Shifting goalposts: The many strands of the Sangh Parivar narrative

‘Joint-family and indissoluble marriage have been the basis of Hindu society. Laws that alter this basis will ultimately lead to the disintegration of society. Jana Sangh will, therefore, repeal the Hindu Marriage and Hindu Succession Acts.’

Thus spake the Jana Sangh manifesto of 1957. The BJP’s precursor accompanied this opposition to divorce and its championing of joint families by an attack on the rights of women.

In his draft legislations in the early 1950s, Dr B.R. Ambedkar had proposed modest changes to Hindu personal law, especially on the question of inheritance for women. He identified the two dominant forms of traditional inheritance law and modified one of them to make inheritance fairer for women. In its 1951 manifesto, the Jana Sangh opposed this proposal in the Hindu Code Bill, saying social reform should not come from above but from society. In 1957, as quoted above, it said such changes were not acceptable unless rooted in ancient culture. ‘Riotous individualism’ would ensue as a result, it feared.

One part of its opposition to divorce was the idea of eternal marriage. However, the material element was to not let divorced women and widowed daughters-in-law inherit property. This position changed over time, but there is no explanation as to why the party changed its position on its manifestos. As divorce became less rare in Indian society and as urban, upper caste, middle-class families (the BJP’s core base) became more nuclear, the pledged loyalty to joint families eroded.

As we observed in an earlier article which looked at a similar abandoning of its socialist policies on the economy by the Jana Sangh/BJP, this is not necessarily a problem. All parties have the right to alter and shift their stand, but when a position is laid out, any retreat from it, — and the taking up of a stand that was previously opposed — should also be laid out and explained. This, the RSS-linked political force has chosen not to do.

A history of shifting ground

A sense of unease about how to handle caste is also reflected in its manifestos. The party said it would create a ‘feeling of equality and oneness in Hindu society by liquidating untouchability and casteism’. But it did not say how. The Jana Sangh did not add to the Congress policy of reservations for the Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes, for example, by pushing for such reservations in the private sector or otherwise expanding them. The support to Dalits comes from such ideas as ‘arranging for extra training classes, refresher courses and in-service training for their benefit’.

Culturally, the party stood firmly against alcohol and sought nationwide prohibition. And it wanted English to be replaced in all spheres by local languages and especially, Hindi. This is something home minister Amit Shah spoke about recently. After the uproar that followed, the BJP forced media outlets to delete the video showing him saying so, likely because it offended its middle-class base.

Another sector in which the Jana Sangh showed itself to be a party of the urban middle-class was agriculture. The first point on agriculture in its first manifesto calls for ‘a country-wide campaign to educate and enthuse the cultivator about the necessity of harder work for more production’. Today, it would take a brave BJP minister to accuse India’s farmers of not working hard enough, and the surrender on the farm bills shows that the party continues to be removed from the way the Indian farmer thinks.

On foreign affairs, a subject on which the BJP has won many gold medals recently, the Jana Sangh had no particular strategic view of the world and India’s place in it, besides stating that India should be friends with all who were friendly and tough on those who were not.

Modi govt making much of not doing anything at all

There appears to be no continuity in the way the Jana Sangh thought about such things. The 1957 manifesto opened with a grim warning of a threat emanating from a Pakistan-Portuguese alliance. The 1962 manifesto made no reference to this but opened with an admonition of Nehru for losing the war to China. The 1972 manifesto made no reference to the war in Bangladesh, which had been carved out of Pakistan only weeks earlier.

Its idea of defence policy came through such demands as compulsory military training for all boys and girls, removal of licences for possessing muzzle-loading guns (an 18th-century weapon), expansion of the National Cadet Corps, and the manufacture of nuclear weapons. In other words, a series of ideas strung together without coherence.

The reader will ask what the point of raising these issues in 2025 is, and that is a valid question. Perhaps the answer is that the BJP is the largest and most dominant political force in our country. What it says it stands for and what it ultimately does is important. Its own constitution says the party “shall bear true faith and allegiance… to the principles of socialism and secularism”, years before other parties were compelled to do so by law.

Today, it is talking of removing these words from the Indian Constitution. It is, therefore, important that its own words be used to remind the party that it is under some pressure — even if the very gentle one exerted by this columnist — to explain itself and its endless shifts to its voters and to the citizens of this country.

Views are personal. More of Aakar Patel’s writing may be read here.