THE SOCIAL PHILOSOPHY OF DEENDAYAL UPADHYAYA: ITS CONCEPT AND IMPLICATIONS

 

Pukhrambam Julia Chanu ¹, Laimayum Bishwanath Sharma ²

 

¹ PhD Scholar (JRF), Department of Philosophy, Manipur University, Manipur, India

² Professor Department of Philosophy Manipur University, Manipur, India

 

1. INTRODUCTION

Pandit Deendayal Upadhyaya was the pioneer of the integral humanists’ movement in modern India, and the 10th President of the Bharatiya Jana Sangh (BJS).  He was a gifted and an original Indian thinker.  His thesis on ‘Philosophy of Integral Humanism’ was a masterpiece in the field of political, social and economics.  The main reason for propounding his philosophy was to pave the right direction for India’s all development and progress of mankind.  This is so because, after the departure of the British, India has been in a whirlpool of difficulties. That is to say that there has been no definite direction for India’s reconstruction.  The then central government had applied borrowed ideas of “ism” from the West and the East, and experiments were done on it.  However, these theories and experiments gave birth to a number of new problems.  He does not aspire Indian men to feel proud in speaking English as their own language and wanted India to use Hindi as their official language. Under such circumstances, Upadhyaya felt the need of a unique policy in consonance with our traditions and culture, and his philosophy of Integral Humanism points out a way to free India from these troubles. His philosophy has many dimensions.  But in this paper, only his social thinking will be   evaluated briefly.

 

2. THE CONCEPT OF MAN

The concept of man occupies a central position in his philosophy of Integral Humanism.  Being a philosopher, who has faith in India’s own ethos and the desperate need of Dharma in the society, the nation and the world, Pandit Deendayal Upadhyaya sees “Man” as the highest creation of God.  As the influence of foreign models i.e.  their ideas of morality, their social sciences, their languages, lifestyles, their political and economic ideas, etc. increased alarmingly, Upadhyaya feared that man, which he referred to as an Indian man, has been losing his own identity.  He is of the view that man’s   moral and spiritual values have declined; instead of value-oriented, his life has become money-oriented. The philosophy of Integral-Humanism will lead man on to progress, and happiness.  To re-establish man’s rightful position, to re-awake his abilities, to bring him the realization of his greatness and to encourage him to attain God like perfection are the chief priorities in Upadhyaya’s philosophy.

The moral of his philosophy is that India as well as the world will have smooth progress and development if humanity is properly guided. But when we think of man, a number of questions arise.  What constitutes a man?  What should be his objectives?  How is he related to family, society and social systems?  What path will help him to reach his goals?

 According to Upadhyaya, man is not merely a repository of material needs and desires, but a mighty spiritual being who consumed a material body. This is to say that unlike communism and capitalism, which regard man as an economic and political animal, Pandit Deendayal Upadhyaya considers man as a spiritual animal, a spiritual being.  Western ideologies like individualism, socialism, secularism, etc. separates man from spiritualism. Therefore, their idea of man is materialistic; their vision of man is divided as they talked only in terms of Man versus Nature, Individual versus Society, etc. not in terms of integration, harmony and cohesion between Man and Nature or Individual and Society; their theories only consumed a thread of harmony and integration in the apparent separateness, which made in man to see himself as an individual, and everyone else as his enemy. Such an approach led man to wage war against caste, family, kinship, panchayat, and social institutions and so on. Man became the slave of his senses by rejecting spiritualism and was unaware of his concept of happiness. In the name of development, he was inviting natural disasters by waging war against the environment (nature) and by accepting socialism, he was creating dictatorship. The Indian philosophies never separate spiritualism from materialism except the Carvaka School. India is a country with voluminous works on spiritualism and materialism. For example- The Vedas, Upanishads, the schools of Indian philosophy and so on. Post-independence Indian political leaders had applied Western concepts of good society in India. But these major schools of Western political thought have failed to improve India’s condition. Upadhyaya does not believe in such approaches wherein the society, the individuals, and its relations with surrounding are seen in fractions.  Then, some question arises: What is the ideal man for Upadhyaya? How can a man experience real happiness? 

According to Pandit Deendayal Upadhyaya, an ideal man is he who takes a view of human life based on the four-fold Purusharthas, and works for them i.e. to say a man who cares for the family, the society, the social institutions, the nation, the world, the whole nature and its maker. Thus, the central theme of Upadhyaya’s social philosophy is the material development along for the all-round progress of humankind, the nation and the world. Man, to Upadhyaya, is a conglomerate of the mind, the body, the intellect and the soul; these attributes of men need to be satisfied for such progresses. Only then, he will experience real happiness. The philosophy of Integral Humanism, therefore, aims at man’s material and spiritual progress. He regarded man as the chief instrument of society and the measure of its progress. To him, man is the visible entity and society, the indivisible one; this means that Upadhyaya’s man is the representative of this indivisible society and through him, the society manifested itself; the individual and social good, and their development are not contradictory interest; they are interdependent of each other; destruction of his individuality would prevent the society from growing its progress and development.

Panditji’s social philosophy envisages the enjoyment of the various categories of happiness such as the happiness of the body, the happiness of mind, the happiness of soul or bliss, etc. Man’s instinct to live has been the first thing that comes to our mind while considering his ideal way of life and it is this human instinct that constitutes the “will to live” in spite of famous maxims like “Life is full of sufferings”, “Man is mortal”, “Death is natural and life is only an accident” (Nene,2016) etc. However, man wants his life to be full of happiness as he was not satisfied merely by a long life. Man’s longing for intense and continuous happiness, to Upadhyaya, is natural. But all his efforts being directed toward attainment of happiness remains uncertain; the concept of real happiness is never seen and man has limited means and capacity to enjoy them. On one hand, our desires increased like a fire getting stronger when fuel is added to it. The Buddhist philosophy suggested us to cast away all sensual desires to escape from such difficulty. Upadhyaya discarded the full and free enjoyment of sensual pleasures at the one extremity and the annihilation of all sensual desires at the other extreme. His philosophy is the middle path of these two extremities. This middle path could be achieved through the four Purusharthas i.e. objectives of man. The four Purusharthas for men are Dharma, Artha, Kama and Moksha. Kama is the fulfilment of man’s sensual and physical desires, and is natural to man. Artha is the means for securing such pleasures. Dharma is the fundamental principles, rules, and emotion. Moksa is liberation from all bondages which can be obtained through Karma, Bhakti and Jnyan. These Purushasthas are related to each other and are necessary for man’s own all-round advancement. It helped him to realize his co-existence with groups of man, family, community, nation and world community, thereby, enabling him to participate in the systems and institution evolved in order to ensure the development and happiness for him and his society. The good society, according to Upadhyaya, is one that functions as an organism in which every individual works to sustain the well-being of the nation. An individual’s goal in life, he asserted, must satisfy two conditions:

1)     His pleasures must be in consistency with the injunctions of Dharma and

2)     It must be complementary to the progress of the society

The philosophy of Integral Humanism clearly states that individual happiness should never be in the way of social progress, but be complementary to it. His philosophy, therefore, is centered around the molding of the individual to enable him to carry out his social obligation.

 

 

3. INDIVIDUAL’S RELATION WITH FAMILY AND SOCIETY

Upadhyaya’s philosophy of Integral Humanism envisages an individual’s relation with his family, society, nation as well as the world. Man, for Upadhyaya, does not merely exist as a living being with a soul or a body; his body, his mind, his intellect and his soul altogether constitutes his beingness. Similarly, his relationship is not limited to a singular “I” or “a particular thing”, or to “himself” only; he is an integrated part of “we”, “the society”, “the state”, “the nation” and “the environments that surround him”. This means that the integral-man, through this path of four Purusharthas, he learnt the values of his family, his co-languagists, his community, his nation etc, and discovered the principles underlying them i.e. Dharma. Such underlying principles have been helping man to maintain life harmoniously through mutual co-operation, and upon which our values and traditions were built. That’s the reason for Upadhyaya giving more emphasis on mutual operation. Upadhyaya regards ‘family’ as a powerful link between man, society and state. This family is the first training ground for man towards social life, and it is from this blood relationship that a mutual sense of longing and love arise in them. In the West, there has been a rapid break up of family as they never consider man as an integral part of every family, nation, humanity and the other rest of the world, which resulted in the lack of awareness of the strong inner bond that joins all these. The philosophy of Integral Humanism warned us of these defects. The Western concept of Individual freedom, the Socialistic concept of Welfare-State as well as the Communes in the Communist countries etc are full of conflicts, unethical and therefore, incomplete and mutually opposed to each other.

This integral approach of Pandit Deendayal Upadhyaya sees the whole of India as a family, an integrated Bharat. Like Indian culture, his philosophy has no tendency to think of all Indian people and land in sections. Instead, it aims to uncover the unified identity behind its diversity and plurality. In this context, the central thought of Upadhyaya’s philosophy bears sticking resemblance with Bharatiya culture. As a result, his philosophy of Integral Humanism condemned individualism. The freedom of all individuals, to Upadhyaya, freed the people from families and relations; it makes the parents to disregard their children and the children to disregard their parents which, mutually leave them to the care of the state, the government discharging the duties of the young ones to the elders and the elders to the young ones. Such a concept made the families of the West functionless and purposeless. As a result, Upadhyaya does not want the Indian people to be enslaved by the government. That’s why his philosophy speaks of dharma.

Unlike the West, he inspired the Indians to follow Dharma and the duty-based family obligation. Without the sense of duty, the family as well as the nation will be deteriorated. Likewise, Upadhyaya wanted the same sense of duty, respect and responsibility towards their motherland. This direction of spiritual development is the central idea of his Philosophy of Integral Humanism.

 

4.  THE CONCEPT OF SOCIETY

Upadhyaya’s concept of society does not accept the Social Contract Theory of the origin of society of those European thinkers. The Western thinkers summarized society as a group of individuals who came together with a view to guard their mutual interests. He argued that it is fundamentally incorrect to say that society is formed merely by a group or a number of individuals. Neither it was created by individuals only. A society, to Upadhyaya, is not an organization, nor a co-operative society, not a joint stock of company. A society is self-born; an organism; a living entity. In the West. there has been a controversy as to whether man dominates society or society dominates man i.e. whether the society has restriction on the powers and functions of the individuals or the individual’s restraints on the functions of the society. Despite such differences, they all agreed the fact that there is a duality between them and that one of the two must dominate the other. Some thinkers supported the concept of complete individual freedom whereas the other supported social autocracy, which scattered the multifaceted individual personality so as to make the society powerful and supreme. He argued that such ideologies are one-sided and placed the social contract theory at its base. Now, the question of who should dominate, the individual or the society, or who is more important of the two, has no significance.

Further he argued that it is true that society creates institutions and arrangements for its development, protection, and expression of its ideals. For example: the institutions of Varnashram Vyavastha in ancient Bharat, and modern-day institutions like Co-operative Society, Assemblies, Municipal Councils, UNO, etc are all created for the welfare of man and society. However, Upadhyaya claims that a society was never formed in this artificial way. A society, thus, for him, is a natural living organism whose creation and destruction are like those plants and animals of the living world. Such view was also shared in Bharatiya Daishik Science. The individual’s relation to the society, for Upadhyaya, is the same as that of an organism to its limbs. Without individuals, we cannot conceive of a society and without society, the individual has no value. His philosophy of Integral Humanism jointly considers the welfare of both the individual and the society.

 

5. DHARMA AS AN ETHICAL PRINCIPLE AND DUTY

 Dharma, according to Upadhyaya, is not a religion as translated in the English dictionary. Dharma is not a philosophical opinion, nor a sect. It is not a ritualism, ceremonies or rites. Dharma, for Upadhyaya, has been termed as the ethical principles or law of life, which have sustained and nourished the individuals, the family, the society, etc. Such principles are embedded deeply in our culture and civilization. Upadhyaya asserted that this underlying principle of culture not only laid the foundation of the nation, but also set the goals of a civilization. The individual, the family and the society, the state and the nation, etc. are all important instruments to discharge the rules and responsibilities of dharma. Likewise, the society, and the nation also needs the qualities of Social Dharma. Just a family and the society could not handle all their needs alone. the prosperity of every nation depends on the harmonized and co-operative efforts of all its citizens. Dharma, includes all rules, qualities, arrangements and the emotions behind them helps the individuals to sustain themselves, which in turn, helps the society and the state. Upadhyaya rightly shows us that it is this dharma that has the power to nurture the citizens and its country.

 According to Upadhyaya, the principles of dharma, which guides the path for worldly progress and salvation, are eternal and universal. His philosophy mainly emphasizes the individual’s dharma (Vyavastha Dharma) and social dharma (Samasthi Dharma). The vyavasthi dharma laid down rules to maintain man’s physical, intellectual, spiritual and mental progress. Similarly, samasthi dharma guides the society to frame policies that aim at its strengthening, to express its deep consciousness of the country, and to know the very purpose of its existence. But what should be a nation’s Dharma? The answer is quoted as “The code of conduct – the people follow in the interest of the nation is the nation’s Dharma.” (Nene,2016) Thus, his philosophy inspired us that by practicing dharma, one can be able to sustain and protect the society mutually. Therefore, he urged the people to never give up dharma because without the qualities of dharma i.e. honesty, truthfulness, restraint etc. the progress of man and society will never go in the right direction. Dharma, therefore, is instrumental in attaining the goal of a country. Indian reformers like Gandhiji, Vivekananda, Savarkar, Tilak, Radhakrishnan, R.N.Tagore, Raja Ram  Mohan Roy, Chaitanya and Kalidas, and  the classical  Indian schools such  as   Jainism and Buddhism also have faith in the eternal principle of dharma. Despites its contradictory practices (i.e. to say the conflicting nature of Indian culture a Western culture), Bhartiya culture and Hinduism has also influenced many western thinkers like Aldous Huxley, Arthur Schopenhauer, Francois Voltaire, Rudolf Steiner, Will Durant, Wilhelm Von Humboldt. Moreover, Dharma was the central concept of Hindu philosophy and ancient Vedic texts like Dharmasastra, Manusmriti, Bhagavad Gita, Upanisads etc are all written by following the principles of dharma, which includes qualities like knowledge, patience, justice, love and dedication. Like the four Purusharthas of an individual, a society also needed Samasthi Purusarthas meaning objectives of society such as Samasthi Dharma, Samasthi Artha, Kama Purusharthas of Samasthi and Moksa Purusharthas of Samasthi.

The Samasthi Dharma refers to the dharma of society which includes things like natural tendencies, the rules and regulations, and dos and don’ts necessary for the smooth functioning of the society; in it, mutual understanding and cooperation are necessary. According to Upadhyaya, there are two bonds that cemented together our national community. Firstly, our deep affinity to our motherland despite our differences in language, life style, clothing, sect and creed, and secondly an amalgam of common history, common tradition, common culture, common ideals and values. These two bonds are regarded by him as the core of Samasthi-Dharma. Emotions expressed by phrases like Undivided India or ‘Hindu Rastra’ reflected the form and direction of Samasthi Dharma.

However, the farmers of the Indian Constitution, he argued, declared Bharat as a Union of States, which implies that the states are independent and brought together to form a Union. He rejected this theory of Union of States as it has in it, the elements of western theories of social contract, which resulted in conflicts between the center and the state, which shaken the foundation of Bharatiya National life. For Upadhyaya, Bharat is one nation divided into states for a convenient administration. He remarks: “Our Constitution needs amendment. We are One Nation, One Society”. (Upadhyaya,2014)

The Artha Purusarthas consists of both the political, social and economic. policies. This Artha of Society, to Upadhyaya, is a means, not an end, for man’s social and economic progress which can be achieved through hard work and honest duty of every individual, government officials, politicians and even judges etc. He agrees with Mahatma Gandhi in holding the idea of production by the masses, not on mass production. In his opinion, creation of national wealth through the efforts of only a few persons, was not considered as a good step for the society; it has to be accrued through the work of all masses. He wants the citizens to work hard and the state to provide a suitable job for every physically fit person with reasonable income, to protect and defend the good and punish the guilty. If it does not follow dharma, the state will be weak, and indiscrete use of its power will ruin the society. His visions, thus, consists of an appropriate economic, social and political planning with dharma as its base. The Kama Purusarthas of Society refers to the fulfilment of national desires and the will to attain it. Upadhyaya is of the view that national objectives and the strong will to attain it are essential for the progress of a society. A nation’s objectives should be based on dharma, otherwise it will be disastrous for the society. Without dharma it is impossible to achieve artha and kama. “Our war of independence against the British, the fact that the people of Bharat rose as one man against the Chinese and Pakistani aggressions sinking their party and group differences, are examples of Samasthi Kama Purusartha of Bharat in recent times” (Nene,2016). With no doubt, we can say that his philosophy of Integral Humanism provided an integrated picture of Bharat. It taught us to keep such collective aspirations alive and to invigorate it.

The Moksa Purusartha of Society is concerned with the objectives of realizing the ethos of a nation. Like an individual that has body, mind, intellect and soul, a nation also has its own soul or ethos, known as Chiti. This Chiti, which is central to a nation from its very beginning, helps in determining the direction a nation has to advance culturally. To Upadhyaya, Samasthi Moksa does not mean an individual affair; it is social. An individual can beat peace only when society is liberated, uplifted and ennobled. Moksa Samasthi can be realized only when Bharat is One Nation, when Bharat is Indianized, well organized, wealthy and powerful. This, the only solution for the salvation of all mankind, for Upadhyaya, is a true “Indian way like Emperor Ashoka, Gandhiji’s principle of Ahimsa and Sri Ramkrishna’s testimony to the harmony of religions” (Nene,2016). Hence, these four Samasthi Purusasthas i.e. Artha Samasthi Purusarthas, Kama Samasthi Purusarthas, Dharma Samasthi and Moksa Samasthi are all inter-related and dependent on each other.

 

6. A UNIFIED SOCIAL SYSTEM

Upadhyaya’s philosophy of Integral Humanism also deals with Indian’ social system. As his exposition of Purusarthas is undoubtedly traditional, his concept of a Unified Social System (Ekatme) has its roots in Hindu Philosophy. Man, for Upadhyaya, is inseparable from society. In the same way Samsthi Moksa is impossible in isolation; it requires one’s earnest dedication for society. Society, according to him, is an enlarged man, a cosmic man with thousand heads, thousand arms, thousand legs and thousand feet; his head represents the intellectuals, his arms- the heroes, the traders and farmers being his legs and stomach and craftsmen or artisans- his feet. As a body is constituted by its head, legs, arm, stomach and feet, similarly, a society is comprised of these intellectuals, heroes, traders, farmers, artisans or craftsmen. So, in his opinion, the individual and society are not contradictory, but complementary to each other through the bonds of education, work, enjoyment, and sacrifice. Whereas society make arrangements for man’s livelihood and enjoyment, the individual offers his services and sacrifices to the society. Hence, his vision aims at building a harmonious relation between the two. It should be noted that Upadhyaya stand together with Indian thinkers like Sri Aurobindo, R.N. Tagore, Sri Radhakrishnan and B.C.Pal, as well as with Western thinkers, Herbert Spencer, Emile Durkheim etc, when he states the society as a self-born, a living organism, not as an artificial manufacture, neither an agglomeration of separate individuals, nor a contract set up for limited ends.

The concept of Chatur Varna System was an integral part of Upadhyaya’s organic conception of society. The Marxian’s classify the modern society into three groups such as the capitalists, the bourgeois and the proletariats. In Bharat, social division are based on hierarchy from the standpoint of social status. Thinkers like Max Weber marked social class as determined by economic factors whereas Robert Morrison MacIver and Page rejected this view of material standard class dominance. However, in Hindu society’s class is represented by caste; Ancient Indian text like Bhagavat Gita reinforces the hierarchy of caste system. According to C.H. Cooley, when a class is strictly hereditary, it can be termed as caste. Unlike class, caste in India cannot be changed by self-acquired qualities; it is determined by birth, nor can it be changed by marriage of higher and lower caste; these social divisions were determined by profession and quality. The Gita mentioned that one can attain the highest perfection i.e. realization of God by the devoted performance of his duty. Western thinkers like Bradley in his “My Station and its Duties” also stress the need for one’s duty in their own station. Based on the profession and quality, there were four types of classes in Hindu society viz. – the Brahmanas, the Kshatriyas, the Vaisyas, and the Sudras. The Brahmanas occupy the highest position in society, next the Kshtriyas and the Vaisyas, and the lowest caste are the Sudras.

 Though many Indian thinkers and reformers like Gandhiji, Dr. B. R. Ambedkar, Raja Ram Mohan Roy, Jyotiba Phule, Periyar Rameswamy Naicker, Jawaharlal Nehru, Jaya Prakash Narayana were against casteism and demands for the abolition of this caste system; other personalities Annie Besant, Guru Golwalkar, and Savarkar have defended and glorified caste system. Swami Vivekananda seemed to have condemned the degenerated caste system, but he has praised all the original (ancient days) caste system. Upadhyaya, who was once an RSS (Rastriya Swayamsevak Sangh) was no exception. The caste-system, according to Upadhyaya, is God-made, determined by birth, decided by one’s good or bad actions in previous incarnation; it is not only natural but also practical. This means that inequality is natural to human society, and regarded it as a natural institution. As a caste system had become a dirty word, he associated it with one’s own religion which he described as swadharma. He followed Golwalkar and demanded to convert democratic-secular India into a Hindu nation, which was synonymous with casteism. He urged that before raising slogans of equality, one should think of it with discretion because from his practical and material point of view, not every man is alike; men have different inherent qualities, so as their duties. He added that men of different qualities performed various kinds of duties, which are allotted to them in accordance with their qualities. In his opinion, the question of high and low does not need to arise at all when men perform duties to fulfill swadharma, which is equivocal with the worship of God. It seems that the central point conveyed by his philosophy was that no conflict should be attached to it when the duty is performed without selfishness, and that the purpose of this Varna system has to bring in men their physical and spiritual happiness. No doubt, one van says that Upadhyaya was a staunch defender of Casteism.

Further, it is important to note that not only the Varna System, he also supported the Ashram System (Stage- System) as mentioned in the Hindu Sastra such as the Brahmacharya Ashram (student stage), the Grhasthashram (householder stage), the Vanaprastha Ashram (hermit stage), and the Sannyasa Ashram (wondering stage). In the Brahmacharya Ashram, a man is moulded with knowledge of culture, arts and science; he received education, intellectual, mental and physical training, which he strictly followed them. In the Grihastha stage of life, he learnt about family and inculcated in him allegiance to duty, pure character, equality in life, the spirit of social services (and entitled to enjoy pleasure as prescribed by dharma). He entered marriage and learnt the rules of Dharma. A woman was given a special place in our society. In the Vanaprastha stage, he concentrates more on God realization and works selflessly for all humanity by detaching from sensual pleasures and household duties. In the Sannyasa stage, he entered a monk life and spent all his time and energy in the service of the people and the country.

 Thus, this Ashram System inspired Upadhyaya to constitute in his philosophy the need for    observation of Dharma in all fields of life, education and culture, mental, intellectual, material and spiritual progress for all round development of man, the value of family and society, cooperation, selfness work for the people and complete devotion or sacrifice in the service of Bharat.

 

7. THE CONCEPT OF GOD, WORLD AND UNIVERSE

The philosophy of Upadhyaya does not only deal with individual’s relations with family and society, but also man’s relation with God, the world and the universe. According to Upadhyaya, the Brahmana and the world are like the two sides of the same coin. The Buddhists, the Jainas, the Sankhyas, the Mimamsakas and the Carvaka of the schools Indian Philosophy do not believe in the existence of God (Brahman). He holds that both the Brahman and the world are real. He rejected the Maya-Veda of Sankara, who holds the world as unreal, an illusion and that only Brahman is real. He regards the world as a manifestation of God’s existence and the God as our Creator, the Omnipotent, Omniscience, All-Pervading, Divine Being. He does not have a negative attitude of the world. To him, service to mankind is like service to God. He belongs to those group of persons like Gandhiji, Swami Vivekananda, Radhakrishnan, Sri Aurobindo, Rabindranath Tagore etc who believed in the existence and realization of God through devotion and selfness services for the upliftment of the people in society which includes upliftment of the last person, down- trodden section of the society. He conceives all entities of the world as correlated to each other, and that there is only mere transformation of one entity into the other forms of entities. In this context, he seems to be influenced by the Upanishad where the latter believed in the unity and manifoldness as both aspect of the life divine, the unity as truth and multiplicity as its manifestation, the Parinamavada theory of the Sankhya, which looked upon the things of the world as the result, not as new creation, but as transformation within the substances. Further, he was also influenced by the Vedantic conception of “That One”, and the Advaita Vedanta’s “That Thou Art”.

Thus, Upadhyaya believed in the concept of intrinsic unity among the manifold things of the universe, unity in diversity and the expression of unity in various forms has remained the central theme of Bharatiya Culture and his philosophy. He considers the entire Universe as a manifestation of one principle. Likewise, the diversity in life is regarded by him as an expression of the internal unity underlying them. He illustrates this idea under the following: “The unit of seed finds expression in various forms- the roots, the trunks, the branches, the leaves, the flowers, and the fruits of the tree. All these have different forms and colours, and even to some extent different properties. Still, we recognize their relation of unity with each other through the seed” (Upadhyaya,2014). Thus, the philosophy of Upadhyaya envisioned the entire universe as a single unified system where all the diverse forms of the universe are inseparably, integrally attached to one-another. As man is intrinsically attached with all the creation of the Universe, his philosophy is termed as Integral Humanism in which he considers the whole world as his family. Hence, with no doubt, we can say that his spiritualistic philosophy can be considered as a therapy committed in improving the conditions of Indian national life as well as the quality of a man’s life and his relationships with others.

 

 

 

 

8. CONCLUSION

It can be observed that Upadhyaya’s social philosophy envisages that as body, mind, intellect and soul constitutes an individual, similarly, family, society, state, nation all are significance and corrected to each other for all-round advancement of our Bharat, both material and spiritual progress to make Bharat self-reliant, self- sustenance, independent country in the world. Whereas Indian hedonism like the Carvaka, the Western hedonists like the Epicureans of the Hellenistic period and Aristippus of Cyrene, and the Utilitarian thinkers of the 19th century, Bentham and J.S. Mill considers pleasure (Kama) as its highest goal. Unlike them, Dharma, for Upadhyaya, is the highest of all the other three Purusharthas. His concept of happiness is hierarchical, but holistic. He gave great importance to the happiness of the soul, unlike the Bentham who is concerned only with quantitative happiness without qualitative differentiation, and J.S. Mill- quantitative happiness. Contrary to the Mimamsa school of Indian tradition who hold salvation through action only, he commends that salvation is possible only in performance of duties in a disinterested way without caring about its consequences. He does not accept the mechanistic nation of society, nor the individualist and collectivists in respect of man’s relation to society. His society is an organism, and that man and society are not contradictory to one another.  He supported casteism which he calls a natural order. His philosophy aims at resurrecting the principles of Bharatiya culture so that Bharat developmental progress would go in the right direction.

However, his views on Dharma and Caste System could not escape from the eyes of critics. Firstly, his concept of Dharma contains negative elements for its rules and regulation put ethical restrictions on men’s activities in the society. And secondly, there has been another group of opponents of his defense of social inequality. When he gave legitimacy to the social division for the orderly functioning of the society, many have condemned it overlooked and ignored the negative consequences of inequality in society which can lead to the development of intolerant caste system; it encourages divisive urges and sectional approaches of society. Instead of promoting social harmony, it promotes inter caste conflicts and disharmony in society. But Upadhyaya strongly defended his conceptions and asserted that besides the negative impact of Dharma, it has a positive attitude on man, family, society and nation. He says that if man had not learnt Dharma, himself, his family, his society and his country is bound to be ruined. Without the principles of Dharma, a family would never be in peace, united, prosperous, and that was the reason for the frequent breakup of families in European Countries. Lastly, he clarified that bitterness in division of society or casteism could be avoided only if the idea of equality, as conceived by the Hindu thinkers, is studied more carefully. All duties of four sections of society are equally dignified, and performed to fulfill their swadharma. So, the purpose of this system is to make man efficient as well as to fulfill his personal and social obligation, thereby ensuring adequate employment to every citizen as per their likes and qualities. Those who see in the system any superiority and inferiority of any kind are blind people. Its purpose is to bring physical and spiritual happiness in them.” (Nene,2016) Therefore, the philosophy of Deendayal Upadhyaya is undoubtedly selfhood oriented, not equality oriented.

 

CONFLICT OF INTERESTS

None. 

 

 

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

None.

 

REFERENCES

  Bakshi, S.S.N. (2018) : Pandit Deendayal Upadhyaya : Life of an Ideologue Politician, Rupa Publication, New Delhi.

Bentham, J. (1823) : An Introduction to the Principles of Moral and Legislations, The Clarendon Press, Oxford.

Hiriyana, M, (2015) : The Essentials of Indian Philosophy, Motilal Banarsidas Publication.

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