Will the RSS trump Modi?

Amitava Mukherjee

(amitavamukherjee253@gmail.com)

JP Nadda, the newly inducted Union Health minister and the likely outgoing
president of the BJP, cannot be called a good student of history. Just on the eve of the last parliamentary election, Nadda had publicly said: “In the beginning, we would have been less capable, smaller and needed the RSS. Today we have grown and we are capable. The BJP runs itself. That is the difference. RSS is a cultural and social organization and we are a political organization. It’s not the question of need. It’s an ideological front. We are managing our affairs in our own way. And that’s what political parties should do”.

Obviously Nadda had an incomplete view about the relationship between the BJP and the RSS. Or he may have an in-depth comprehension but never believed in the umbilical relation between the two organizations. Most of all, he did not keep in mind the fate of LKAdvani, the nonagenarian  Bhishma Pitamaha of the BJP.

You may become a big leader of the BJP, but never try to outgrow the mother organisation i.e. the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS). This is always the message from Nagpur where the RSS has its headquarters. LKAdvani once forgot this maxim. He went to Pakistan, visited Mohammed Ali Jinnah’s mausoleum in Karachi and praised the first Governor General of Pakistan in the visitors’ book. For this ‘sin’, the RSS got him removed from the post of the BJP president.

The Sangh always maintains an ambivalent attitude. It comes down heavily only when someone goes too far. It didn’t interfere when Atal Bihari Vajpayee was widely rumoured to be on the point of almost sacking Narendra Modi from the post of Gujarat chief minister in the wake of the Godhra riots. At that time it was LKAdvani who had saved Modi’s chair. But of late,the RSS was not comfortable with the personality cult that had been taking hold of the BJP. So large numbers of RSS cadres had become inactive during the electioneering of the last parliamentary election. It resulted in great electoral losses for the BJP in the Hindi belt.

So Mohan Bhagwat, the RSS Sarsanghchalak(chief), has decided to hit when the iron is hot. In an address to RSS entrants in Nagpur a few days back, Bhagwat indirectly cautioned the BJP government to adopt the right path. In his opinion, the Opposition is not the enemy of the government but only a competitor which presents the other viewpoint on any issue. He also laid stress on consensus. Was he giving a message to Narendra Modi by giving credence to the Opposition’s oft repeated charge that the Modi government always steamrolls its decisions? Most important, Bhagwat indirectly criticised the BJP government for failing to maintain peace in Manipur.

Nadda is totally wrong in his above mentioned estimation of the RSS. He has described the latter as a cultural organization, but the RSS has a political philosophy too. This was the reason behind the collapse of the Janata Party experiment of the 1970s as the Jan Sangh could not cut off its relations with the RSS because it derived its political philosophy from the Sangh. Secondly, the Sangh deputes many of its senior organizational men to man key positions in the BJP structure. RSS knows it very well that even if Narendra Modi wants to break free from Sangh shackles, he as Prime Minister of India will still not be able to do much.

RSS is not very comfortable with the growth of a personality cult around Modi. Therefore it off and on sends a subtle message that the BJP may not be indispensable to it. About four years back, the BJP consecutively lost power in Maharashtra, Delhi and Jharkhand, and one of the principal allegations against the saffron party for this debacle was mal-administration by BJP-led governments. Then came the rap from Suresh Bhaiyyaji Joshi, former general secretary of the RSS. Joshi asserted that the BJP was not synonymous with the Hindu community, a very significant statement if one judges it in juxtaposition with Narendra Modi and Amit Shah’s repeated attempts to equate the BJP with the Hindu community during the electioneering this time.

What Bhaiyyaji Joshi did not spell out at that time was the subtle warning that the RSS has other organisations to fall back upon to implement its ideologies. On an earlier occasion, in 1981, NanajiDeshmukh had also spoken in the same vein advocating support for the Congress.

So it will not be prudent to put the RSS in any straitjacket formula, a folly so long committed by politicians as well as some media-persons. It is a very complex organisation and it never allows its functionaries to go haywire and act according to their own whims and wishes. Previously, it did not hesitate to withdraw Ram Lal, whom it had deputed to the saffron party for holding the post of national general secretary (organisation), as he had become too close to the BJP bigwigs, and as under him, the fine ideological differences between the RSS and the BJP had become increasingly hazy.

BL Santhosh, the next man RSS deputed as the BJP’s national general secretary (organization) is reputed to be a tough, no-nonsense man totally committed to RSS ideology. He was from Karnataka and was also known to be a votary for probity in public life. He had once come down heavily on BS Yediyurappa, a former BJP chief of Karnataka, as the latter became embroiled in several controversies. So it is no wonder that Santhosh might have a hand behind the RSS’ subtle disapproval of some of Narendra Modi’s policies and programmes.

One thing is certain. In the days to come, Modi will find it increasingly difficult to cope with three fronts — a rejuvenated Opposition, coalition partners particularly the Janata Dal(United) and the Telugu Desam Party, and most of all the RSS. He can handle the situation if he changes his persona a bit. Here we are reminded of the widely quoted interview that Modi had given to a British author a few years back. At that time, the Prime Minister had asserted that people were looking for a ‘trusted name, not a party name’ and that people believed that ‘Modi was the only hope and wanted to see him win’.

The RSS is sure to disapprove such kind of thinking. It did so. We will have ample evidence of it if we go through the statements of Manmohan Vaidya, RSS joint general secretary, in 2019.

(The author is a senior journalist and commentator)