Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh sarsanghchalak, Mohan Bhagwat’s Vijayadashami speech might have disappointed Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s detractors. Many in the liberal intelligentsia and the Opposition camp were almost growing fond of Bhagwat over the past few months as he cautioned ‘true sevaks’ against ‘arrogance’ and spoke of ‘Man’ trying to become ‘Superman’ and ‘Bhagwan’. They saw in such descriptions the Sangh’s growing impatience with PM Modi.
It helped that the RSS never officially denied those interpretations. Modi’s detractors were, therefore, waiting for Bhagwat’s speech with bated breath on Saturday—something to perk them up after the setback in the Haryana election. It turned out to be a bummer. The RSS chief targeted the Mamata Banerjee government for attempted ‘cover-up’ in RG Kar rape-and-murder case, virtually endorsed Modi’s population imbalance theory in Jharkhand, and talked up the usual Hindus-in-danger line. The Bharatiya Janata Party couldn’t have asked for more this poll season.
Hours later, PM Modi tweeted, congratulating all swayamsevaks on the RSS entering its 100th year and heaping praise on his ideological alma mater for its service to the nation. Check out PM Modi’s X timeline. The last time he had tweeted about the Sangh’s foundation day was in 2017.
On Saturday, the PM also tweeted the YouTube link to sarsanghchalak Bhagwat’s Vijayadashami speech, calling it a must-listen. That was a first. The last time he had referred to Bhagwat’s speech in a tweet was in 2014 when he had embedded a link to a summary.
And the last time he had tweeted about Bhagwat was to greet the latter on his birthday in 2016. And the last time PM Modi addressed the RSS in a tweet was in March 2019, when he had appealed to the Sangh, the NCC, the NSS, the Nehru Yuva Kendra and the Brahma Kumaris to “help increase voter awareness”.
Clearly, something has changed after the Haryana assembly election. It’s Modi’s way of acknowledging the RSS’ role in the BJP’s unexpected victory in Haryana. The party paid heavily in the Lok Sabha for its hubris, marked by party president JP Nadda’s blunt message to the Sangh about the BJP not needing it any more. The BJP looked down and out in Haryana. It was in desperation that the BJP sent an SOS for help to the RSS. Sangh joint general secretary Arun Kumar then stepped in and took control of the election. He held a series of meetings with senior BJP functionaries from both Delhi and Haryana and chalked out a plan for a turnaround in the BJP’s fortune. From the selection of candidates to the BJP’s narrative on the ground and the counter-strategy against the Congress, the RSS was in total control. Stakes were very high for the RSS. If the Sangh failed to deliver in Haryana, leaders like Nadda would turn around and say something like—‘Didn’t we tell you? It’s the BJP that wins or loses elections. We don’t need the RSS to tell us what to do.’ These are my words, of course. Anyway, the RSS showed who is the boss and how the BJP very much depends on the RSS.
Also read: Why Amit Shah, more than PM Modi, needs to worry about RSS chief Bhagwat’s message
RSS is in control
It’s another matter that the BJP leadership went overboard to showcase the Haryana victory as another evidence of Modi’s enduring popularity. The party had earlier sought to shield PM Modi from any adverse results. His was one of many pictures in posters and campaign materials. He addressed only four rallies—as compared to 10 in 2014 and six in 2019.
As the results came out, the party was back to attributing it all to Modi. At the victory bash at the party headquarters, Nadda spoke of how the results showed that the country’s mood was “Modimay” and the slogan “Modi hai toh mumkin hai–Everything is possible with Modi” was revalidated. Of course, nobody asked him about the Haryanavis bringing the BJP’s Lok Sabha tally from 10 to five just five months back. Or why the BJP’s vote share came down to 46 per cent in 2024 from 58 per cent in 2019 and further down to 40 per cent in the latest Assembly election? One leader after another spoke of PM Modi’s old friend Manohar Lal Khattar’s efficient, corruption-free governance in Haryana. Nobody explained why, in that case, the party removed him as the Chief Minister. Or why eight out of 10 ministers in the Nayab Saini-led government lost the election?
Why did the BJP confine Khattar, the CM for nine-and-a-half years, to his Karnal parliamentary constituency, instead of using him as the star campaigner across the state? These questions have become irrelevant.
Celebrations in the BJP were justified, of course. Winning a third consecutive election, that, too, with the best-ever tally and an increase of three percentage points in its vote share over the last assembly poll, was quite a feat.
Bhagwat’s speech and PM Modi’s tweets on Saturday marked a return to normalcy in the RSS-BJP relationship. The Sangh proved yet again that its political mentee couldn’t just wish it away, no matter how popular an individual leader might become. The RSS is back in control of its political protégé and will remain so, no matter what happens in future elections and for how long Modi’s popularity endures.
Also read: A swayamsevak Narendra Modi as PM—what complain could RSS have with BJP in power?
Succession woes
The RSS being back in the saddle is likely to have significant implications for the BJP and the government. The Sangh is likely to start exercising its newly regained veto power sooner than later, starting with the election or selection of the next BJP president. With a mass leader like Modi and an avid practitioner of realpolitik like Amit Shah at the helm, the BJP has, strangely, been promoting a whole lot of incompetent leaders in key positions. The criteria for a CM or a union minister, a state BJP president or a national general secretary remain opaque. Leaders who have worked for decades in the Sangh and the BJP lose out to defectors from another party when it comes to party tickets. What then of ordinary party workers? Ask a BJP MP the names of the party’s national general secretaries and what they do, and you’ll know the answer. I know because I asked a high-profile BJP parliamentarian the same question a couple of months back and he laughed it off after giving me only three names, one of which was that of a vice-president. As I mentioned in my last column, Modi-Shah have failed to develop mass leaders in states the way Vajpayee-Advani did.
Those arbitrary selection and promotion criteria are set to change now that the RSS is back in control. Expect a big organisational shake-up and many bigwigs giving way to new faces or those who have been left on the margins.
RSS functionaries say that Mohan Bhagwat is unambiguous about his preference for a 75-year upper age ceiling for holding “any chair”. One doesn’t know whether this criterion will apply to PM Modi or not. But what’s good for the BJP now is the fact that the RSS can effectively intervene to end the internecine war in what’s essentially a battle for succession. It cost the BJP in many states—UP, to name just one—in the Lok Sabha election. The RSS is a past master in smooth leadership transitions in the BJP.
Bhagwat’s speech and Modi’s tweets on Saturday signalled a rapprochement between the two. It’s also an acknowledgement that they need each other.
The RSS is unlikely to interfere in governance. As it is, most ministries, institutions and key positions are helmed either by swayamsevaks or recent converts to Hindutva nationalism. What’s however likely to happen is the re-emergence of the RSS as an alternative and effective power centre, this will encourage many around Modi to re-calibrate and re-position their loyalty now that he is in his third and likely last term. How it will play out is anybody’s guess. The first sign of the things to come was when former union minister Smriti Irani, who found herself in the cold after a decade-long stint in the corridors of power, sent an SOS to the RSS in the form of a social media post. It showed a khaki pant-clad cyclist with the caption ‘the winner’, just when the BJP was seeking to showcase the Haryana result as evidence of PM Modi’s popularity.
DK Singh is Political Editor at ThePrint. He tweets @dksingh73. Views are personal.
(Edited by Theres Sudeep)
Has anybody considered Rahul Gandhis feelings in a dynastic party? May be if he was not constrained by his surname, the so called legacy, he would have been more comfortable joining CPI like Kanhaiyya. But then the lack of political prospects would have made him switch ideology be damned. Congress used to be the party of Lal Bal Pal of C Rajagopalachari. The centrists were destroyed because JN and now Rahul identify with communists but cannot openly do so.
Lots and lots of rear burns coming out in this article.
Have become a fan of this column. Single malt.
Haryana election is over. Which left wing journalist is worried about the side effects of their poison and failed narrative building? They tried hard to divide the country on caste. Did not work. Now they will dust and repeat. Will one of them be called to account?