How the BJP Wins by Jha & Prashant

Author:Jha & Prashant [Jha & Prashant]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Juggernaut
Published: 2020-06-03T00:00:00+00:00

Sangh: Source, Supplement, Shadow

The Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh remains the source, the supplement and the shadow – contributing to the BJP’s phenomenal electoral success, shaping it, but also getting shaped in the process.

The Sangh is the BJP’s ideological parent. It remains the ‘alma mater’ of almost its entire leadership and cadre base, the home they can always turn to.

Yet it is not a one-way street. Narendra Modi’s personal popularity, the BJP’s transition to becoming an inclusive Hindu party and its national success altered equations between the parent and its offshoot.

The Sangh, with its strong emphasis on organization, has a natural aversion for any ‘personality cult’ and thus to a single strong leader such as Modi. Its attitude towards caste is more cautious than that of the party. Not long ago the RSS was the organization with a wider national footprint, and the BJP was an offshoot confined to specific regions. Today, the BJP is on its way to becoming a pan-Indian outfit, outstripping the Sangh’s reach and spread. This has meant that the Sangh plays the role of a supplement in electoral battles.

These contradictions on leadership, issues and election management have persisted between the RSS and the BJP. They have not got out of hand for three broad reasons – Narendra Modi’s personal dynamic with Mohan Bhagwat, ideological convergence and regular coordination.

***

Narendra Modi is the Sangh. He is, as the commentator Ashok Malik once put it, its most distinguished alumnus. It was the Sangh that deployed him to the BJP, as the organization secretary of Gujarat in the late 1980s. Modi owes his worldview, his networks, his political life and his ethos to the Sangh. Anyone who treats Modi as completely distinct from the Sangh does justice neither to Modi nor to the Sangh.

Yet Modi is not just the Sangh. He has gone much beyond the Sangh and, at key moments, he has confronted, challenged and pushed the parent organization.

This was visible when Modi was the chief minister in Gujarat. After the 2002 riots – where Modi, either due to reluctance or incompetence, did precious little to rein in the Sangh affiliates attacking minorities – there was also a phase when the Modi–Sangh relationship dipped. A section of the Sangh leadership even encouraged splinter groups and leaders against Modi in elections; the VHP leader Praveen Togadia, the most hardline of the Hindutva leaders, was in open war with Modi. The conflict was about personalities and egos, about control and about the say the Sangh would have in direct governance.

As Modi grew in popularity and stature, media speculation hovered around whether the Sangh would accept him as the face of the BJP for the 2014 elections. There were voices of dissent, but his enormous appeal among the cadre – the pracharaks as well as swayamsevaks, the full-time cadre and the sympathizers, and the wider Sangh ecosystem – meant that Nagpur had to take into account voices from below. Mohan Bhagwat, and his number 2, Bhaiyaji Joshi, supported Modi, and even persuaded the reluctant L.

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