In choosing to appear before the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh coordination meeting in Delhi on Friday, Prime Minister Narendra Modi has tacitly accepted that even if the Sangh does not hold the remote control to his government, it definitely possesses the jammer.
Nobody quite knows precisely how the Sangh operates the jammer, which is deployed every time an individual strays from the path it favours. Yet there is ample evidence of its capacity to freeze leaders in their tracks. Ask Bharatiya Janata Party leader LK Advani, who, much to the annoyance of the Sangh, gave a secular chit to Jinnah ten years ago and found his political career take a nosedive.
It is possible Modi became apprehensive of the jammer because Gujarat last fortnight rather mysteriously erupted with an agitation for caste reservations for the Patel community. For Modi, it was essential to quell the unrest at the earliest, not least because in his campaign speeches in Bihar he had showcased his home state as the model of his idea of governance and development. He needs to win Bihar to re-discover the momentum he lost following the BJP's drubbing in the Delhi assembly elections in February.
To achieve this, he needs the RSS to push its footsoldiers in Bihar to mobilise voters. Perhaps it isn’t a coincidence that at the peak of the Patel agitation, a statement was issued announcing that in addition to party president Amit Shah, the prime minister would also attend the RSS coordination committee meeting.
A stellar cast
The three-day meeting was a spectacle. From Home Minister Rajnath Singh to Defence Minister Manohar Parrikar to Human Resources Development Minister Smriti Irani, they were all there, explaining their policies, justifying their performances, displaying their allegiance to Hindutva. This was in sharp contradiction to the laboured insistence of the RSS that the coordination meeting was designed not to assess, but to interact with the government.
Modi, too, attended the meeting on September 4, which was Teachers’ Day. What is the RSS sarsanghchalak (head) if not a teacher? It, therefore, seemed befitting of Modi to request the assembled Sangh functionaries to repose their faith in him, that he would deliver on the promises made, and that he looked forward to marg darshan, or guidance, from them. The guide of the nation was seeking guidance from those who possess the jammer.
Indeed, Modi’s participation in the coordination meeting confirms the truth of the statement Union Minister Venkaiah Naidu made in Parliament last year. “You are proud of your parivar and we are proud of our parivar,” he declared. This pride, needless to say, arises from the BJP and Congress leaders accepting the superiority and exalted status of their respective parivars. For the Congress, it is the Nehru-Gandhi family; for the BJP, it is the RSS.
Their exalted status flows from the power they possess to endorse and promote politicians. And so to humour them, their egos must be massaged through periodic obeisance to them, to allow them the right to interfere in governance, to accept their power even though it does not flow from the Constitution. Over the ten years of the United Progressive Alliance, it was widely recognised that the prime minister could call the shots as long as it was not to the displeasure of party president Sonia Gandhi.
The arrangement between the prime minister and “his parivar” not only continues under the National Democratic Alliance, but also acquired a great symbolic value last week. After all, Bhagwat and his brothers have been meeting ministers over the last 15 months, the effects of which are quite apparent, for instance, in the HRD ministry of Irani. But in holding a formal meeting with ministers and the prime minister, the RSS can be said to have transmitted the message that it is indeed the supra-body that has the jammer, also known as the power to veto government policies.
Ironies never fail
The conscious depiction of the RSS as superior to the government is particularly ironic because the BJP, over the 10-year-rule of the UPA, never tired of portraying Gandhi as remote-controlling Prime Minister Manmohan Singh. Further, it attacked the Gandhi-chaired National Advisory Council, which had been constituted to suggest policy and legislative proposals to the prime minister, as unconstitutional. This became the basis for the BJP to accuse Singh of violating the oath of office by showing government files to Gandhi (a charge that it never substantiated).
This is the charge already being levelled against the BJP and the RSS, which has, like the Congress, been equally dismissive of the critics. At the conclusion of the coordination meeting, RSS joint general secretary Dattatreya Hosabale told the media: “Don’t ministers speak to CII? Is RSS an illegal organisation? I don’t see how any secrecy [of office] has been compromised [with ministers briefing the coordination meeting].”
But it isn’t as much about whether the oath of secrecy has been violated as it is about undermining the authority of the prime minister. Last week’s coordination meeting has sent the signal that Modi may have won for the BJP a majority in the Lok Sabha, but he is accountable not just to Parliament but also to the RSS.
This is a sure recipe for internecine squabbles, for challenging the authority of the prime minister as soon as he suffers setbacks or appears weakened. This was indeed the situation in the UPA in its last two years of rule. Ministers wouldn’t listen to Singh, files demanded would take weeks to reach him or not at all, and just every Congress minister would jockey for greater influence and independence.
The looming shadow
Such signs are already emanating from the NDA government – note, for instance, Rajnath Singh’s discovery of history and Rana Pratap, or the shrill tone Foreign Minister Sushma Swaraj and Defence Minister Parrikar have tended to employ lately.
The looming shadow of the RSS will also restrict the ideological flexibility of the BJP government, often required in India because of its sheer diversity. The party in power has to bargain with various interest groups, adopt the policy of give and take (the One Rank One Pension issue as an example), and even dilute its positions.
Such political manoeuvres may become increasingly difficult because of the insistence of the RSS to push its ideological agenda, and its inclination to look askance at digressions. This is why the RSS affiliates chose to push such divisive programmes as ghar wapsi, love jihad, attacks on churches, and the revision of history books early in the NDA government’s tenure, all of which took the fizz out of the expectations Modi had generated. The feel-good headlines Modi had been generating petered out late last year, an important factor behind the rout of the BJP in the Delhi assembly polls.
This means Modi will find it hard to invent a new persona for himself, or at least attenuate the more polarising aspects of his political personality. If not, he could end up being the prime minister of Hindutva followers, not of the nation at large.
It is the peculiarity of Hindutva politics that it is forever under pressure to shift from the extreme right closer to the centre of India’s ideological spectrum. A BJP leader hoping to enter the top league must first win over the RSS cadres, to whom a hardline position is infinitely more appealing. But once anointed as the top leader, he must reach out to the largest segment of the nation to win a majority on his own or lead a diverse coalition of parties. This entails dropping the more divisive or less popular aspects of the RSS agenda.
Source of friction
It is this that creates friction between the unelected RSS bosses and those from their ranks sent to the BJP for entering electoral politics. This was the nub of the rift between Advani and RSS. Following the surprise defeat of the BJP in the 2004 elections, and with Atal Behari Vajpyee headed towards retirement, Advani sought to invent himself as a liberal. He hailed Jinnah as secular, incurring the wrath of the RSS, which marginalised him despite his stature.
He was given only the comfort of choosing his time of departure. At the national executive meeting of Chennai in September 2005, Advani announced he would demit office, but not before declaring that an “impression had gained ground” that the BJP could take no decision without the approval of the RSS. “This perception, we hold, will do no good either to the party or to the RSS… Both the RSS and the BJP must consciously exert to dispel this impression.”
Last week’s coordination meeting shows the RSS isn’t interested in dispelling the impression that the BJP and its government take decisions only after securing its consent. In fact, if anything, Modi seems to have accepted the right of the RSS to interfere in governance. Perhaps the career graph of Advani is a reminder to Modi on the fate awaiting those who don’t walk the path the RSS favours.
Ajaz Ashraf is a journalist from Delhi. His novel, The Hour Before Dawn, published by HarperCollins, is available in bookstores.
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Nobody quite knows precisely how the Sangh operates the jammer, which is deployed every time an individual strays from the path it favours. Yet there is ample evidence of its capacity to freeze leaders in their tracks. Ask Bharatiya Janata Party leader LK Advani, who, much to the annoyance of the Sangh, gave a secular chit to Jinnah ten years ago and found his political career take a nosedive.
It is possible Modi became apprehensive of the jammer because Gujarat last fortnight rather mysteriously erupted with an agitation for caste reservations for the Patel community. For Modi, it was essential to quell the unrest at the earliest, not least because in his campaign speeches in Bihar he had showcased his home state as the model of his idea of governance and development. He needs to win Bihar to re-discover the momentum he lost following the BJP's drubbing in the Delhi assembly elections in February.
To achieve this, he needs the RSS to push its footsoldiers in Bihar to mobilise voters. Perhaps it isn’t a coincidence that at the peak of the Patel agitation, a statement was issued announcing that in addition to party president Amit Shah, the prime minister would also attend the RSS coordination committee meeting.
A stellar cast
The three-day meeting was a spectacle. From Home Minister Rajnath Singh to Defence Minister Manohar Parrikar to Human Resources Development Minister Smriti Irani, they were all there, explaining their policies, justifying their performances, displaying their allegiance to Hindutva. This was in sharp contradiction to the laboured insistence of the RSS that the coordination meeting was designed not to assess, but to interact with the government.
Modi, too, attended the meeting on September 4, which was Teachers’ Day. What is the RSS sarsanghchalak (head) if not a teacher? It, therefore, seemed befitting of Modi to request the assembled Sangh functionaries to repose their faith in him, that he would deliver on the promises made, and that he looked forward to marg darshan, or guidance, from them. The guide of the nation was seeking guidance from those who possess the jammer.
Indeed, Modi’s participation in the coordination meeting confirms the truth of the statement Union Minister Venkaiah Naidu made in Parliament last year. “You are proud of your parivar and we are proud of our parivar,” he declared. This pride, needless to say, arises from the BJP and Congress leaders accepting the superiority and exalted status of their respective parivars. For the Congress, it is the Nehru-Gandhi family; for the BJP, it is the RSS.
Their exalted status flows from the power they possess to endorse and promote politicians. And so to humour them, their egos must be massaged through periodic obeisance to them, to allow them the right to interfere in governance, to accept their power even though it does not flow from the Constitution. Over the ten years of the United Progressive Alliance, it was widely recognised that the prime minister could call the shots as long as it was not to the displeasure of party president Sonia Gandhi.
The arrangement between the prime minister and “his parivar” not only continues under the National Democratic Alliance, but also acquired a great symbolic value last week. After all, Bhagwat and his brothers have been meeting ministers over the last 15 months, the effects of which are quite apparent, for instance, in the HRD ministry of Irani. But in holding a formal meeting with ministers and the prime minister, the RSS can be said to have transmitted the message that it is indeed the supra-body that has the jammer, also known as the power to veto government policies.
Ironies never fail
The conscious depiction of the RSS as superior to the government is particularly ironic because the BJP, over the 10-year-rule of the UPA, never tired of portraying Gandhi as remote-controlling Prime Minister Manmohan Singh. Further, it attacked the Gandhi-chaired National Advisory Council, which had been constituted to suggest policy and legislative proposals to the prime minister, as unconstitutional. This became the basis for the BJP to accuse Singh of violating the oath of office by showing government files to Gandhi (a charge that it never substantiated).
This is the charge already being levelled against the BJP and the RSS, which has, like the Congress, been equally dismissive of the critics. At the conclusion of the coordination meeting, RSS joint general secretary Dattatreya Hosabale told the media: “Don’t ministers speak to CII? Is RSS an illegal organisation? I don’t see how any secrecy [of office] has been compromised [with ministers briefing the coordination meeting].”
But it isn’t as much about whether the oath of secrecy has been violated as it is about undermining the authority of the prime minister. Last week’s coordination meeting has sent the signal that Modi may have won for the BJP a majority in the Lok Sabha, but he is accountable not just to Parliament but also to the RSS.
This is a sure recipe for internecine squabbles, for challenging the authority of the prime minister as soon as he suffers setbacks or appears weakened. This was indeed the situation in the UPA in its last two years of rule. Ministers wouldn’t listen to Singh, files demanded would take weeks to reach him or not at all, and just every Congress minister would jockey for greater influence and independence.
The looming shadow
Such signs are already emanating from the NDA government – note, for instance, Rajnath Singh’s discovery of history and Rana Pratap, or the shrill tone Foreign Minister Sushma Swaraj and Defence Minister Parrikar have tended to employ lately.
The looming shadow of the RSS will also restrict the ideological flexibility of the BJP government, often required in India because of its sheer diversity. The party in power has to bargain with various interest groups, adopt the policy of give and take (the One Rank One Pension issue as an example), and even dilute its positions.
Such political manoeuvres may become increasingly difficult because of the insistence of the RSS to push its ideological agenda, and its inclination to look askance at digressions. This is why the RSS affiliates chose to push such divisive programmes as ghar wapsi, love jihad, attacks on churches, and the revision of history books early in the NDA government’s tenure, all of which took the fizz out of the expectations Modi had generated. The feel-good headlines Modi had been generating petered out late last year, an important factor behind the rout of the BJP in the Delhi assembly polls.
This means Modi will find it hard to invent a new persona for himself, or at least attenuate the more polarising aspects of his political personality. If not, he could end up being the prime minister of Hindutva followers, not of the nation at large.
It is the peculiarity of Hindutva politics that it is forever under pressure to shift from the extreme right closer to the centre of India’s ideological spectrum. A BJP leader hoping to enter the top league must first win over the RSS cadres, to whom a hardline position is infinitely more appealing. But once anointed as the top leader, he must reach out to the largest segment of the nation to win a majority on his own or lead a diverse coalition of parties. This entails dropping the more divisive or less popular aspects of the RSS agenda.
Source of friction
It is this that creates friction between the unelected RSS bosses and those from their ranks sent to the BJP for entering electoral politics. This was the nub of the rift between Advani and RSS. Following the surprise defeat of the BJP in the 2004 elections, and with Atal Behari Vajpyee headed towards retirement, Advani sought to invent himself as a liberal. He hailed Jinnah as secular, incurring the wrath of the RSS, which marginalised him despite his stature.
He was given only the comfort of choosing his time of departure. At the national executive meeting of Chennai in September 2005, Advani announced he would demit office, but not before declaring that an “impression had gained ground” that the BJP could take no decision without the approval of the RSS. “This perception, we hold, will do no good either to the party or to the RSS… Both the RSS and the BJP must consciously exert to dispel this impression.”
Last week’s coordination meeting shows the RSS isn’t interested in dispelling the impression that the BJP and its government take decisions only after securing its consent. In fact, if anything, Modi seems to have accepted the right of the RSS to interfere in governance. Perhaps the career graph of Advani is a reminder to Modi on the fate awaiting those who don’t walk the path the RSS favours.
Ajaz Ashraf is a journalist from Delhi. His novel, The Hour Before Dawn, published by HarperCollins, is available in bookstores.
