Every year on 25 September, the BJP pauses to remember the man whose ideas gave the party its soul — and this year, Chhattisgarh Chief Minister Vishnu Deo Sai marked Pandit Deendayal Upadhyay Jayanti with a heartfelt tribute, reaffirming that the ideologue's vision of lifting the last person in the social order remains the governing compass in Raipur.

In his post, CM Sai described Upadhyay as 'mahan rashtrachhintak, jansangh ke sansthapak, ekatm manavvad aur antyodaya ke praneta' — 'a great national thinker, founder of the Jana Sangh, and the originator of Integral Humanism and Antyodaya' — offering what he called 'shat-shat naman', a hundredfold salutation. He wrote that Upadhyay never saw politics as a route to power, but as a means of serving society's most marginalised — and pledged that his government continues to work to carry development and opportunity to the very last rung of the social ladder.

The man who shaped a party's conscience

Pandit Deendayal Upadhyay founded the Bharatiya Jana Sangh in 1951, building an organisation rooted in cultural nationalism and a sharp critique of both Western capitalism and Soviet Marxism. His landmark lectures of 1965 laid out Integral Humanism — the idea that political economy must be anchored in the holistic development of the human being, not abstract state machinery or market forces. When the Bharatiya Janata Party was formally constituted in 1980, it adopted Integral Humanism as its official guiding philosophy, a lineage it has carried ever since.

His second enduring contribution — Antyodaya, or 'rise of the last person' — became the rhetorical and programmatic touchstone for welfare policy across BJP-led governments. The Antyodaya Anna Yojana, launched in 2000 by an NDA government at the Centre, took its name directly from this concept, extending food security to the country's poorest households. The philosophical thread runs straight from Upadhyay's lectures to contemporary scheme design.

How Chhattisgarh reads Antyodaya today

For CM Sai, the tribute is more than ceremonial calendar-keeping. BJP-ruled states have consistently framed welfare delivery — in housing, nutrition, and livelihood programmes — within the Antyodaya vocabulary, explicitly linking current spending to the party's foundational ideology rather than short-term electoral cycles. Sai's post fits squarely into that pattern, signalling to party workers and the broader public that programmes targeting rural communities and the poorest households in Chhattisgarh draw their mandate from this older intellectual tradition.

Upadhyay's life, as CM Sai noted, was entirely dedicated to 'rashtraseeva, sangathan aur Bhartiya jeevan-mulyon' — national service, organisation, and Indian life-values. That three-part formulation — service, structure, culture — is the architecture BJP leaders return to on days like this, using the Jayanti not only as an occasion for remembrance but as a moment to re-state governing intent.

The ideas of a man who died in 1968 continue to shape budget speeches, scheme guidelines, and the political grammar of one of India's largest ruling parties. That kind of ideological longevity is rare — and worth understanding.