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The chief priest of Bageshwar Dham, Dhirendra Krishna Shastri, has emerged as a significant figure whose political clout extends well beyond his home state of Madhya Pradesh.
On Sunday, in a crowning glory for Shastri, Prime Minister Narendra Modi arrived at Bageshwar Dham to lay the foundation stone for the Bageshwar Dham Medical and Science Research Institute, a landmark project spearheaded by Shastri. A testament to Shastri’s expanding clout was Modi referring to him as a “younger brother”.
Located in Chhatarpur in the Bundelkhand region of Madhya Pradesh, Bageshwar Dham, under Shastri’s leadership, has grown into a sprawling religious complex, drawing lakhs of devotees. Here, Shastri claims to possess supernatural abilities, such as reading devotees’ minds and solving their problems without being told their issues.
Shastri’s political stand too has evolved significantly. Initially, his discourses, devoid of overt political messaging, focused on devotion to Hanuman and personal problem-solving. However, over the past two years, Shastri has embraced a hardline Hindutva stance, branding himself a “Hindu Rashtra yodha (warrior for a Hindu nation)”. He has called for India to be declared a Hindu nation, urged Hindus to unite against conversions, and made provocative statements like comparing unveiled women to “vacant plots”.
Leaders from both the Congress and BJP have tried to court Shastri, whose influence is seen to be significant in Madhya Pradesh’s Bundelkhand region, Bihar, Uttar Pradesh and Jharkhand. With the Congress struggling, courting shastri has proven to be more beneficial for the BJP.
Incidentally, it was the patronage of former Congress MLA from Chhatarpur Alok Chaturvedi that gave Shastri his first significant break. Then, among the earliest high-profile leaders to court Shastri was former Madhya Pradesh Chief Minister and state Congress chief Kamal Nath, reflecting the party’s strategic pivot toward “soft Hindutva” ahead of the 2023 Assembly elections.
Nath, accompanied by Chaturvedi, first met Shastri on February 13, 2023, at Bageshwar Dham. This visit was seen as an attempt to neutralise the BJP’s narrative of terming the Congress as “anti-Hindu,” especially after Nath’s earlier efforts to project a devout image, such as installing a 101-foot Hanuman statue in Chhindwara.
Later, Nath escalated his outreach by hosting Shastri for a three-day Hanuman Katha event in Chhindwara from August 5-7, 2023, where his son, Nakul Nath, a Congress MP, personally welcomed Shastri with an aarti.
However, the BJP swept the November 17, 2023, Assembly polls, winning 163 of the state’s 230 seats while the Congress managed to win only 66. The BJP’s entrenched Hindutva narrative and schemes like Ladli Behna Yojana seemingly outmaneuvered the Congress’s efforts.
Current Union Agriculture Minister and then Madhya Pradesh CM Shivraj Singh Chouhan also embraced Shastri as a part of the BJP’s strategy to consolidate Hindu votes in the 2023 elections. Chouhan visited Bageshwar Dham on February 15, 2023, along with state BJP chief V D Sharma, who hails from Bundelkhand, for a mass marriage event.
The Chouhan-led BJP government further solidified this alliance by granting Shastri Y-category security in May 2023. “Shastri’s messaging of uniting Hindus and pushing ‘ghar wapsi’ dovetailed with Chouhan’s pro-Hindutva governance, including cow protection and temple development initiatives. It also showed up divisions in the Congress over Nath courting him,” a BJP leader said, adding that apart from the BJP government’s popular schemes, Shastri’s popularity in Bundelkhand, particularly among younger voters and devotees in rural constituencies, helped the party return to power.
While Chouhan has moved to the Centre as Union minister, his close aide and Madhya Pradesh Home Minister Narottam Mishra remains a frequent visitor to Bageshwar Dham and is a vocal defender of Shastri. Known as “Babbar Sher (lion)” in Shastri’s circles, Mishra has attended Shastri’s well-attended events and leveraged his influence in the Datia region, part of the Gwalior-Chambal belt. Ironically though, in the 2023 Assembly elections, Mishra had lost the Datia to the Congress’s Avadhesh Nayak by 7,822 votes, a defeat attributed mainly to local anti-incumbency and factionalism within the BJP.
In Chhattisgarh too, Shastri got a royal welcome during his visit to Raipur in January 2023, months ahead of the Assembly elections, with former Chief Minister and BJP leader Raman Singh courting him.
Singh attended Shastri’s divya durbar, alongside Governor Anusuiya Uikey, who felicitated him at Raj Bhavan. Shastri’s push against religious conversions— a BJP poll plank— resonated in a state with a significant tribal population and rising Hindutva rhetoric. His events drew lakhs of people, amplifying the BJP’s campaign against Congress Chief Minister Bhupesh Baghel, who dismissed Shastri’s “miracles” as theatrics.
Now, it is in the upcoming Bihar elections that the BJP hopes Shastri’s appeal to boost it among rural voters. Union Minister Giriraj Singh, a firebrand BJP leader from Bihar, welcomed Shastri during his five-day Patna visit in May 2023, ahead of last year’s Lok Sabha elections, with the BJP’s North East Delhi MP, Manoj Tiwari, who hails from Bihar, personally driving Shastri from the airport.
Shastri’s events also drew attendees from neighboring Uttar Pradesh and Jharkhand, amplifying his regional influence.
RJD leaders, including Tejashwi Yadav, have criticised Shastri’s “Hindu Rashtra” rhetoric as a BJP ploy to communalise Bihar’s politics.
