It's so funny to note that none of the raytas shilling for the caste politics of BJP seems to have studied the 1967 Lok Sabha elections. For them Indian politics seems to have started from 2014
BJS fought the 1967 Lok Sabha elections under Shri Balraj Madhok who was a direct disciple of Dr. Syama Prasad Mukherjee. The concept note of BJS along with the ideological matters which it was supposed to pursue were drafted by Madhok during the inauguration of the party
1967 in many ways can be considered as a watershed moment in Indian politics. That elections saw the rise of Hindutva politics of BJS as a credible alternative to the nationalist socialism of Congress
Madhok being a close aide of Dr. Mukherjee, completely followed his ideals and did not pay heed to the suggestions of Sangh in many of the seats. Infact in 1967 many expected BJS to end up with less than their tally of 14 seats won by them in 1962 because of this feud
But Madhok proved them wrong. He fielded candidates only based on their commitment to the cause of Hindus. For him the only aim was to consolidate Hindus of the country. He didnt focus on social engineering or caste politics like others
This resulted in random candidates being fielded in various constituencies. For example, the RJB fame KK Nair and his wife Shakuntala were fielded from Bahraich and Kaiserganj. Goa liberation movement fame Jagannath Rao Joshi from Karnataka was fielded in Bhopal
Madhok himself contested from South Delhi despite being a Dogra. Today no Dogra can expect to get a tkt from any major political party outside Jammu. But for Madhok his hindu credentials were enough to fight from that seat
Guess what all these leaders ended up winning their respective seats. Despite not having the full support of RSS, BJS ended up winning 35 seats thus increasing its 62 tally by 21 seats. Madhok essentially showed everyone that Hindu credentials alone are enough to win elections
This meteoric rise of BJS came in some extraordinary circumstances. All political pundits who have written abt this elections have mentioned the advantage possessed by congress in the run up to this elections coz of Shastris death and 65 victory.
Despite this, Madhok managed to increase the tally of his party by 164% in that elections. Naturally you would expect a leader who granted this extraordinary victory to be rewarded by his party.
However he was sidelined immediately after this victory in favor of Deendayal Upadhyay by the RSS members of the party who were afraid of his ability and was never allowed to return to the helm because of his differences with the Sangh
After getting the total control of the party, the Sangh leadership adopted the social engineering politics of Congress and ended up having reducing its tally by 13 seats in the following elections purely because Indira was better than them in that politics
And as we see, BJS and BJP largely remained clueless till the RJB movement was taken over by Advani in 1980s. In the middle they even allied with left parties to form a govt aft emergency and ended up not having the PM post despite having more than 90 MPs from their side
So on the whole my point is simply this, you can win elections purely based on Hindu issues. You were created to do it. That model will have long lasting effects unlike caste politics because you dont have an competitor in that model. Period
