Within a few months of coming to Ahmedabad, 19-year-old Narendra Modi was engrossed in Sangh activities. Back then, working for the Sangh was not just restricted to the various programmes, branch operations and expansion of the RSS, but also being involved in the work of the Bharatiya Jana Sangh, Akhil Bharatiya Vidyarthi Parishad, Bharatiya Mazdoor Sangh, and Vanavasi Kalyan Ashram. Not just pracharaks, these organisations faced a dearth of volunteers and workers too.
From Vakil Saheb, Sangh’s Prant Pracharak of Gujarat, to the then Gujarat unit general secretary of Jana Sangh, Nathabhai Jhagda, Vishva Hindu Parishad’s KK Shastri and Dr Vanikar, who apart from the VHP used to work for Vanavasi Kalyan Ashram, Modi would go with all of them whenever required.
In 1969, young Modi spent most of his time working for the Vishva Hindu Parishad. VHP’s Gujarat unit clocked just three years since its inception, while the Parishad was busy making its presence felt. Hence, VHP needed the support and help of Sangh Parivar members the most.
‘Why the hurry?’
While keeping himself busy with growth activities, Modi would often wonder why the hurry to set up another organisation like Vishva Hindu Parishad when Sangh, Jana Sangh, Vidyarthi Parishad, Vanvasi Kalyan Ashram, and Bharatiya Mazdoor Sangh were going to take a lot of time to establish their roots in Gujarat and the rest of the country? Once these organisations were strengthened and expanded themselves, then the thought of setting up a new organisation could have been considered.
When he discussed the matter with senior leaders of the Sangh and Vishva Hindu Parishad, Modi was in for a surprise. He had never thought about what could be the reason for Sangh chief Madhav Sadashiv Golwalkar’s urgency to establish the VHP.
Modi knew that as per the needs of the society and the nation, the Sangh and its pracharaks had established Akhil Bharatiya Vidyarthi Parishad in 1949, Jana Sangh in 1951, Vanvasi Kalyan Ashram in 1952, and Bharatiya Mazdoor Sangh in 1955. He soon realised that pracharaks like Balraj Madhok, Dattopant Thengadi, and Deendayal Upadhyaya played an important role in setting up these organisations under the guidance of Golwalkar.
But Modi didn’t know that the reason behind immediately establishing the Vishva Hindu Parishad was not any incident or immediate problem in India, but a big problem and pain of the Hindus living around 13,750 kilometres away from the country. When Modi got to know about it in detail, he understood the need for the establishment of another institution.
Answer comes from faraway Trinidad
The story behind it is very interesting. It is connected with Trinidad, a Caribbean island located at a five-hour air distance from New York. Even today, it takes at least 28-30 hours to reach Port of Spain, the main city of Trinidad, from India, that too by air as there is no direct flight. Before reaching Trinidad, there are two or three stopovers. It used to take months to go to Trinidad by sea at the beginning of the 20th century.
Today, the people of India, especially cricket fans, know Trinidad as the home of famous players like Dwayne Bravo, Kieron Pollard, Sunil Narine, Denesh Ramdin, and Ravi Rampaul, while the older generation will remember it as the place of Sonny Ramadhin and Brian Lara.
However, in the 1960s, Trinidad was known as a place of indentured labourers of Indian origin, where Hindi and Bhojpuri were widely spoken. It had recently gained independence from Britain. While India became independent on August 15, 1947, Trinidad and Tobago gained independence on August 31, 1962.
Within a year after independence, a parliamentarian from Trinidad came to India; his name was Simbhoonath Capildeo (Shambhunath Kapildev). The writing of the name in this way was an indication of how big the challenge was among the Sanatani Hindus of Indian origin in Trinidad to protect their identity amid attacks of Christian missionaries and the British hegemony.
Plagued by missionaries
The people of Indian origin in Trinidad were mainly Sanatani, large in numbers, who could not practise their faith freely, despite gaining independence from British colonial rule. There were no arrangements for education in schools as per Hindu rituals and culture, while the Christian missionaries were allegedly converting Hindu children in the name of education. Such was the extent that one had to undergo baptism and become a Christian to be a teacher in schools. Sanatanis did not even have priests to perform their rites, they were completely dominated by Christian missionaries.
Indentured Hindus were economically weak. As the practice of slavery and trade in Africa were declared illegal by most European countries, the British used to take Indian labourers to Trinidad and pay a nominal amount for sugarcane farming in the last five decades of the 19th century. As part of an agreement, these labourers had to take a formal oath to work continuously for five years. There were situations like bonded labour, while there were no rights, and people had to endure a lot of atrocities. They couldn’t leave the work as it was against the agreement.
Thousands of kilometres away from their birthplace India, who was there to listen to them in distant Trinidad? They were caught in this web. And due to the agreement’s distorted nature, they were known as indentured labourers. Even today, their population is present in large numbers in Fiji, Mauritius, Seychelles, Trinidad, and Guyana, playing an important role, politically and economically.
In 1963, when Simbhoonath Capildeo visited India, the situation in Trinidad was very unfavourable for Sanatani Hindus of Indian origin. There were no proper temples there in the 60s. They did not even have priests to conduct pujas, ‘yajnopavita’, and weddings. Even marriages were held in Christian style due to compulsions. The population of Hindus was declining due to the alleged conversion on a large scale.
Simbhoonath Capildeo stood up seeing this situation of the Hindu society. After achieving success in law, Simbhoonath formed the Sanatan Dharma Mahasabha in Trinidad in 1952 and led the Hindu society on the island. He had even become a Member of Parliament in 1956 due to the full support of people of Indian origin.
Simbhoonath Capildeo’s father Capildeo Dubey was like thousands of people who came to Trinidad between 1845 and 1917 from many parts of India, including Uttar Pradesh, which was a British colony back then. There was a lot of poverty in British India and the Britishers used to collect huge taxes on agriculture. Due to drought and floods, crops used to get damaged, making it difficult to have a proper meal. In order to survive in such times, people were compelled to go to an unknown country, thousands of kilometres away, while enduring pain and travelling by sea for months, even as indentured labourers.
Capildeo Dubey left his village Mahdewa Dubey near Gorakhpur in September 1894, got registration done in Banaras (Varanasi) and then reached Trinidad from Kolkata via the Hereford ship. He got married there to Soogee, the daughter of a ‘sardar’ man named Govinda. The couple had a total of 14 children, though the first three died at a young age. After that, seven girls, including Dhanapati and Kalavati, and later two sons, Simbhoonath and Rudranath, were born. After that, they again welcomed two daughters, one of them named Droapatie.
Droapatie was the mother of famous writer Sir Vidiadhar Surajprasad Naipaul. Through his books, VS Naipaul won the hearts of literature lovers around the world. He won the Booker Prize in 1971 and received the Nobel Prize in 2001.
Disappointed by Nehru
When Naipaul’s uncle Simbhoonath Capildeo visited India in 1963, there was Jawaharlal Nehru’s government at the Centre with Congress ruling most states. By then, Nehru had completely freed the Congress from Sardar Patel’s influence, as it had been almost 13 years since the latter’s death. Most of his colleagues, who believed in Sanatan values, were either sidelined or had left the party.
On May 11, 1951, the then President Rajendra Prasad participated in the consecration ceremony of the Somnath Temple — rebuilt with the resolution and determination of Sardar Patel — as chief guest, against Nehru’s wishes. Rajendra Prasad passed away on February 28, 1963, after spending his last few days in Patna.
Nehru had opposed the reconstruction of the Somnath temple. He got angry at his cabinet colleague Kanhaiyalal Maneklal Munshi after soil, water and ‘durva’ were ordered from all the countries around the world for the consecration ceremony of the temple. He did not even attend Rajendra Prasad’s funeral.
The Congress gained its political ground with the help of Hindu votes in the pre-Independence movements and elections. The Muslim votes went to the Muslim League, and Muhammad Ali Jinnah, the founder of Pakistan, would call the Congress a Hindu party. However, with time, the Congress continued to move away from core Hindu values due to Nehru’s utopian thinking and the huge influence he gained from assuming the post of prime minister.
For the Nehru-led Congress government, the word Hindu was a symbol of conservative and reactionary forces. The extreme definition of secularism had reached the extent of Muslim appeasement, but they had a problem with Sanatan values and symbols. In 1951, when the construction of the Somnath temple was underway, Nehru angrily called it a symbol of ‘Hindu revivalism’. The Hindu resurgence was a conservative idea for him.
Unaware of Nehru and his government’s thinking, Simbhoonath Capildeo came to India in November 1963 with a special request. The request was that some Hindu priests, dharmacharyas, and religious books should be sent from India to strengthen the Hindus in Trinidad. They were fighting for their existence amid poverty and the challenge of conversion by Christian missionaries. Such an effort from India, according to Capildeo, would help them follow their traditional values and not feel alienated.
Simbhoonath Capildeo had reasons to have hopes from India; after all, this was the country of his ancestors. Despite going to Trinidad, his father Capildeo Dubey kept visiting India within his limited means, due to his love for his birthplace. He had come to India in 1909 and 1926. Capildeo Dubey died in India in 1926 while he was preparing to return to Trinidad.
During his time, Capildeo Dubey used to perform marriage and janeu rituals for the Hindus of Trinidad. He himself was an active Sanatani and had an idol of Durga riding on a lion at home. Due to this reason, Capildeo’s house is still known as ‘Lion House’, a place for tourists to understand Indian architecture in Trinidad.
Like his father, Simbhoonath also performed rituals as a priest for some time. But after his father’s demise, this work was not enough to support his large family and he had to take up law. The situation was such in Trinidad that there were not many people to provide relevant information to Hindus about their religion and the rites and rituals like birth, marriage, death, etc. Due to the aggressive conversion activities of Christian missionaries, Hindu dharma was in danger of being wiped out from Trinidad. In such a situation, Simbhoonath Capildeo, too, looked up to India, the birthplace of Sanatan culture.
Apart from Ramcharitmanas, written by Tulsidas, the Hindus of Trinidad had nothing to keep themselves connected to Hindu Dharma. Its copies were also limited and education was negligible. Hence, it was necessary that poor Hindus were exposed to religious education to not feel alienated from Sanatan Dharma under the pressure of Christian missionaries. Arrangements were to be made for the people of Trinidad to follow their prayer rituals. Priests, saints, and necessary books were some of the things Simbhoonath Capildeo expected of India.
However, Simbhoonath Capildeo was disappointed with the Nehru government. How could the Nehru government, driven by secularism, help the Hindus of Trinidad, even though various steps were taken at home and abroad keeping in mind the Muslim vote bank — be it backing Palestine and thereby souring relations with Israel?
When Simbhoonath met Nehru, the first prime minister of independent India shrugged off the matter, rebuked him, and made it clear that nothing could be done for the Indians who left the country before 1947. The same was the condition of other ministers; after all, how could a secular government provide such help, this was their feeling.
Finding hope from RSS
When Simbhoonath Capildeo received no help from the Nehru government except for ridicule and rebuke, it moved an official of the foreign department (MEA) who knew some RSS pracharaks. He asked Simbhoonath to meet Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh representatives in Delhi.
Seeing a ray of hope, Simbhoonath Capildeo went to Sangh’s Jhandewalan office, where he met Delhi’s Sanghchalak Lala Hansraj. Lala Hansraj listened to Simbhoonath Capildeo’s problems and advised him to meet the then Sarsanghchalak Madhav Sadashiv Golwalkar, popularly known as Guruji.
Following Lala Hansraj’s advice, Simbhoonath Capildeo thought of meeting Guruji. Back then, there were no mobile phones, he only knew that Golwalkar was on a visit to Karnataka. After a call was made to the office in Bengaluru, it came to light that Guruji was in Belgaum. After gathering this information, Simbhoonath Capildeo reached Belgaum, where Guruji had come after visiting several districts one after another.
Simbhoonath Capildeo told Guruji that he had come to him with great hope, not as an individual, but as a representative of the Hindus of Trinidad. He explained his problems in detail to Golwalkar and also mentioned his disappointment in the Nehru government in Delhi. Guruji assured him of help. Simbhoonath Capildeo was pleased with this and took Guruji’s autograph on two photographs so that after going back to Trinidad he could tell the Hindus about his meeting with Guruji and console them.
Guruji had assured Simbhoonath Capildeo of help and thought about how to do it. He already knew a lot from two of his colleagues – Lakshmanrao Bhide, who was engaged in unifying Hindus abroad, and Deendayal Upadhyay who, being a Jana Sangh leader, had visited many countries and was aware of the problems and expectations of the Hindus living there.
The challenge before the Hindus in India too was big, especially in the tribal areas. Like in Trinidad, Christian missionaries were allegedly luring innocent forest dwellers in the tribal areas and converting them. The Niyogi Committee report was already out and had unmasked the terrible problem of conversion before the country.
In such a situation, Guruji took the initiative to establish the Vishva Hindu Parishad to deal with these challenges, solve the problems of Hindus all over the world, and unite them. Shivram Shankar Apte, who was famous as Dadasaheb Apte, was entrusted with this responsibility by the Sangh.
Apte, the founder of Hindusthan Samachar, was fully aware of the challenges faced by Hindus in the country and around the world. On the auspicious day of Krishna Janmashtami on August 29, 1964, a meeting was held at Sandeepany Sadhanalaya in Mumbai to establish the Parishad; apart from Guruji and Dadasaheb Apte, many other senior pracharaks of the Sangh were present. Apte presented the concept of the Vishva Hindu Parishad in the meeting, on the basis of which this organisation was formed.
Popularising VHP
A large number of Sangh pracharaks and volunteers were engaged in popularising the work of the Vishva Hindu Parishad in the country and the world. Plans were made to organise Hindu sammelans from the district to the world level. As part of it, it was decided to organise the first international conference in Prayagraj (then Allahabad) on the occasion of Kumbh. The Maharaja of Mysore and the former Governor of Madras, Jayachamaraja Wadiyar, was made the first president of the Vishva Hindu Parishad, and famous industrialist Jugal Kishore Birla became the patron.
Nehru had almost disappeared from the political scene by the time the Vishva Hindu Parishad was established, or as part of efforts to expand it, a plan was made to organise a big conference in Prayagraj. Nehru died on May 27, 1964, three months before the establishment of the Vishva Hindu Parishad in Mumbai.
After Nehru’s demise, Lal Bahadur Shastri became the Prime Minister. He belonged to a Sanatani Kayastha family of Kashi who neither refrained from going to the temple nor from praying. He used to pray to Ganga in his childhood and would cross the river daily to attend school. He did not oppose the establishment of the Vishva Hindu Parishad.
Shastri would contest elections from Prayagraj (Allahabad). He had a good relationship with Rajendra Singh (aka Rajju Bhaiya), a senior Sangh pracharak who later became the fourth RSS chief. He also respected the then RSS chief Golwalkar a lot. He also called Guruji for advice during the India-Pakistan war of 1965. In contrast to Nehru’s long-standing opposition to the Sangh and its associated organisations, Shastri’s attitude was positive.
When the World Hindu Conference was organised on January 22, 23, and 24 in 1966 on the occasion of Maha Kumbh in Prayag, Gulzari Lal Nanda was the interim Prime Minister. Shastri passed away 11 days earlier. Nanda was also made the interim Prime Minister after Nehru’s demise as he was second in seniority in the cabinet.
Nanda was the home minister at that time and under the Kamaraj Plan, leaders senior to him like Morarji Desai had been removed from the cabinet. Nanda played the role of interim prime minister between May 27 and June 9, 1964, before the “syndicate” could make Shastri the PM, announcing that he had a majority in the parliamentary party.
Nanda became an MP from Sabarkantha in the 1962 elections held after the establishment of Gujarat. Shastri died in Tashkent on January 11, 1966, soon after the Tashkent Declaration — mediated by the Soviet Union — was signed between India and Pakistan after the 1965 war. Even at that time, Nanda was number two in the cabinet and was the home minister.
Nanda had to become an interim PM again. He was at the helm till the “syndicate” in the Congress, which held the reins in those days, decided to prop up its “puppet” Indira Gandhi as opposed to Morarji Desai.
Nanda was the interim prime minister until Indira Gandhi became the PM on January 24, 1966, and during this time, the first World Hindu Conference was organised under the banner of the Vishva Hindu Parishad in Prayagraj between January 22 and 24. Nanda, who led the mill workers, was a Gandhian and also a staunch Sanatani. It was Nanda who after retiring from active politics formed the Shri Ram Janmotsav Samiti in Delhi in 1983 and also participated in the meeting held in Muzaffarnagar in the same year, in which a formal resolution was taken to rebuild the temple at Ram Janmabhoomi.
Success of World Hindu Conference
The World Hindu Conference held in Prayagraj in 1966 was the first occasion when, due to the efforts of Guruji, all four Shankaracharyas along with religious leaders and saints belonging to all sects of Hinduism gathered on one platform. Besides them, Uttar Pradesh governor Bishwanath Das, Bihar counterpart Anant Sainam Iyengar, and West Bengal’s Kailash Nath Katju also participated in the conference.
Nepal’s prime minister Tulsi Giri also attended this conference as a special guest. Indians living abroad and citizens of Indian origin also arrived in large numbers. The total number of attendees exceeded 75,000, three times the number anticipated. Detailed information about the objectives of the organisation was given at the conference.
Uttar Pradesh governor Bishwanath Das, who inaugurated the conference, appealed to the VHP to unite followers of the Hindu religion wherever they live across the world and seek maximum cooperation for the revival of Indian culture. During the conference, everyone laid emphasis on establishing unity within the Hindu society, along with resolutions related to ‘ghar wapsi’, restoring the old glory of temples, cow protection, and spreading Sanskrit education were also passed.
After the success of this first international-level conference, it was decided to organise conferences at regional and provincial levels. Before this, it was necessary to create an organisational structure at the regional, provincial and district levels. In a meeting held in Mumbai on August 24, 1966, it was decided to quickly form committees at the regional, state, and district levels.
The Gujarat unit of the Vishva Hindu Parishad was started after the Prayagraj conference in 1966. When Narendra Modi joined the activities of the Sangh Parivar in Ahmedabad in 1969, at that time there wasn’t much work by the Vishva Hindu Parishad on the district level. The centre of activities was Ahmedabad and a lot of hard work had to be done.
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