Deendayal Upadhyaya – The thinker who gave Bharat Antyodaya and Integral Humanism

September 25 marks the birth anniversary of Pandit Deendayal Upadhyaya – a philosopher, organiser, and nation-builder whose ideas continue to animate the moral soul of Bharat. In an age when the Indian elite was obsessed with the binaries of capitalism and socialism, Upadhyaya gave Bharat a framework rooted in its own civilisational wisdom – Integral humanism. Alongside, he offered a moral compass for governance – Antyodaya.

Indian answer to imported ideologies

The Nehruvian state sought to borrow its dreams from the West – five-year plans from Moscow, industrial models from London etc. For Pandit Deendayal, this was a dangerous transplant. He argued that India, with its unique spiritual heritage and cultural ethos, could not afford to be a pale imitation of others. What we needed was an