Modi Heaps Birthday Praise on Bhagwat, But is Sanjay Joshi Holding Up Decision of Next BJP Chief?

New Delhi: It no longer comes as a surprise to most that the Bharatiya Janata Party and its ideological parent, the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh, have been locked in a power tussle over the choice of next BJP president.

However, Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s elaborate tribute to sarsanghchalak Mohan Bhagwat on his birthday (September 11, 2025) struck a different note – one of kinship, not discord. Modi not only recalled Bhagwat’s lifelong commitment to the RSS, but also showcased his personal side. One got to know that Bhagwat can play a range of musical instruments, and that he is a tremendous listener, according to the prime minister.

Had it not been a birthday note, Modi’s tribute could have very well been a speech made at a lifetime achievement award ceremony for Bhagwat. After all, the tribute written by Modi came on Bhagwat’s 75th birth anniversary – a number that has long been an unofficial cut-off for retirement in the Sangh parivar until Bhagwat recently dismissed such a claim.

“I never said I will retire or someone should retire at 75. We are swayamsevak (volunteers), we are given a job and we can’t say no to it. It’s not allowed in the Sangh. I will work till the time this organisation wants me to work,” Bhagwat recently remarked at an event.

Modi’s outreach to Bhagwat comes at a time when the relationship between the two leaders has been rather strained over a range of differences around the prime minister’s centralised style of functioning. The friction has never been as apparent as in the run-up to the inordinately delayed election of a new BJP president.

Recently, at an event marking the centenary celebrations of the RSS, when the Bhagwat was asked about this delay, he curtly responded, “If we were deciding, would it have taken so long?”

“We don’t decide; we don’t want to decide. Take your time,” the RSS chief said, while admitting that it “offers suggestions” but “doesn’t interfere in governance and political appointments”.

“There might be some struggle…but there is no quarrel,” he said, adding that “objectives” of both the BJP and RSS are in sync and there was no “manbhed (difference of opinion)”.

Although his remark was meant to dismiss the widespread assumption that the RSS had a prominent role in selecting the BJP president, history indicates otherwise. Several accounts have conclusively pointed at the fact that the RSS’s approval for the party president’s position has not merely been a formality but almost an eligibility criterion. Remember, how the RSS paradropped Nitin Gadkari, a little-known political figure outside Nagpur, as the party president in 2009, upsetting many hopefuls in the saffron party’s central leadership.

Re-emergence of RSS's political role

The RSS came to the BJP’s rescue a few months ago when it intervened in the latter’s organisational polls in several states. It was able to bypass the ongoing factionalism in several regional units by elevating senior but largely unambitious RSS leaders to take charge as state chiefs. Severe infighting in various regional units had prevented the party from conducting organisational polls – so much so that it has still not been able to choose new state heads in its strongholds like Uttar Pradesh and Gujarat.

Factionalism delayed organisational polls in the party to such an extent that the BJP could not elect a minimum number of state presidents out of its 36 state units to fulfil the requirements of an electoral college needed to elect a new party president.

Now that the party has chiefs in more than 18 state units, after struggling for over a year and thanks to the RSS, it has fulfilled the requirements of an electoral college that can choose or elect a new party president. Yet, it has still failed to do so.

Outgoing party president J.P. Nadda’s term ended in January 2024, and he has been given multiple extensions since then in light of the party’s inability to elect his replacement. The latest round of delay in choosing a new president is because of a lack of consensus between the BJP (read Modi and Amit Shah) and the RSS that has reportedly been insistent on having a more independent leader who can steer the show, instead of being a “rubber-stamp” president who merely follows Modi-Shah’s diktats.

The Sanjay Joshi dilemma

Sources close to the RSS told The Wire that the already volatile situation in the Sangh parivar plummeted even further when the RSS proposed the name of Sanjay Joshi as Nadda’s replacement. Joshi is a long-time rival of Modi's in the party. The former general secretary (organisation) was forced to back down from public eye when an apparent fake video showing him in a sexual act surfaced in 2005, soon after Modi’s dislike towards him was widely reported.

Yet, he remained politically active as part of BJP’s executive until 2012 when Modi, then the Gujarat chief minister and soon-to-be prime ministerial nominee, threatened BJP president Gadkari that Modi would boycott the BJP’s national executive meeting unless Joshi resigned. Modi had his way. Joshi resigned and Modi announced his participation in the meeting within two hours of his exit. Since then, Modi has scuttled every attempt by the RSS to include Joshi in important positions within the BJP.

The RSS itself was reduced to a smaller figure in front of the larger-than-life personalities of Modi and Shah. Its leaders have occasionally spoken directly or hinted at the growing “congressification” of the BJP under the duo's leadership. The Modi cult and his political aura had become a liability for RSS’s century-old values of simplicity, minimalism and asceticism.

Its significance faded in front of Modi’s popular appeal. But after the 2024 Lok Sabha elections in which the RSS played a subdued role (a possible fallout of Nadda’s May 2024 remark that the BJP can now win elections without the support of RSS), its leaders have openly asserted its values on multiple platforms, all of which were seen as digs at the personality-oriented politics of the BJP in current times.

The fissures between the two parallel leaderships were there to see for all, in spite of the fact that both repeatedly denied any such friction.

The differences appear to be more out in the open now, with the RSS insisting on having an independent voice at the top of the BJP. “RSS is stuck on Joshi’s name. He will surely be inducted again as a national general secretary, if not the president,” an old RSS activist told The Wire.

Joshi is seen as an introvert who still prefers travelling in sleeper class over air-conditioned bogies in trains, has never been seen splurging on material goods, and has remained a committed Sangh parivar activist and an organiser non-pareil, widely respected by Sangh parivar’s rank and file. The RSS proposing his name can be seen as directly aimed at Modi, whose perceived personality is starkly opposite to that of Joshi’s.

Nonetheless, those who are close to the RSS believe strongly that Nadda’s replacement should be one who is deeply rooted in the RSS and its values. Apparently, the RSS also favoured Shivraj Singh Chouhan, the former chief minister of Madhya Pradesh and the serving agriculture minister, as one of the leaders who could fulfil the role. However, Chouhan, who recently met Bhagwat in Nagpur and is considered close to veteran RSS pracharak Suresh Soni, appears to have backed out of the race. He told the media recently that he was quite content in his current role as a minister under the leadership of Modi.

Other names that are circulating as the next BJP president include the likes of Dharmendra Pradhan, who is known for his closeness with the sarkaryavah or RSS’s number two Dattatreya Hosabale, and Bhupendra Yadav, who rose through the ranks with a strong RSS background. However, both are ministers in Modi’s cabinet and have found their places as Modi-Shah’s trusted aides.

The vice-presidential elections have bought the BJP some time to evade the implosion in the Sangh parivar. However, it is likely to choose a leader ahead of the Bihar elections. The RSS favours one of its own, who could tide over growing cultism in the BJP and assume an independent, or defiant if required, position, while also thinking of someone who could probably be seen as Modi’s successor. Both Shah and Adityanath have never been in the good books of the RSS, despite having a good working relationship.

The choice of the BJP president is turning out to be a good-old familial fight. Modi has only had it his way ever since he became the prime minister. On the other hand, with Modi cut to size in the last elections, there has never been a better time when the RSS can put a stamp of its own significance in the political scheme of things. Consensus doesn’t seem to be on cards. It’s a matter of time before one upstages the other.

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