While all this was happening, Joshi was also on lookout for a political front he could get attached with. His earlier experience with political parties was exasperating and even his followers were fed up. At the same time he knew that he could not remain isolated from politics. That was when he began to take interest in the Swatantra Party. He had earlier interacted with Indian Liberal Group which was closely associated with Swatantra Party. He had often spoken from their platform and had generally liked the company of Minoo Masani and S. V. Raju, his deputy, who were the pillars of Indian Liberal Group and Swatantra Party. Joshi discovered that their overall philosophy was considerably close to his own ideas. This was around 1993. Swatantra Party had become more or less defunct by then. Joshi decided to revive that Party. It is worth mentioning here the background of the Swatantra Party. Swatantra Party was formed at a public meeting in Madras (now Chennai) on 4 June 1959 by Chakravarti Rajagopalachari alias Rajaji. He was perhaps the biggest leader from South India and became the first Governor General of independent India in 1947. His daughter had married the son of Mahatma Gandhi and Gandhi always referred to him as “my conscience-keeper”. He was the first recipient of the Bharat Ratna. He was also the first to publicly oppose socialism and the policies of Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru. It is interesting to note that he was 81 when he started Swatantra Party. Rajaji believed that socialist policies adopted by Nehru were very harmful to the nation but because masses were mesmerized by his personality, no one dared oppose. As a result, the nation was moving in the direction of bankruptcy. In order to remove poverty we had to encourage entrepreneurship and for that we had to adopt free economy. License-Permit Raj was the famous phrase he used to describe their regime. Because of Rajaji’s stature several leading Indians like Search for New Ways
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