Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) sarsanghchalak Mohan Bhagwat, in his customary address to a workers’ camp at Nagpur, said the true sevaks perform public work without arrogance (ahankar), causing no harm to others. Describing the just concluded election contest as “bitter”, he said that “decorum was not maintained during the campaign”.
Bhagwat said: “The kind of things were said, the way the two sides castigated each other, the way no one cared about social divisions being created because of what was being done, and for no reasons the Sangh was drawn into it.… Untruths were spread with the use of technology… How will the country function like this?”
The RSS chief’s outburst came as a bomb shell to the BJP establishment. It opened a new front for the leadership, already beleaguered by a stronger opposition and determined allies like the Telugu Desam Party. Given the RSS hierarchy’s complex system, an outright retraction was impossible. More over, the BJP’s relationship with Nagpur had deteriorated during the past few years.
And barely 10 days after Bhagwat’s outbursts, RSS outfits like the ABVP, Shiksha Bachao Andolan of Dinanath Batra and another affiliate Shikshasanskriti Utthan Nyas came out to blame the BJP government for mishandling the NEET exam. They openly criticised the National Testing Agency.
RSS outfits have been lying low ever since Nagpur – under an deal with Narendra Modi and Amit Shah way back in 2015 – had told affiliated organisations to hold back from protesting.
Now, as the mood shifted, there were frantic moves to try and get a contradiction. But four days after, all that was available was a vague ‘clarification’ from an unnamed ‘senior source’ in the Nagpur establishment. It claimed the RSS chief’s remarks were directed at the karyakartas, and not in reference to Modi or the government.
A quick look at the original text reveals that facts were otherwise. Look back to what Bhagwat said: “Elections are an integral part of democracy. Because of this, there is a tendency …but one should not use untruths. People have been elected. They will sit in Parliament and run the country through consensus. Consensus is our tradition.”
There are repeated references in Bhagwat’s address to Parliament and the duty of the political parties to maintain decorum and maryada, something the ruling party has breached. All this cannot be aimed at the ordinary karyakartas.
The BJP managers also promptly acted to silence those who ventured to join Bhagwat’s harangue. Indresh Kumar, a member of the RSS national executive, was forced to revise his earlier statement. The new Odisha chief minister Mohan Charan Majhi, who criticised Indresh Kumar, was also told to keep
The RSS mouthpiece Organiser had also carried a more elaborate article shedding light on the strained relationship between the two organisations. Written by an old parivar hand, it said that the dedicated workers were spurned and the “new age social media aided, selfie-powered experts” took over.
The article says such people ignored RSS workers. Another complaint relates to even senior leaders being unable to meet BJP ministers and leaders. The cult creation had reached such a state that even senior leaders said ‘Modi is the candidate in all the 543 constituencies’. The Organiser article said even the party workers were led to believe they did not need to work as “Modiji’s aura” will bring them votes in all constituencies.
Clearly, BJP president J.P. Nadda’s remarks that the party was now stronger and could manage without the RSS’s help, hurt Nagpur. This explained the extreme arrogance with which the BJP bosses treated the RSS. And a prominent friendly commentator concluded that the both sides needed each other and Bhagwat’s outbursts amounted a ‘rap on the knuckles’ for Nagpur.
For years, there has been no meaningful interaction between the RSS and Modi-Shah establishment. The RSS hierarchy’s differences with the government have been growing ever since the regime began taking to unbridled Modi-centric build-up and ideas such as him being Hindu Hridaysamrat. In 2019, Bhagwat himself had asserted his right to warn the regime whenever it ‘flounced’.
In 2021, the BJP played down Bhagwat’s criticism of its Covid management. Before this came his first major outburst when he said aid both the administration and government had dropped guard on dealing with Covid.
The choice of a new party president in place of Nadda will give us some idea about the existing relationship between the two sides. In the good old days before the Modi era, the RSS was duly consulted on the choice of the president and members of the BJP’s central executive committee. Will Modi-Shah agree to revive this process?
There were rumours in Delhi that during his Gorakhpur visit, Bhagwat will meet Adityanath, who in turn will sound the former out about the need for a patch-up. However, contrary to the earlier reports, there was no meeting between the two.
The RSS will hold its prant pracharak’s meeting in Ranchi on July 11-13. Next will be the annual coordination meeting of the affiliated organisations at Palakkad from August 31. By then, we will know more about the kind of relationship that is developing.
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When the BJP was formed in April 1980, there was a broad consensus among the RSS and BJP leaders on three points: expand the new party by enlisting maximum number of ‘sikular’ Janata liberals, regular liaison with the RSS and prevent authoritarian trends in its hierarchy.
The last was a hangover of the anti-Emergency movement. With this in view, the RSS under the then sarsanghchalak Balasaheb Deoras decided to assign a few of its senior functionaries like Sunder Singh Bhandari to the nascent party as political ‘commissars’. They directly reported to Nagpur. In the initial stages, the system worked fairly well.
However, BJP’s first president Atal Bihari Vajpayee was the first to flout this arrangement. His policies alienated the RSS hierarchy to the extent that in the 1984 Lok Sabha elections, the party could win just two seats. L.K. Advani, who became president next, had a more or less smooth relationship with Nagpur.
After the BJP’s defeat in 2004 to which the RSS had immensely contributed, Advani also had a brush with Nagpur over his praise of Muhammad Ali Jinnah. He was forced to resign. And the RSS installed Rajnath Singh as the new party chief. Such was the control the RSS had on the BJP. Modi has snapped this umbilical cord and asserted his superiority. This has enraged the RSS.
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The relationship between the RSS and BJP leadership ebbed during Vajpayee’s second inning as prime minister from March 1998. Public statements and warnings against Vajpayee by RSS leaders continued throughout his rule. While Bhagwats’s accusations are inexplicit and needed explanations, RSS under its sarsanghchalak K.S. Sudarshan had raised specific issues with Vajpayee like FDI in industry, small units, privatisation and Ayodhya.
All this was 15 years before Modi clamped down on free and frank debates within and outside the party organisation. Look at the bitter debates within the the RSS parivar from 1991 on economic policies. Apart from Sudarshan, BMS founder Dattopant Thengadi, Murlimanohar Joshi, K.R. Malkani, K.L. Sharma, Govindacharya and Jai Dubadhi argued that economic nationalism was as important as ‘cultural’ nationalism.
After intense debates at two meetings of the BJP’s central executive committee, at Gandhinagar the party adopted its consensus economic policy called ‘BJP’s Swadeshi Alternative’. It defined the areas where FDI is acceptable and emphasised the need for protection of the public sector.
Soon after the Vajpayee government began its second innings in 1998, the RSS began taking objection to the breach of the Gandhinagar document by the NDA regime. Thengadi alleged that Vajpayee, who had by then emerged the corporate media’s reform icon, was taking orders from the ‘Chambers’. Even the mild mannered RSS boss Rajendra Singh had in January 2000 joined the protests.
RSS outfits took objection to the regime’s every move to impose reform. Sample the following.
- In February 2000, RSS outfits opposed Samkhya Vahini, a foreign controlled firm that would dominate India’s land-based communication network. Subsequently, it was scrapped.
- An RSS-led Agra seminar in June 2000 opposed plans for 100% FDI in all industries and privatisation of the PSU banks.
- At an RSS workers’ camp in Agra in October 2000, Sudarshan said Vajpayee’s economic policies were aimed at ‘pleasing foreigners’.
- In February 2001, Vajpayee announced he had put on hold the Balco-Sterlite deal. But the next day, he said it was not dropped.
- In October 2022, Sudarshan at an intellectuals’ meeting lambasted the government for ‘falling prey to the WTO’.
- Disinvestment minister Arun Shourie in January 2003 lamented that disinvestment dropped by Rs 12,000 crore due to the parivar’s objections.
There was a lull in the tension following an agreement with Vajpayee at a meeting at the prime minister’s residence. There were about a dozen such meetings with the prime minister, attended by Sudarshan and his men and senior cabinet ministers and BJP functionaries like president Jena Krishnamurthi and Kushabhau Thakre, on different issues.
Pressures by the Vishwa Hindu Parishad on issues like acquiring land for the Ayodhya temple and its ‘Chetna Yatra’ were other issues of differences. However, finally, in May 2003, Advani who by then became deputy prime minister, persuaded the RSS to agree to a ceasefire in view of the 2004 Lok Sabha polls.
P. Raman is a veteran journalist.
