On the evening of 21 July 2025, the opening day of Parliament’s monsoon session, former vice-president Jagdeep Dhankhar dropped a bombshell. He drove to Rashtrapati Bhawan and handed in his resignation, stating that he wanted to “prioritise health care”. Many conspiracy theories have been floating around since then. Neither Dhankhar nor the government chose to clear the air. It was a bitter parting, evident from Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s curt farewell note on X:
“Shri Jagdeep Dhankhar Ji has got many opportunities to serve our country in various capacities, including as the Vice President of India. Wishing him good health.”
Five weeks later, the former VP moved into Indian National Lok Dal (INLD) leader Abhay Singh Chautala’s Gadaipur farmhouse in the national capital, and has stayed there since. He is entitled to a Type VIII bungalow, but the government has denied it to him so far. Fifteen months after Dhankhar quit as VP, the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) has sprung a surprise now. Dhankhar was a guest at the Sangh’s annual Vijayadashmi event Tuesday, addressed by Sarsanghchalak Mohan Bhagwat. It’s a big comeback for the ex-VP, who has been shut out of the Bharatiya Janata Party’s ecosystem. Not a single BJP leader has visited Dhankhar since he resigned. Now, the party’s ideological patron, the RSS, has sent an unmistakable message that it doesn’t consider him a pariah, notwithstanding what happened between him and PM Modi.
It’s not the first time the Sangh has sent this message. Four months after Dhankhar quit, RSS joint general secretary Manmohan Vaidya invited him to launch his book, Hum Aur Ye Vishwa (Us and this World) in Bhopal. In what was his first public speech as ex-VP, Dhankhar said that Vaidya’s book debunked propaganda that portrayed the RSS as an ultra-Right organisation. As his aides reminded him about his flight, Dhankhar told the audience cryptically, “Main flight pakadne ke chinta se apne kartavya ko nahin chhod sakta (I cannot neglect my duty out of worry about catching the flight). Friends, my recent past is proof of it.”
One doesn’t know what flight he had to miss to answer the call of duty in July 2025.
That the RSS loves the ex-VP is no secret. No chairman of the Rajya Sabha defended the organisation so consistently and vehemently as Dhankhar did. No occupant of the Kolkata Raj Bhawan pursued the RSS–BJP agenda in Syama Prasad Mookerjee’s Bengal as openly as he did. The reason for his fallout with ex-RSS pracharak, PM Modi, has remained a mystery. That’s why Dhankhar being invited to the Vijayadashmi assumed significance.
A signal to Modi?
There are three ways one could read the message from Nagpur.
Trust Modi-baiters to interpret it as a signal to PM Modi. They had pounced on the RSS chief’s take that true leadership is not about coming to the front, winning elections, and preaching to the people. His analogy of the sun rising and setting had also excited Modi critics. Let’s leave them to that. Bhagwat is not given to sending signals. He doesn’t mince words. He will never undermine PM Modi directly or indirectly. After all, it’s this ex-pracharak’s popularity that has catapulted the Sangh to a level where even its critics have to recalibrate their politics vis-à-vis the Hindutva ideology. Responding to questions about RSS-BJP coordination during his lecture series in August last year, Bhagwat said that there could be “matbhed” or “difference of opinion”, but there was no “manbhed” or “differences in hearts”.
“I am an expert in running ‘shakhas’. The BJP is an expert in running the government. We can only give suggestions to each other… Even if a man in the chair is 100 per cent for us, he has to do it, but he knows what the hurdles are. He may be able to do it. We have to give him that independence. There is no quarrel anywhere,” he said.
There couldn’t be a more succinct explanation of how the Sangh looks at its equations with the Modi government.
In his Vijayadashmi speech, Bhagwat, who earlier opened a dialogue with Gen Z, was quite critical of those currently protesting against the Modi government. “When an agitation becomes a means of politics, has animosity against an individual, group or ideology, then forces that want to undermine India take advantage of it,” he said. Mind his words here—animosity against an “individual, group or ideology”. If we decode these words, the ‘individual’ comes to mean PM Modi; the ‘group’ becomes the BJP–RSS; and the ideology is Hindutva. Bhagwat couldn’t have backed PM Modi better amid attacks by the Rahul Gandhi-led Opposition. So, no, the Sangh’s invitation to Dhankhar to join him at the Vijayadashmi event was no signal to PM Modi.
Also read: Why Modi govt’s effort to discredit the Opposition isn’t working this time
Not a neat script
The second way of looking at the invitation is what Sangh Pariwar critics call a game of good cop, bad cop. In this case, if the BJP or its government at the Centre hurts an individual or a group, the balm comes from the RSS. That was how the Opposition had sought to project Bhagwat’s outreach to Gen Z. The Sangh’s decision to invite Dhankhar to the Vijayadashmi event can be seen in that context, especially when the ex-VP has been such a vocal fan of the RSS despite his early political innings in the Janata Dal and the Congress. But I don’t buy this theory, either. The BJP and the RSS do work in tandem, if need be, but they don’t do it as per a neat script.
That brings me to the third way of reading the message from Nagpur. The crux of it is that everything the century-old RSS does is in pursuit of its long-term goals and mission. In the immediate context, its priority is to ensure a third term for Uttar Pradesh chief minister Yogi Adityanath. After the bitter fallout between PM Modi and former Jammu & Kashmir governor Satyapal Malik, the optics of the BJP humiliating another prominent Jat face, Jagdeep Dhankhar, would hurt the party in western UP. The RSS chief publicly showing appreciation and respect for the ex-VP is expected to address these hurt sentiments. It goes without saying that no matter what the BJP top brass thinks about Dhankhar, the RSS has a soft corner for him. The organisation has put its might behind Yogi in this election, activating its cadre at the grassroots and holding regular coordination meetings with the BJP to build a narrative around development and law-and-order in the run-up to the Assembly elections early next year. Why the RSS is going all out to ensure Yogi’s victory is a question whose time has not come yet.
DK Singh is Political Editor at ThePrint. He tweets @dksingh73. Views are personal.
(Edited by Prasanna Bachchhav)