Parivar wars: A no-holds-barred battle between the BJP & RSS?

On a flight from Lucknow to Delhi after polling was over for the last phase of the 2014 Lok Sabha polls, I found an interesting co-passenger in Indresh Kumar, a senior RSS leader. I asked him what were his expectations from the government if the BJP led by Narendra Modi were to win the elections.

Pat came the answer: “Get a closure report in all cases being termed Hindu terror cases.” Indresh himself was an accused in the Ajmer blast case along with Swami Aseemanand and Sunil Joshi, an RSS pracharak from Madhya Pradesh. Modi did oblige his RSS brethren.

Ten years later, I was surprised to read Indresh Kumar’s statement on Modi: “Lord Ram has punished the BJP for its arrogance by limiting its tally to 240 (32 short of the majority).”

The two instances sum up the change the relationship between the BJP and its mother organisation the RSS has undergone this past decade. The RSS, which worked tirelessly to bring the BJP to power, is now blaming it for all that is wrong with politics.

It’s now a no-holds-barred battle between the two, though still not out in the open. Instead, the battle is being fought through proxies and symbols. The BJP feels like a tiger cub that has come of age and no longer needs the help of its mother. The RSS feels it has invested too much in the BJP to let go of its grip, and has the cub between its teeth.

A symbiotic relationship that soured RSS chief Mohan Bhagwat played an active role in Modi’s ascension, first as the BJP’s campaign committee chief and then as prime ministerial candidate in 2013–14. But Modi has never had a one-on-one meeting with Bhagwat in the last 10 years.

The latter’s request for such a meeting on the sidelines of the Ram Mandir inauguration in Ayodhya was spurned by Modi. The very same symbiotic relationship between the two organisations that helped them grow with abandon has now become a vexed (and vexing) problem to be sorted out between them. According to a BJP leader close to the top leadership, “It’s a do-or-die battle for the two leaders. There is no middle ground left.”

The feel-bad factors Everyone knows that the RSS never wanted a Modi-centric campaign. It wanted a campaign focused on the government’s achievements and future plans. Yet, BJP leaders went ahead with its ‘Modi’s Guarantee’ campaign. This was why the RSS pulled back slightly after the first phase of polling.

However, it did not voice its concern immediately, preferring rather to wait for the elections. Sensing the RSS’s mood, BJP president J.P. Nadda made the issue public, with the statement, “Initially, the BJP was not strong enough, that’s why we leaned on the RSS. But now the BJP has outgrown the RSS and no longer needs its help in running the organisation or contesting elections.”

Post-elections, the RSS has been paying back the BJP in the same coin. When Bhagwat said, “a true RSS worker is never arrogant”, everyone knew it was targeted at Modi. RSS think tank member Ratan Sharda’s article in the Sangh mouthpiece Organiser attacked Modi for keeping the campaign centred around him. The BJP lost because of over-confidence (in Modi).

Bhagwat’s salvo

In his address to RSS workers in Jharkhand’s Dumka in early July, Bhagwat unsheathed his claws: “There is no end to development, be it internal or external. There are men who haven’t even learnt how to be human, who want to become Superman. But they don’t stop there, they want to become demigods. But then, God is greater, so they want to be God himself. And then God says, I’m all-encompassing (Vishwaroop).”

For those with short memories, PM Modi had said in the run-up to the recently concluded elections, “As long as my mother was alive, I had believed that perhaps my birth was a biological one… But after her death, I’m convinced that God has sent me here.”

If anybody had any doubts as to the target of Bhagwat’s salvo, Congress leader Jairam Ramesh removed all ambiguity: “I am sure the self-proclaimed non-biological prime minister would by now have come to know of the latest Agni missile fired by Nagpur (RSS headquarters) at Lok Kalyan Marg (the PM’s residence).”

Vertical split possible?

The RSS has regularly been drafting its cadre to its ancillaries, including the BJP. Each minister, MP and MLA essentially has one RSS member on his/her staff.

The RSS has been managing the BJP’s organisation through its secretaries: Suresh Soni (during Atal Bihari Vajpayee’s time), Ram Lal, Krishna Gopal and Arun Kumar (during Modi’s era). The same system is in place all across, from state to district headquarters, making workers of the two organisations mix like sugar in water. So, can the RSS pull out all its cadre from the BJP, abruptly or even gradually?

Obviously not. Even if it issues such a clarion call, a large number of its cadre might prefer to stay back in the political outfit. RSS leaders like Arun Kumar and Suresh Soni are known to be sympathetic towards Modi. Soni has been advising Modi on major political decisions taken by the Centre over the last 10 years. He is the architect of the BJP’s pro-OBC stance in the selection of candidates and appointments to key positions in the government.

Diminishing returns

Irrespective of the fracas, a number of state units of both organisations have been collaborating with each other. The Jharkhand RSS unit has promised the BJP to support its campaign for Assembly elections.

Assuming that it can’t control its entire cadre and an open fight with the BJP might vertically split the 99-yearold organisation, the RSS leadership is gradually chipping away at BJP leadership, with the aim of discrediting it as arrogant and insincere.

The BJP has realised this is a case of diminishing returns. Its tally in the Lok Sabha has come down from 302 to 240. In the Uttar Pradesh, MP, Chhattisgarh and Rajasthan Assembly elections, it managed to win with far narrower margins than before.

The party lost Karnataka and Telangana. In the next few months, it faces Assembly elections in Maharashtra, Haryana, Jharkhand and Jammu & Kashmir. It is not comfortably placed in any of these states.

Bid to placate RSS

And that explains why the BJP is trying to placate the RSS. Earlier this month, the Centre quietly revoked a 58-year-old government order prohibiting government employees from participating in RSS shakhas on the grounds of it not being a banned organisation, rather an apolitical one. An argument that is as flimsy as it sounds.

The timing of the decision raised several questions. It could have been revoked any time during the last 10 years. The announcement could even have been made to commemorate its centenary celebrations next year. Why now, when relations between the two are strained to breaking point? There can be only one reason: to pour oil on troubled waters.

The 18-year itch

This is not the first time that the RSS has had strained relations with the BJP. The two organisations worked as two poles during Vajpayee’s six years as PM. So much so that RSS functionaries called Yashwant Sinha a destructionist rather than an economist, an ‘anarth mantri’ (calamitous minister) instead of ‘arth mantri’ (finance minister) and Vajpayee the “worst-ever PM of India”.

They opposed India’s economic liberalisation, privatisation of PSUs and even overtures to Pakistan. The VHP defiantly took out a Ram Shila Pujan Yatra in Ayodhya.

But the then RSS chief K.S. Sudarshan was much more apolitical and moderate than Mohan Bhagwat. He never tried to destabilise the Vajpayee government, waiting rather for it to crumble under the weight of its own follies.

The real churn began after the fall of the Vajpayee government in 2004. At a meeting in Chitrakoot in 2006, the RSS top brass seriously considered abandoning the BJP as it had gone rogue and propping up a new political organisation instead which would follow RSS ideals to the T.

That proposal was shot down because of the time it would take. Instead, it was decided to reform the BJP and bring it back on the RSS ideological track. It took almost seven years to bring the BJP back to power. What benefits it has reaped are yet to be calculated.

The UP thorn in their side

The leadership issue in Uttar Pradesh is another thorny issue. The RSS, after a thumping victory in the 2017 UP Assembly polls had forced the Modi–Shah duo to choose Yogi Adityanath as chief minister over Modi’s choice (Manoj Sinha). The Sangh needed another Hindutva mascot besides Modi. But as Yogi’s popularity grew across the country, so did the schism between the two organisations.

The Modi–Shah team has left no stone unturned during the past seven years to make Yogi’s road as difficult as they could. This included encouraging the two deputy CMs, Keshav Maurya and Brijesh Pathak, to boycott meetings chaired by the CM. This was gross indiscipline, yet the party abstained from taking action.

Can the Gujarat model be used in UP?

Yogi has put his foot down. He won’t vacate his chair without a fight. The BJP is working on various formulae to ease him out without too much damage. One of the ways is replicating the ‘Gujarat Model’ wherein the entire ministry including the chief minister and party organisation was changed in one go.

The BJP may replace Yogi, Pathak, Maurya and state president Bhupendra Chaudhary with completely new and unknown faces as they have already done in Rajasthan, Odisha, Chhattisgarh, Haryana, Gujarat and Madhya Pradesh. One can only keep one’s fingers crossed. And wait for Yogi and the RSS’s response to such a decision, if and when it’s taken.