“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.”
This is from the party’s manifesto of 1957. The Jana Sangh/BJP’s opposition to divorce and its championing of joint families was accompanied also by an attack against the rights of women. In his draft legislations in the early 1950s, Dr BR 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, the one that is quoted above, it said that 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 not letting divorced women and widowed daughters-in-law inherit property. This position changed over time, but there is no explanation 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 base of the BJP) became more nuclear, the pledged loyalty to joint families eroded.
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As we observed in the earlier column looking at a similar abandoning by the Jana Sangh/BJP of its socialist policies on the economy, this is not necessarily a problem. All parties have the right to alter and shift their stand, but when a position is laid out, then its retreat and cancellation 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.
An uneasiness with 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 speak of how. Jana Sangh did not add to the Congress policy of reservations for the Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes, for example by pushing for it in the private sector or expanding it. The support to the 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 an uproar, the BJP forced media outlets to delete his video, likely because it offended their middle class base.
Another place the Jana Sangh showed itself to be a party of the urban middle class was in agriculture. The first point on agriculture of 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 that on which the BJP has won many gold medals recently, the Jana Sangh did not have any 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. It wanted India to be given a place in the United Nations Security Council but there was no reference to why or what India’s role would be, or how its influence and options could be increased if this seat were miraculously given. It offered no path for getting to the Security Council. 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 against Nehru for losing the war to China. The 1972 manifesto made no reference to the war in Bangladesh which had been created 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 eighteenth-century weapon), expansion of the National Cadet Corps and the manufacture of nuclear weapons. It is a series of things strung together without coherence.
The reader will ask what the point of raising these things 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 that the party “shall bear true faith and allegiance… to the principles of socialism and secularism,” and this came years before other parties were compelled to do so by law. Today it is talking of removing these words from the constitution. It is therefore important that its own words be read out to the party that it is under some pressure, even if the very gentle one exerted by the columnist, to explain itself and its endless shifts to its voters and to the citizens of this country.
By Aakar Patel
