Prime Minister Narendra Modi is all set to unveil a massive 72-feet statue of Pandit Deen Dayal Upadhyay, the co-founder of BJP’s predecessor Bharatiya Jana Sangh, in the national capital on Monday. The brass statue will be erected at a park named after the leader opposite BJP headquarters on Deen Dayal Upadhyaya Marg in Delhi.
Monday is the birth anniversary of Deen Dayal Upadhyay who had drafted the Jan Sangh’s political doctrine.
Work on the statue has been progressing for few months now. A proponent of Hindutva who started a monthly publication named Rashtra Dharma in 1940, Upadhyay’s statue would show him in his quintessential attire – kurta, dhoti and a sleeveless jacket.
Security was beefed up at the park over the weekend with a last-minute beautification drive on. Sources said the PM will unveil the statue at 7pm.
In 2020, PM Modi had unveiled a 63-feet statue of Deen Dayal Upadhyay in his Lok Sabha constituency Varanasi. The ‘pancha loha’ statue was so far the tallest statue of the BJP ideologue in the country, but would be surpassed by the Delhi installation on Monday.
Over 200 artisans had worked for almost a year to complete the statue in Varanasi and around 30 Odisha craftsmen and artists had worked on the project. Similar details of the Delhi statue are yet to be known.
Along with Shyama Prasad Mookherjee, Pandit Deen Dayal Upadhyaya occupies an important position in BJP’s history.
Born in 1916 in Mathura, Upadhyaya was an RSS functionary and one of the founding members of the Jan Sangh. He had launched Panchjanya in 1948 which continues to be the Sangh mouthpiece today.
Upadhyaya’s philosophy of “integral humanism” and antyodaya (uplifting the most deprived) has been cited by PM Modi as a guiding principle for his government’s welfare measures.
In internal meetings, Amit Shah and JP Nadda have cited Upadhyaya’s example to show how a foot soldier can rise to become the party president. “Finally came the red letter day in the annals of the Jan Sangh when this utterly unassuming leader of the party was raised to the high position of President in the year 1968,” is how the BJP records describe Upadhyaya’s journey to the top post.
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