RSS chief Bhagwat draws the line at 75. India’s politics stares at the Modi Exception

BJP has no dynastic succession, at least not at the top. You can trace this back to Vajpayee-Advani era. This act of spotting, empowering younger talent is even more striking with the choice of BJP presidents.

Illustration: Manali Ghosh/ThePrint

Please do not fall into the trap of the usual cliches like ‘setting the cat among the pigeons’ over the statement by Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) chief (Sarsanghachalak) Mohan Bhagwat that once they attain the age of 75, leaders should think of retiring and yield to younger colleagues.

This caution is needed because in the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), and particularly the BJP-RSS relations, there will always be the Modi exception. To think that this is a nudge to Prime Minister Narendra Modi to step down as he turns 75 on 17 September this year, six days after Bhagwat, will be reading too much into it. However, a Sarsanghachalak is never to be taken lightly. In this case, Bhagwat broke from a speech in Marathi to speak just these, retirement-at-75 lines in Hindi. No slip of the tongue, or scope for misinterpretation there.

I anticipate an immediate questioning of this from those who follow national politics closely. They can indeed remind me of my own two-part conversation with then RSS chief K.S. Sudarshan in 2005, where he asked Atal Bihari Vajpayee (80) and L.K. Advani (77) to move on and let younger people take over. He had also attacked Vajpayee’s son-in-law, close associate Brajesh Mishra and his style of working. His response became even more vehement when I reminded him that Vajpayee had dismissed rumours of his retirement with that famous line: “na tired, na retired.”

Since the Vajpayee-Advani duo was still very much in control of the BJP and widely respected as its founders, and also because there was no ready claimant for their places at that point, Sudarshan drew immediate criticism, though only in whispers. It was insinuated that his ageing mind was fading. The reality was different. From the BJP/RSS point of view, if he could be faulted, it was only for his timing. It was too soon after the party’s defeat in the general election the previous year and the party didn’t need a succession struggle right then. In substance, he knew what he was doing, and was vindicated in the course of time.

With his words, the die was cast. An entire line of likely successors had begun to emerge. Rajnath Singh, Sushma Swaraj, Arun Jaitley, Nitin Gadkari and, most notably, Narendra Modi in Ahmedabad. In a way, he had set up an American primaries-style leadership contest within the BJP. Modi won it by the time he swept his third state election in 2012.

Whether or not you like the BJP/RSS, you have to concede that they are the force with the most robust and meritocratic HR system in Indian politics. Through decades, they have produced successive generations of leaders with the shakha system.

It’s a digression but a significant point—that of all the parties in India’s political history, the BJP has had the least defections or splits. The ideological glue mostly keeps them all in the same tent, even the disgruntled. A few significant ones who left, returned, like Kalyan Singh and Yediyurappa. Others, Shankersinh Vaghela, Balraj Madhok, all faded into irrelevance. In the same decades, the Congress has had so many splits that it seemed sometimes the entire alphabet might not be enough to find letters as suffixes for all its breakaway parties. Janata Party, Socialists, or what used to be the Lok Dal, all went the same way. Not the BJP. You can’t show me a hyphenated offshoot.

The BJP also had no dynastic succession, at least at the top. There are many offsprings of illustrious founders and elders in key positions in the party now, but the succession was never straightforward. It was more like “accommodating” somebody’s child than a power transfer.

You can trace it back to the Vajpayee-Advani era. They chose very young chief ministers: Vasundhara Raje, Shivraj Singh Chouhan, Raman Singh, Narendra Modi—averaging 49 years.

This spotting and empowering younger talent is even more striking with the choice of the BJP presidents. In 2002, Venkaiah Naidu became president at 53. Rajnath Singh became president at 54 first in 2005, Nitin Gadkari at 48 in 2009 and Amit Shah at just 49 in 2014.

In contrast, through this period, Sonia Gandhi remained the Congress president, until Mallikarjun Kharge moved in after a Rahul Gandhi interregnum, sprightly still, but 80. Meanwhile, so much of the Congress party’s young talent has withered away. Some have joined the BJP in frustration, the others carry on in the party even more frustrated. We make too much of ideological differences between the two parties. We ought to be paying more attention to their respective HR practices.

This principle has been followed even post-2014. J.P. Nadda took over as the party president at 59. The new chief ministers, Yogi Adityanath (U.P.), Bhajan Lal Sharma (Rajasthan), Mohan Yadav (Madhya Pradesh), Vishnu Deo Sai, Mohan Charan Majhi, Biplab Deb and Himanta Biswa Sarma (Assam, though a Congress original), Manohar Lal Khattar, Devendra Fadnavis, Pramod Sawant, Pushkar Singh Dhami, Rekha Gupta, the 12 of them, averaged 51 when sworn in.

The Congress has inducted some younger talent in Telangana and Himachal, but in its most important state, Karnataka, it is stuck with a non-performing golden oldie in Siddaramaiah.

A most notable fact is that the ideological guru of the BJP is living up to its own counsel. The oldest age up to which a Sarsanghachalak has served is 78: Sudarshan (2009), (Rajendra Singh or Rajju Bhaiyya, in 2000), Madhukar Dattatraya “Balasaheb” Deoras, (1994).

From the founder group, K.B. Hedgewar and M.S. Golwalkar died young in harness, at 51 and 67 in 1940 and 1973 respectively. All the Sarsanghachalaks rose to the top young and had long tenures. As the current one.

The fact is, despite the rumours and whispers, nobody has mentioned any retire-at-75-rule within the BJP. It was only whispered as the justification to send Advani, Murli Manohar Joshi and others to retirement in the Margdarshak Mandal (Group of Elders). At the same time some ministers continued including Kalraj Mishra and Najma Heptulla. These were subsequently sent out as governors. In the latest election, Hema Malini was fielded from Mathura though she had crossed 75, maybe to remind us that there is no ‘75-year-rule.’ The only on-record reference we can find is Anandiben Patel explaining her resignation as Gujarat chief minister in 2016 because “I have turned 75”. That will for sure be no precedent for Modi.

September 11 will now be the date to watch. That’s when Bhagwat turns 75. If he decides to follow his own counsel and retire, there will at least be ‘talk’ about Modi in the BJP corridors. Will there be a challenge? No. Will anybody dare to seek a process of post-2009 style ‘primaries’? It isn’t impossible, but most unlikely. But, as the calendar runs up to late 2028, some among the more ambitious in BJP might feel impatient. Nobody would dare to even whimper, forget making a claim. Modi now has the power and pre-eminence in the BJP-RSS to choose how long he wants to serve and he is definitely going to want to contest in 2029. He will only be 79, as old as Donald Trump now, and fitter. The others will have to wait for the decision or cue from him, even as some silent, subterranean ‘primaries’ might have begun within the BJP.