On the birth anniversary of Pandit Deendayal Upadhyay, Odisha Chief Minister Mohan Charan Majhi offered reverent tribute to the philosopher-economist whose ideas continue to shape the ideological spine of the Bharatiya Janata Party. The homage, posted on 25 September 2026, reaches across decades to honour the man who gave Indian conservatism its most enduring intellectual framework.

Writing in Odia, CM Majhi described Upadhyay as a 'bishishta rajaneetijna, darshnik, arthaneetijna' — a distinguished statesman, philosopher, and economist — and saluted his dedication to the nation. He specifically invoked two pillars of Upadhyay's thought: Ekatma Manavavad (Integral Humanism) and Antyodaya — the principle that a society must be judged by how it serves its very last person. 'His contribution to the welfare of the last person in line through Antyodaya,' Majhi wrote, 'will forever remain memorable in Indian public life.'

The ideas that outlasted their author

Pandit Deendayal Upadhyay was among the most consequential figures of 20th-century Indian political thought. As a leading organiser of the Bharatiya Jana Sangh — founded in 1951 and the direct ideological predecessor of the BJP — he argued that India's path to development could not be borrowed wholesale from either Western capitalism or Soviet socialism. His answer was Integral Humanism: a framework rooting economic and political life in India's own civilisational values, prioritising the holistic development of every individual.

Antyodaya — literally 'rise of the last' — translated that philosophy into a concrete welfare imperative. The poorest, most marginalised citizen was not a footnote to progress but its ultimate test. That idea has since been formally adopted by successive BJP-led governments since 2014, lending Upadhyay's name and vocabulary to a range of welfare schemes aimed at last-mile delivery.

A ritual of ideological continuity for the BJP

The 25 September birth anniversary tribute is a fixture in the BJP's annual calendar — observed from state capitals to party offices across India. For a chief minister like Majhi, who took office in Odisha in 2024 after the BJP's historic win in the state, invoking Upadhyay is both a personal act of reverence and a political signal: that Odisha's BJP government is anchored in the same foundational values as the wider movement.

The consistency of these tributes across BJP-governed states reinforces a deliberate chain of ideological memory — connecting current governance to the party's founding thinker and his insistence that cultural nationalism and last-mile welfare are inseparable goals.

Seventy-five years after the Jana Sangh's founding, the vocabulary of Ekatma Manavavad and Antyodaya remains the BJP's most durable philosophical inheritance — and every 25 September, the party makes a point of saying so.