The decks were cleared for the exit of Dr Syama Prasad Mookherjee after he had a bitter spat with Prime Minister Pandit Nehru at a Cabinet meeting over the worsening plight of the Bengali Hindus in erstwhile East Pakistan, now Bangladesh. Earlier, before the advent of Independence, Nehru had requested Dr Mookherjee to join his Cabinet after he resigned from the Hindu Mahasabha of which he was the president in the wake of Mahatma Gandhi’s assassination. He joined as the Minister of Industries and Supplies.
At the Cabinet meeting, he roared, pointing angry fingers at Nehru, “When Muslims in Kashmir were attacked you sent the Indian armed forces and spent crores of rupees. What do you care for Bengali HindusIJ What do you care for the criminal assaults on our womenIJ” Nehru and Dr Mookherjee were both found trembling with rage. Many of the other ministers present, including Sardar Patel, chose to leave the scene, as they nearly came to blows. Dr Mookherjee along with another minister from Bengal, K C Neogy, quit the Cabinet on April 1, 1950.
Wilting under mounting pressure, Nehru invited then PM of Pakistan liaquat Ali Khan to Delhi to find a solution to the deepening minority crisis in East Pakistan. After six days of talks, the Delhi Pact was inked on April 8. The pact said that the refugees would be allowed to their erstwhile homeland unmolested to dispose of their properties and the abducted women and the looted properties would be returned to them. Besides, forced conversions were outlawed.
Dr Mookherjee was not satisfied. There were reasons too. By that time, the number of Hindu refugees who fled East Pakistan and sheltered in West Bengal rose up to one million and it was steadily spiralling. While speaking in Parliament on August 7, he raised some points to redress things. He asked the Government of India to make Pakistan cede one-third of its territory in East Pakistan to India for the resettlement of the refugees. Besides, he asked for a peaceful transfer of population between the two Bengals on the lines of what happened in Punjab just after Independence.
The Nehru Government unheeding his demands, he started toying with the idea of forming a new party that would prove to be a nationalist alternative to the Congress which would espouse the cause of the Hindus. His search on, interestingly a document entitled ‘Wanted a National Front’ that suggested formation of a ‘Bharat Mahasabha’ reached him from Almora. It stressed on an inclusive party, embracing in its folds all the creeds existing in the land - not just Hindus, Sikhs, Buddhists and the Jains but Muslims, Christians and Parsis - while affirming that all must show allegiance to India and respect the cow and the Ganga as twin symbols of the Holy. The document suggested that the proposed Mahasabha should champion the cause of the 350-million strong Scheduled Caste people who despite forming an integral part of the greater fraternity were yet to get a fair deal from the so-called mainstream. While expressing anger over the vivisection of the holy land, it suggested action to unsettle the settled fact, though in a realistic way.
However, it is not known who authored the document. We can conjecture that the author or the authors might have been associated with the Hindu Mahasabha that was headquartered in Haridwar, founded by Pandit Madan Mohan Malavya.
The role of the RSS in the formation of the Jana Sangh is interesting. It remained silent though it was widely expected that the organisation, championing the Hindu cause since Dr Keshav Baliram Hedgewar left the Congress and founded it in Nagpur in 1925, would support Dr Mookherjee’s attempts to form a pro-Hindu alternative to the Congress. Its silence was all the more surprising, as it gave him a rousing reception after he left the Nehru Government.
In fact, the RSS was at the time yet to recover from the severe shock it received in the form of the ban imposed on it by the Government of India in the aftermath of the Mahatma’s assassination. It was even considering the idea of its cadres joining the Congress en masse, stressing on its paramount mission of character-building while leaving politics to the Congress, a proposal put by Sardar Patel.
Finally, the RSS stepped in after Dr Mookherjee announced the formation of the All-India People’s Party in Calcutta. A meeting was held in Calcutta between him and then RSS chief MS Golwalkar. The RSS insisted that the name of the party must be in Hindi to have a wider appeal among the mass of the people. It suggested Bharatiya lok Sangh. Dr Mookherjee said that lok meaning crowd of people was not suitable. He suggested instead Bharatiya Jana Sangh. It was accepted.