I wrote this article on Dattopant Thengadi for Swarajya. You can read a version of the article below:
In the 1950s, one-third of the world was besotted with
communist ideology. The famous slogan in India then was Lal kile pe lal nishan,
maang raha hai Hindustan (India wants to see the red sign at Red Fort). The
Left ideology dominated the labour movement in India at that time. It was at
this juncture that Dattopant Thengadi successfully made inroads into worker and
peasant movements in India and established the Bharatiya Mazdoor Sangh (BMS) in
1955. Today, BMS is a leading workers' organisation in the world and represents
the country at bodies like the International Labour Organization.
Rise In Public Life
Dattopant Thengadi was born on 10 November 1920 in Vardha,
Maharashtra. After completing BA and LLB, he became a Rashtriya Swayamsevak
Sangh (RSS) pracharak in 1942. At the age of 15, he joined Vanar Sena in Vardha
to fight for the freedom of the country. As an RSS pracharak, he was sent to
Kerala where he stayed for two years and was later transferred to Bengal. In 1949,
he was assigned the task of organising workers and labourers. Six years later,
he established the BMS which later became the largest labour organisation in
India.
Thengadi entered Bharatiya Jan Sangh (BJS) under the
directive of the RSS and worked as an organising secretary in Madhya Pradesh
and in the south India. He was a member of Rajya Sabha from 1964 to 1976, where
he raised demands of workers and peasants. When Nanaji Deshmukh and Ravindra
Verma, the secretaries of Struggle Committee against Emergency were arrested,
Thengadi took up the mantle and directed all his efforts towards the foundation
of the Janata Party. But, he did not like politics and returned to his first
love - workers and peasant movement.
He was the founder of many other organisations like the
Swadesh Jagran Manch, Samajik Samrasta Manch and others.
As an author, he wrote more than 80 books and booklets, most
of which dealt with the hardships of workers and the downtrodden. His books
include Labor Policy, Karykarta, Destination, Focus, The Hindu View of Arts,
The Perspective, Our National Renaissance, Third Way, Ambedkar and Social
Revolution.
Saurashtra University, Gujarat, conferred a doctorate on him
for his contribution to the labour and peasant movement in India.
Workers, Unite The World
With the consent of Guru Golwalkar, Thengadi had been
organising workers since 1949. He applied Deendayal Upadhyay’s philosophy of
integral humanism to the cause of workers and peasants and replaced the idea of
class struggle with class coordination and cooperation. He was the first person
in Indian history who established a worker's movement that was not inspired by
Marxist ideology or any other political party and factored in the Indian value
system. He was of the view that with time and space, ideas and their relevance
changes. At the first all-India workshop of BMS on 27 October 1968 in
Maharashtra, he said, “If there exist different societies in different
conditions in same time period, then there could be no one 'ism' for them.
Similarly one idea cannot be considered appropriate for one society over
different time periods. Nor a single 'ism' can be a panacea of all ills because
time and conditions change and any ideology or 'ism' takes shape out of the
knowledge pool of that time.'
Thengadi was clear that the fight had to be against
injustice and not against any class. He gave the call, ‘workers, unite the
world’ in place of ‘workers of the world, unite’.
Earlier, chanting Bharat Mata ki Jai and Vande Matram at
rallies and programmes of workers was unheard of. BMS broke this silent taboo
and started hoisting a saffron flag and chanting nationalist slogans.
Thengadi wanted to free the labour movement from the
clutches of the Left that looked to the then USSR and China for inspiration. So
he gave the slogan - Lal gulami chhod ker, bolo Vandematram. (Leave Red
slavery, chant Vande Matram).
The movement from red flag to saffron had a deep impact and
even today the indigenous labour movement, BMS, use a saffron flag.
The core philosophy of BMS entails nationalisation of
workers, industrialisation of nation and labourisation of industries (Shramikon
ka Rashtriyakaran, Rashtra ka Audyogikikaran aur Udyogon ka Shramikikaran).
In Moscow, Thengadi floated the idea of an apolitical labour
confederation at an international meeting of World Federation of Trade Unions.
This forum was supported by Leftists and his resolution was rejected. He, along
with others, floated a new labour federation at the intentional level and named
it 'General Confederation of World Trade Unions' and provided it with a white
coloured flag in the place of the trademark red one.
In 1985, for the first time, a nationalist labour
organisation was invited by the Communist Party of China and a BMS delegation
participated under the leadership of Thengadi. Every year now, a BMS delegation
takes part in the labour conference in China.
After membership verification in 1989, the Labour Ministry
of the government of India declared BMS as the largest labour organisation in
the country.
A great scholar, organiser and a greater leader and
activist, Thengadi walked the path that none before him had taken. Over the
years he became a huge source of inspiration for millions of activists striving
for the welfare of workers and peasants.
Search For The ‘Third Way’
Thengadi worked under the ideological guidance of Dr
Hedgewar and Guru Golwalkar. He himself became margdarshak (patron) of many
organisations and asked juniors to lead these. He believed that a senior should
assume the role of a patron and a junior should lead the movement.
He studied both the dominating ideologies of the world and
also visited capitalist and socialist countries, and reached a conclusion that
there is a need for a third way. He was of the firm belief that the third way
could emerge only from the Indian soil.
In one of his lectures at Bengaluru, he claimed that we
should not imitate the West blindly. He declared that Westernisation is not
modernisation. “We do not think that modernisation is westernisation: Due to
over a century of brain washing through Macaulay system of English education,
majority of Indians are habituated to believe that anything west is always
best. To be modern our lifestyle and thought style should necessarily be
western. However this is only a mental blockade. We must come out of it at the
earliest and be prepared to think free of western biases. We must accept that
modernisation is not westernisation and westernisation is not modernisation.’
He described swadeshi economy through four features - one
with free competition without manipulated market, where movement is towards
equitability and equality, where nature is milked but not ravaged, and where
there is self-employment and not wage employment.
He always fought against economic inequality and opposed
social inequality at every level. He worked with Dr B R Ambedkar during the Lok
Sabha election in Bhandara, Maharashtra and understood his feelings both
towards the marginalised sections of society and nationalism. On 14 April 1983,
he established the Samajik Samrasta Manch (Social Harmony Forum) on the birth
anniversary of Dr Ambedkar. Ambedkar Aur Samajik Kranti (Ambedkar and Social
Revolution) was his last book where he elaborated the idea of social justice
and nationalism propounded by Babasaheb.
He was of the firm view that national rejuvenation is
possible only through people who strongly believe in the traditional knowledge
system of India.
Dattopant Thengadi worked with labour movements but never
compromised on the idea of cultural nationalism and national reconstruction. In
2011, workers of the Communist, Centre Of Indian Trade Unions (CITU) joined BMS
in chanting Bharat Mata ki Jai and Vande Matram at a workers' rally. The ideas
that Thengadi had sown, had come to fruition five decades later.
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