Tensions between the BJP and RSS leaderships symbolise the latter’s attempts to establish supremacy over a democratically elected government, a no-no in any democracy
Prime Minster Narendra Modi and RSS chief Mohan Bhagwat. Pic/X
A barely concealed glee has been the predominant response on two occasions Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh chief Mohan Bhagwat took potshots at Prime Minister Narendra Modi. Soon after the 2024 Lok Sabha election results were announced, Bhagwat said a true sevak does not have arrogance—the remark was widely construed as his criticism of Modi’s personality. More recently, the RSS chief quipped, “We should not consider ourselves as God.” He seemed to be taking a crack at Modi, who, during the election campaign, claimed, “I am convinced that God has sent me. This energy [that I have] could not be from my biological body.”
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The glee over Bhagwat’s potshots arises because of the feeling that a powerful voice from inside the Sangh Parivar, comprising the RSS and its 36 affiliates, including the Bharatiya Janata Party, has challenged Modi’s perceived authoritarianism and cultish leadership. But this challenge is not ideological for, except for making occasional ambiguous remarks, Bhagwat has seldom sought to bridge the social chasm Hindutva has been widening every passing day.
Bhagwat’s remarks are better comprehended through the prism of the RSS, with no constitutional status, trying to establish its supremacy over a democratically elected government led by its own affiliate. This tussle for supremacy is, in a way, inevitable because of the RSS leadership structure. Walter K Andersen and Sridhar D Damle write, in The Brotherhood in Saffron, that senior RSS figures gathered in Nagpur, in November 1929, and decided their organisation will have one sarsanghchalak, or supreme guide, who would choose all its office-bearers and supervise all its activities. The sarsanghchalak is whom we know as the RSS chief.
Andersen and Damle quote MS Golwalkar, the second RSS chief, saying the office of the sarsanghchalak “was like the throne of Vikramaditya [a Hindu king renowned for virtue, justice and valour]. Even a shepherd boy sitting on it would say nothing but right, and do nothing but right.” The sarsanghchalak is infallible; he is to be obeyed as the guru was in the imagined Indian tradition, without reservation or question.
An alternative source of authority within the Sangh Parivar emerged with the BJP acquiring electoral successes. To what extent were its leaders to be autonomous of the RSS? Was even its prime minister, deriving power from the Constitution, expected to obey the sarsanghchalak, a non-constitutional authority? These questions came to the fore in 1999, when then RSS chief K S Sudarshan vetoed Prime Minister A B Vajpayee’s decision to assign the finance ministry to Jaswant Singh. Vajpayee did not defy Sudarshan.
In 2005, BJP president, L K Advani, on a tour of Pakistan, hailed MA Jinnah as secular. The RSS saw Advani’s characterisation of Pakistan’s founder as ideologically sacrilegious and mounted pressure on him to resign. Advani complied, but not before noting that “impression had gained ground” that the BJP could take no decision without the RSS’s approval. “This perception…will do no good either to the party or to the RSS,” Advani said.
Tension between the BJP and RSS leaderships arose yet again before the 2014 Lok Sabha elections. According to journalist Dhirendra Jha’s story, Bhagwat invited Modi to come to the RSS headquarters in Nagpur to discuss the BJP’s election strategy. Modi said Bhagwat should instead visit Ahmedabad for a meeting with him. Bhagwat agreed, and proposed the RSS office as the venue for their meeting. No, Modi responded. They ultimately met elsewhere.
When Bhagwat began to give suggestions regarding the election campaign, Jha says Modi cut in, “Mohanji, do remember… Had I not obeyed the RSS order to shift to the BJP, I might have been sitting in the position where you are today.” Modi brusquely challenged the notion that the sarsanghchalak is a paragon of wisdom.
Yet, in September 2015, Modi and his ministers complied with the RSS’s order to make presentations about their ministries to an RSS committee, which even made policy suggestions. The RSS may have established its supremacy over Modi, yet it overturned the cardinal democratic principle of governments being accountable
to Parliament.
Thereafter, though, the RSS refrained from demonstrating its supremacy over the Modi government. One reason is that the government has implemented the RSS’s pet Hindutva projects. Another reason is Modi repeatedly proving his popularity by notching electoral successes.
Bhagwat has admonished Modi at precisely the time he has emerged bruised from the 2024 Lok Sabha elections. But the censuring of Modi will neither dilute the Hindutva ideology nor diminish the growing abrasiveness of our politics. The guru model of the RSS leadership wires BJP leaders to unquestioningly follow the sarsanghchalak and his political line. And they, in turn expect the same from their subordinates, even from those outside their fold.
Indeed, BJP leaders groomed in the RSS stable tend to become intolerant of dissent. Even Vajpayee, heading a coalition government, ordered raids on the proprietor of Outlook magazine for featuring a story on the influence of business establishments over the Prime Minister’s office. The Vajpayees and the Modis may come and go, but the RSS and its sarsanghchalak symbolise enduring quests extra-constitutional in nature, an alarming prospect forgotten in the glee over Bhagwat’s barbs against Modi.
The writer is a senior journalist and author of Bhima Koregaon: Challenging Caste
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