confined to necessary and strategic engagement with specific issues and the
occasional electoral success.
Upadhyaya developed his views on Hindu nationalism, and thereby codified
the Jana Sangh mission, in two books, The Two Plansand, more resonantly, Inte-
gral Humanism. From the RSS (to which, as most of the subsequent Jana Sangh
leadership, he belonged), he accepted the ultimate aim of a cultural transfor-
mation of the nation, based on the organic notion of an existent Hindu society
with its own essential historical features and functions. But the explicit political
aim, which was to be the Jana Sangh’s specific raison d’être, was the realization
of the Hindu nation within the state of India, through the transformation of all
political institutions from village to central government. However, such trans-
formation, which would seem to require electoral success, was in fact going to
be achievable only through gaining more diffuse support in society as a whole.
The process was an idealization: it was not that the Jana Sangh would gain power
through electoral success and then bring about social change; rather there
would first have to be social change before there could be electoral success.
The Jana Sangh could only then set about attending to its specific tasks within
the Hindutva movement, namely, the realization of Hindu principles within the
institutions of the Indian state.
This strategy had a profound effect on the way party political Hindu nation-
alism developed. Adhering closely to the idea of (self-)disciplined organiza-
tion espoused by the RSS, the Jana Sangh concentrated on the so-called
sanghathanist strategy. Sangathanmeans “consolidation,” and the strategy was
meant to focus on building disciplined cadres and inculcating Hindu values at
the grassroots. The contrast was with the conventional political model of elec-
toral calculation, alliances, elite support, manifestos with explicit socioeconomic
promises, etc. The consequence of the sangathanist strategy was a sustained
closeness between the RSS and the Jana Sangh, and lack of electoral success (for
which the sangathan strategy offered idealized justification).
Hindu nationalism through the 1950s and much of the 1960s found it diffi-
cult to explicate a political position that made relevant use of the cultural argu-
ments of Hindutva. This was primarily because of Nehru’s and, initially, Indira
Gandhi’s refusal to allow any relaxation of the secularist framework of discourse
and political contestation. The Jana Sangh had, instead, to engage through other
oppositional strategies, especially on the economy. Here, there seemed to be no
direct and obvious answer to the question of what economic model followed
from Hindutva ideology. One wing of Hindu nationalism, which had an affinity
with the still existent Hindu traditionalist element in Congress, made the link
between cultural conservatism and economic liberalism. It saw not only an
instrumental reason to oppose Nehruvian socialist and dirigiste policies but also
an ideological continuity between an organic conception of a society comprised
of different groups and an economic ideal of free activity. The other wing
took the cultural conception of an organic society to involve commitment to
social issues of development, which was to a certain extent compatible with
Nehruvian socialism. This tension has continued to beset Hindu nationalism.
534 c. ram-prasad