Mohan Bhagwat on 9 July 2025: “When you turn 75, then understand that you must stop, and leave the place for others.”
Mohan Bhagwat on 28 August 2025: “I never said I will retire or someone should retire. In Sangh, we are given a job, whether we want it or not.”
The RSS chief seems to be eating his own words. No political observer failed to note who the target of his July statement was, given his jibe last year that some people believe themselves to be ‘sent by God’ and even ‘want to become God’.
A few RSS-BJP leaders are turning 75 soon. It would be naïve to assume that two months ago, Bhagwat did not see the connection between his statement and his own age and position. He spoke about it voluntarily and not under any compulsion. At the time, perhaps it was a well-thought-out message. As if he was contemplating to dare: “I step down from my position, you step down from yours.”
If Bhagwat had stood by his stance, it would have been difficult for an RSS-trained BJP leader to ignore such a dramatic example set by the Sarsanghchalak. But now, the backtracking indicates Bhagwat himself is not going to retire. He says he will remain “as long as the RSS would ask him to serve.” Pray, then, who was he publicly asking ‘to stop at 75 and leave space for others’? Barring political leaders, all officials, clerks and top bureaucrats retire much earlier anyway.
A humbug to deceive their own
This backtracking signals an insistence by a select few in the RSS-BJP to continue in their respective posts. It also reveals, unwittingly, that the age-factor was never really a concern and that the excuse deployed to remove old leaders in the past was phoney. In other words, the RSS-BJP betrayed their own. This would not be taken kindly by the majority of RSS-BJP supporters. Leaders will now face censure. The understanding would be that all their talk of being a sevak, of renunciation, of ‘picking up the humble bag and leave’ were just humbug. Whatever the excuses, the leaders are not following their own invented ‘rules’ that they applied to others. They are, therefore, ordinary men. Not exemplary.
Bhagwat’s U-turn is yet another example of the RSS’ preachiness. Its leaders keep asking others to do this and do that, including ‘fighting,’ but stay away from doing anything themselves. When asked, their followers cheekily defend it: “Our (RSS’s) duty is not to fight, but asking people to fight.” They brazenly assume to be above their own counsel. Since the RSS seems, and also claims — at least informally — to be the ‘largest Hindu organisation,’ it becomes important to reflect on the Hindu mind: Is the Hindu mind so perennially infantile that it always asks others to do what it is not prepared to do itself?
The top brass of the RSS-BJP propagated a code of ‘retire past-75’ to unceremoniously push their own respected leaders into oblivion. Later, in the 2024 Lok Sabha and some Assembly elections, many BJP leaders were reportedly denied tickets for being past-75. Now, not applying it to themselves — the ones seemingly behind this rule — will further bring down the RSS-BJP’s falling image.
While the common public — largely concerned with basic necessities and driven by fear — is the arbiter in democracy, leaders compete to be the face, luring or fooling the public. Even so, repeated and louder claims do eventually reach the masses for discernment. The ‘retire at 75’ argument was one such claim.
Now, turning it into a device to be used selectively reveals deceit. Such opportunism — including upon one’s own benefactors — does not win any leadership great admiration. Their pretension of being above the rules has no basis, except being on the post they want to keep, perhaps forever.
No succession — a Hindu problem
This trait doesn’t only ail the RSS-BJP. It’s an Indian, especially Hindu, ailment. MK Gandhi, who entered Indian politics during the First World War, never allowed anyone else to take decisions — despite committing blunders after blunders. He pushed his line of action against the wishes of the entire Congress leadership. For example, in 1919, he forced the Congress into the disastrous Caliphate movement. He accepted his mistake to activist and his personal secretary, Mahadev Desai, in 1924, and yet never relinquished leadership. Rather, he invented a more irresponsible, ‘back-seat driving’ leadership: forcing the leaders at the forefront to do something without being held accountable for it. Every Congress president that followed him, including after independence, as well as the first Prime Minister or Home Minister, could not freely take decisions until Gandhi agreed to it. This style of Hindu leadership brought several disasters upon the country — something historians should consider writing about.
At least one intellectual leader, Ram Manohar Lohia, minced no words. He argued that because of the aged, sick, and tired leadership of the Congress in 1946-47, the country suffered Partition and the killings, sufferings, and displacements of millions of people unprecedented in human history. Lohia was not speculating: he was part of the Congress Working Committee meeting (14-15 June 1947) that accepted Partition and was very much in the thick of events. He wrote about it shortly after, reviewing the horrible episode. Here is his damning conclusion, in the closing lines of the second chapter of his book Guilty Men of India’s Partition: “…no shadow of doubt need obscure the simple proposition that a decaying leadership operating in a riotous situation produced partition and that a purposive and more youthful people may have avoided the division of Hindustan into India and Pakistan.”
The RSS-BJP leadership should reflect on it — the age factor matters in deciding the urgent tasks for the country, and a decrepit leadership must not remain at the helm. Such leaders would not do what ought to be done, and a youthful leadership might do the needful.
Most Hindu leaders suffer from the Gandhi syndrome: never consider others capable of taking the right decision. It’s worth pondering the impact this mindset has had on the country and its politics in the last century.
Real ‘chaal, charitra’, no ‘chehra’
Indian leaders must devise a healthy, impersonal system of succession. Otherwise they prove themselves incapable of leadership precisely because of this evasion. They simply don’t know what would happen in their party if they are suddenly gone. That is no way to run a country or a party. Every businessperson, every industrialist knows that they must create a succession plan well in time. It is curious that Indian leaders, who have the task of running the country, never seem to care about it.
None from the RSS-BJP can pretend that they do care. Even Atal Bihari Vajpayee, who wasn’t in the best of his health in 2003-04, at the age of 80, never conceded that it was time for him to quit politics. He indirectly chided then-BJP president M Venkaiah Naidu for including LK Advani’s name in the leadership “under which the party would fight the next (2004) election.” Naidu had to clarify that he didn’t mean to belittle Vajpayee, the boss. Even after losing the 2004 election, Vajpayee did not indicate that he had left the place for his successor. Only time removed him, gradually, from the active top party position.
So, there is no succession mechanism in any Indian political party. There isn’t even a free and frank discussion on the issue. That’s because no reigning party leader wants to quit. Is it good for the country? All sincere leaders of India should think about it — before it is too late.
As to the RSS-BJP, it is quite clear now that their boast of ‘chaal, charitra, chehra’ (conduct, character, and face) to dislodge others from power was empty rhetoric. The latest stance of the top RSS-BJP leaders only shows that 12 years ago, they deceived their own leaders to shunt them to a fictional ‘Margdarshak Mandal’. While it shows their real ‘chaal’ and ‘charitra’, it would seem they don’t have a ‘chehra’ at all.
Shankar Sharan is a columnist and professor of political science. He tweets @hesivh. Views are personal.
(Edited by Prashant)