Newspapers in India on September 25, 2026 were flooded with birthday-celebration advertisements for Pandit Deendayal Upadhyay, issued by RSS-BJP rulers. Upadhyay was a senior ideologue of the RSS who also served as president of the Bharatiya Jana Sangh (the first all-India political organization created by the RSS) and was in line to become the third Supremo of the RSS. His body was found at Mughal Sarai Junction (now Pandit Deen Dayal Upadhyaya Junction) on February 1, 1968. The RSS's then-leading figures, including Atal Bihari Vajpayee and Nana Deshmukh, declared that Communists had hired a thief to murder him.
A mews media headline read: "Our guiding light": BJP leaders pay tribute to Pandit Deendayal Upadhyaya on birth anniversary. It is fine that the RSS-BJP are celebrating Upadhyay's 109th birthday with great pomp and show. But this lot must tell the nation who killed Upadhyay.
A senior RSS ideologue, Balraj Madhok — an RSS full-timer (Pracharak) since 1942 who was in charge of Jammu & Kashmir state in the pre-Partition years, edited the RSS's English organ Organizer, founded the RSS's student wing, the ABVP, in 1948, teamed up with Shyama Prasad Mukherjee to establish the RSS's first all-India political wing, the Bharatiya Jana Sangh (BJS), in 1951, and was twice elected to the Lok Sabha (1961 and 1967) from Delhi — shared disturbing details of an inside conspiracy in his autobiography, Zindagi Ka Safar–3: Deendayal Upadhyay Ki Hatya Se Indira Gandhi Ki Hatya Tak ("Journey of Life–3: From the Murder of Deendayal Upadhyay to the Murder of Indira Gandhi"), Dinman Prakashan, Delhi, 2003, implicating leading RSS figures of that era in Upadhyay's murder.
He wrote: "One thing is clear. Behind the murder of Deendayal Upadhyay was neither the hand of Communists nor of any thief... He was killed by a hired assassin. But the conspirators who sponsored this killing were self-seekers and leaders with a criminal bent of mind from within the Sangh–Jan Sangh." (p. 22)
The autobiography also describes a concerted effort by the killers to keep the facts hidden: "Though those jealous self-seekers to whom the finger of suspicion points, in conspiring the murder of Deendayal Upadhyay, are benefiting from his name, they do not want the truth of his murder to come out. However, as a student of history, I believe that the blood of Deendayal Upadhyay will be avenged, history will do justice to him, and those who conspired to kill him will be subjected to a curse." (p. 15)
Written by a top swayamsevak, the autobiography does not hesitate to alleged that Atal Bihari Vajpayee and Nana Deshmukh were the main conspirators behind the murder of Deendayal Upadhyay, then president of the BJS. Madhok states categorically: "Information gathered from different sources points the finger of suspicion for the murder of Deendayal Upadhyay toward them." (p. 23)
According to the autobiography, Upadhyay was assassinated by those he had kept out of leading positions in the BJS. After taking over the BJS presidency from Balraj Madhok in December 1967, Upadhyay had sidelined both Vajpayee and Deshmukh from important posts. Madhok writes that Upadhyay was killed because "he was constantly striving that ill-reputed people should get no promotion in the BJS, so that the organisation's reputation would not be tarnished. For this reason, some characterless, self-seeking people found him a stumbling block on their path to self-serving fulfilment." (p. 14)
The RSS must tell the nation, on Upadhyay's 109th birth anniversary, how he was assassinated — and on whose orders.
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