint statement was signed by the two leaders on April 12, 1964, in which the two leaders spoke about the possibility of Pakistan realising some day that partition has not been good either for Hindus or for Muslims neither in India nor in Pakistan and as a consequence both countries becoming mentally prepared for an Indo-Pak Confederation!

If I am in Delhi I never miss any of these floral homage functions in the Central Hall. It has happened some times that I am the only M.P. present. This happened once in the case of Netaji Subhash’s birth anniversary.

I recall that three years back Dr. Manmohan Singh also was present at Dr. Lohia’s birthday function. The Prime Minister casually asked me: How well had you known Dr. Lohia? Quite well, I replied, but I was a journalist then. I then recounted to him the episode about his meeting with Deendayalji and how the two of them had issued a joint statement about the possibility of an Indo-Pak Confederation.

He listened attentively to my narration of that meeting and asked: Do you think this is still possible ? My firm reply was: Not at all, if we continue to soft-pedal Pakistan’s terrorist tactics!

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I have participated in all General Elections held in independent India since 1952. In none of the fifteen Elections held till today, the Congress Party’s defeat seemed as certain as it does this time, I have been telling party colleagues.

My own parliamentary innings began in 1970 with the Rajya Sabha. For two full terms I was in the Rajya Sabha. In the following six Gen. Elections I succeeded in the Lok Sabha (Ninth, Tenth, Twelfth, Thirteen, Fourteenth and Fifteenth) from Gandhinagar. I did not contest for the Eleventh Lok Sabha because after the Hawala Charge against me, I announced that I shall not go back to Parliament until I am judicially absolved of this false allegation. In the 1996 Lok Sabha election in which BJP became the largest party in the Lok Sabha for the first time, I did not contest. On 8 April, 1997 Justice Mohammed Shamim of the Delhi High court delivered the verdict in the Hawala case quashing the charge of corruption against me.

The Pioneer commented:

“A conspiratorially placed taint on the life of a clean and honest political leader has been judicially rubbed out. A plot to finish off, or at any rate severely disable. the political career of the BJP President, and thereby halt the seemingly unstoppable progress of his party has come to naught. Justice Shamim’s 70-page judgement, a work of high legal discipline and exceptional fidelity to facts, has not only quashed the charges against Mr. Advani but held that the case is not even worth consideration for trial. He found no evidence with the prosecution to establish that industrialist, Mr. SK Jain, paid out and Mr. Advani received the alleged Hawala cash.”

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Ten months back (May, 2013) I wrote a blog on the Balance Sheet of India’s fourteen Prime Ministers since 1947. I concluded my blog thus :

“If any political analyst were to dispassionately evaluate Atalji’s six year regime, he would readily concede that the NDA regime from 1998 to 2004 was replete with achievements, and there was practically nothing that can be called negative. To sum up the highlights of the period, one can list the following:

1.      Within months of becoming PM, India was made a nuclear weapons power.

2.      In the economic field, this government concentrated on infrastructure – highways, rural roads, irrigation, power.

3.      Made India a super power in computer software.

4.      Despite U.S.’s economic sanctions being applied against us, despite the devastating Kutch earthquake, the worst in independent India, Atalji successfully kept inflation in check for the six years of NDA rule.

5.      The six years regime was a model of good governance, development and coalition dharma.

6.      There was not even a whisper of corruption against the government.

7.      Foundations were laid for interlinking of rivers, an ambitious project meticulously worked out by a Task Force for which a cabinet minister was fully spared.

What I regarded Atalji’s most conspicuous trait was that even with such cardinal achievements to his credit I never sensed in him even a trace of ego or arrogance! It is therefore that while talking about the balance sheet of all Prime Ministers since 1947 I myself can say that he was by far the most outstanding of all !”

Following carefully the performance of the Sonia - Manmohan Singh Government since 2004, I have been telling colleagues that we should be grateful to the U.P.A. duo for working systematically and steadfastly to ensure that in 2014, once again a BJP led government comes into power! No earlier government has presided over so many scams and scandals as this Government. Corruption has become the dominant characteristic of this government, and people are eagerly looking forward to throw it out at the earliest.

            

Born in 1951, the Jana Sangh which now functions as BJP has been in existence now for 63 years. Scores of dedicated and talented party activists have contributed towards making the BJP achieve the singular place in Indian politics that it today has.

But if I were to name four pioneers who can be regarded as role models for the whole party to emulate, they are Deendayal Upadhyaya, Nanaji Deshmukh, Atal Bihari Vajpayee and Kushabhau Thakre.

L.K.ADVANI

New Delhi

March 25, 2014