Jana Sangh

Modern Indian political party, founded
in 1951 by Shyam Prasad Mookerjee.
Despite Mookerjee’s earlier roots in the
Hindu Mahasabha, a Hindu nationalist
organization, the Jana Sangh’s leadership largely came from workers
dispatched by another conservative
Hindu organization, the Rashtriya
Svayamsevak Sangh (RSS). By the mid-
1950s the Jana Sangh had become the
political arm of the RSS, with RSS members filling most of the party’s important
positions. In its political platform the
Jana Sangh espoused many populist
Hindu causes, such as a ban on cow
slaughter and the prohibition of alcoholic beverages, but the party was also
noted for its sympathetic orientation
toward farmers, who formed one of its
important constituencies. The Jana
Sangh’s high point came in the 1977 general elections, when it won ninety-three
seats in Parliament. It was the largest
single party in the coalition of political
parties that ousted Indira Gandhi’s
Congress Party and ended their two
years of martial law. This triumph quickly turned to failure: the Janata government dissolved over the so-called
dual-membership controversy, which
was rooted in concerns over Jana Sangh
members simultaneously being members of the RSS. Legislators from other
parties saw this as creating a conflict of
interest and were also wary of their government being directed by the RSS,
which was considered a Hindu chauvinist organization. These outside legislators demanded that Jana Sangh members
renounce all RSS ties, which the latter
were unwilling to do. All attempts at
compromise eventually failed, and after
the Congress Party came back to power
in 1980, the Jana Sangh legislators and
other remnants of the Janata government formed a new party, the Bharatiya
Janata Party. For further information
see Walter K. Andersen and Shridhar
D. Damle, The Brotherhood in Saffron,
1987; and Bruce Desmond Graham,
Hindu Nationalism and Indian
Politics, 1990.