Integral humanism (Hindu nationalism)

The creation and adoption of these concepts helped to suit the major discourses in the Indian political arena of 1960s and 1970s. This highlighted efforts to portray the Jan Sangh and Hindu nationalist movement as a high profile right fringe of the Indian political mainstream. A major change here in compared to Golwalkar's works was the use of the word "Bhartiya" which Richard Fox had translated as "Hindian", combination of Hindu Indian. Due to the official secularism in politics, it had become impossible to invoke explicit reference to "Hindu" and the usage of the word Bhartiya allowed to circumvent this political reality.

Upadhyaya considered that it was of utmost importance for India to develop an indigenous economic model with the human being at center stage. Integral Humanism was adopted as Jan Sangh's political doctrine and its new openness to other opposition forces made it possible for the Hindu nationalist movement to have an alliance in the early 1970s with the prominent Gandhian Sarvodaya movement going on under the leadership of J. P. Narayan. This was considered as the first major public breakthrough for the Hindu nationalist movement.

Philosophy

According to Deendayal Upadhyaya, the primary concern in India should be to develop an indigenous development model that has human beings as its core focus.

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.

Four objectives of humankind

Humankind, according to Upadhyaya, had four hierarchically organised attributes of body, mind, intellect and soul which corresponded to the four universal objectives of dharma (moral duties), artha (wealth), kama (desire or satisfaction), 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.

Rejection of individualism

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.