BJP banks on the late Ghar Wapasi campaigner, Judeo, to revive fortunes in Chhattisgarh

The sculptor with the late BJP leader’s statue. (Express photo)

The unveiling of the statue on Monday, nine years after his demise on August 14, 2013, comes at a time when the BJP is desperate to win back power in the minerals-rich state.

The party hopes the 12-ft statue, sculpted by Padma awardee Ram V. Sutar, whose work includes the Statue of Unity of Sardar Patel in Gujarat, will help both the party and the family revive the late Judeo’s influence in the region.

The party, which had come to power for three consecutive terms since the first election in 2003, lost power to the Congress in the 2018 election, in which it faced a humiliating defeat – it got only 15 seats in the 90-member Assembly.

Surguja division has 14 seats, while Bilaspur has 24. In 2013, the BJP won seven in Surguja and 12 in Bilaspur, but it drew a blank in 2018 in Surguja and could win only 4 in Bilaspur.

As the BJP initiates aggressive campaigns to win back its tribal support in Chhattisgarh — and Madhya Pradesh, from which it was carved out in 2000 — Judeo is a natural choice to try revive its legacy, party sources said. Party leaders had admitted that the BJP support base among the STs and SCs had been eroding, largely due to the absence of influential leaders from, as well as poor representation of these communities in its organisational posts.

Judeo’s son Prabal Pratap, 43, who quit his job in the US and returned to Jashpur to take over his then-ailing father’s Ghar Wapsi campaign, said the statue was a plan born out of the demands of the tribals in the region since his father’s death. “In 2013, when then chief minister Raman Singh was addressing the tribal people in the shradhanjali sabha of my father, the locals had made a demand – two of his statues should be erected in Jashpur and Kunkuri. Although the work was begun, it got delayed after the Congress government came to power. It was expected to be unveiled at a function during the first break during the Covid pandemic. But the breakout of Omicron delayed it further,” Prabhal told The Indian Express.

A Lok Sabha MP from the region, Judeo ran the Ghar Wapsi campaign to “bring back” tribals who, he alleged, had been converted forcibly by Christian missionaries, to Hinduism. In the early 2000s, his Ghar Wapsi programmes, in which Judeo — known as Maharaj as he was the scion of the Jashpur royal family — used to wash the feet of tribals to welcome them “back home” (into the Hindu faith).

His popularity had helped the BJP sweep polls in at least seven Assembly constituencies in north Chhattisgarh.

While the BJP failed to keep up his legacy, his own family faced a series of tragedies – his two sons died – elder son Shatrunjay Sing Judeo in 2012, and Yudhvir Singh Judev, an MLA, in 2021 at the age of 39. Internal strife in the BJP’s state unit and the family tragedies made a deep dent into Judeo’s political legacy, said BJP sources.

Prabal Pratap Singh, who spent 12 years in the US, is now aggressively continuing his father’s anti-conversion campaign, and is trying to inherit his father’s political legacy.

“Its big that the Sarsanghchalakji is going to be here to unveil my father’s statue. Along with me, tribals in this region also feel honoured,” Prabhal said. “Dilip Singh Judeoji is remembered with reverence and gratitude as a leader who initiated and personally conducted the Ghar Wapsi movement for tribals. His contribution is no less than a civilisational rescue,” claimed Prabhal.