*** Welcome to piglix ***

Integral humanism (India)


Integral humanism is a doctrine developed by Deendayal Upadhyaya and adopted by the Jana Sangh in 1965 as its official doctrine. It is also the official philosophy of the Bharatiya Janata Party. It aims to appeal to broad sections of Indian society by presenting an indigenous economic model that puts the human being at centre stage.

According to Upadhyaya, the primary concern in India must be to develop an indigenous economic model that puts the human being at center stage.

It is opposed to both western capitalist individualism and Marxist socialism, though welcoming to western science. It seeks a middle ground between capitalism and socialism, evaluating both systems on their respective merits, while being critical of their excesses and alienness.

Humankind, according to Upadhyaya, had four hierarchically organized attributes of body, mind, intellect and soul which corresponded to four universal objectives, kama (desire or satisfaction), artha (wealth), dharma (moral duties) and moksha (total liberation or 'salvation'). While none could be ignored, dharma is the 'basic', and moksha the 'ultimate' objective of humankind and society. He claimed that the problem with both capitalist and socialist ideologies is that they only consider the needs of body and mind, and were hence based on the materialist objectives of desire and wealth.

Upadhyaya rejected social systems in which individualism 'reigned supreme'. He also rejected communism in which individualism was 'crushed' as part of a 'large heartless machine'. Society, according to Upadhyaya, rather than arising from a social contract between individuals, was fully born at its inception itself as a natural living organism with a definitive 'national soul' or 'ethos' and its needs of the social organism paralleled those of the individual.


...
Wikipedia

...