Lohia’s impact on PM Modi and the Sangh Parivar

Socialists, especially those groomed in India by the speeches and writings of Ram Manohar Lohia, were dumbfounded on reading Umesh Chaturvedi’s article in Hindi, captioned Jana Sangh aur Samajvad ke  sangam ke pairokar Lohia (Lohia: Advocate of confluence of Jana Sangh and socialists).  

Be that as it may, this endorses Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s jibe at the biggies of Mahagatbandhan, a motley collection against the BJP. The PM wrote in his blog: “Anti-Congressism was Dr Lohia’s heart and soul… today, Dr Lohia would be horrified at the political developments taking place.”

He recalled the words of Atal Bihari Vajpayee, then one of the topmost leaders of Jana Sangh on the rout of the Congress in the 1967 elections, “Due to Dr Lohia’s efforts, one could travel on board the Howrah-Amritsar Mail without having to pass a single Congress state!”  

It was Lohia’s tactical prescription of anti-Congressism that became the basis of Samyukta Vidhayak Dal governments that were formed in nine states in 1967.  

The seeds of destruction of the monolithic power of Congress were sown and within a decade, the first non-Congress government came into being. Lohia’s dream came true, but he did not live to see its fruition.  

Lohia’s politics of anti-Congressism was essentially spearheaded against Jawaharlal Nehru during his twilight years. He was defeated by Nehru in the Phulpur Lok Sabha constituency by a margin of 64,671 votes (33.45 per cent of the total votes counted).  

But the maverick, albeit an erudite socialist, did not give up. The then Jana Sangh president Deen Dayal Upadhyay, a staunch adherent of the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) like Prime Minister Modi, filed his nomination for the bye-election from Jaunpur (UP) in 1963. Lohia emerged as his principal campaigner and Upadhyay won.  

A few months later, another bye-election was due at Farukkabad, also in UP. Lohia came in and Upadhyay reciprocated as a campaigner. He too was victorious. The two cashed in on India’s humiliating defeat by China in 1962 and targeted Nehru.

The Sangh Parivar sensed Lohia’s impulse. RSS ideologue Nanaji Deshmukh entered the scene and managed to bring Lohia at an RSS camp in Kanpur. Chaturvedi wrote, “When reporters asked Lohia why did you go there, Lohia’s answer was, ‘I went to turn sanyasis into homemakers’.  

The concept of proximity towards the controversial socialist was built up among the top Sangh Parivar brass. Significantly, in 2013, BJP stalwart LK Advani, said in Chitrakoot that Lohia appreciated BJP’s  philosophy of ‘Rashtravad’ and supported organising a Ramayana mela.  

Lohia’s anti-Congressism was rooted in his growing chagrin towards Nehru, his one-time idol in the 1930s. One factor was his anathema towards the undivided Communist Party of India during the experiment of Congress Socialist Party or CSP (a front of socialists and Communists within the Congress) in the 1930s.  

Susnata Das, a young history scholar, in the May 2001 issue of Marxvadi Path, CPI(M)’s theoretical monthly, identified Lohia, Minoo Masani and Asoka Mehta as those who had from the very beginning of the CSP experiment worked against the CPI. The CSP was formed in 1934. Masani, who joined the rightist Swatantra Party, was one of the joint secretaries of CSP while Mehta was editor of CSP journal, Congress Socialist.  

From day one, the Communists inside the CSP (including E M S Namboodiripad, Muzaffar Ahmed,  Sripad Amrit Dange, Hiren Mookerjee, Sajjad Zahir and Dinkar Mehta) became an eyesore to this faction, although Jaya Prakash Narayan and the CPI general secretary Puran Chand Joshi genuinely wanted the experiment to be successful.  

But Lohia’s anathema towards CPI in his last years turned into a pathological hatred towards Marxism, which he termed as “Europe’s Weapon against Asia”, an idea that was handy for the RSS.

Gandhiji did smell Lohia’s apathy towards the commitment of Congress to secularism. He told the young socialist to be “non-communal” before talking of socialism, quoted the CPI leader Indrajit Gupta during a Lok Sabha motion of no-confidence against the National Democratic Alliance (NDA) government.

The author is a political thinker and analyst