The question has intrigued all who have dealt with the BJP over a quarter century. What is the exact nature of its relationship with the RSS? Critics, especially the Left, tend to spot the ‘sinister hand’ of the RSS behind every major move by the BJP. The BJP, they have no doubt, is a puppet with the strings being pulled from elsewhere. The BJP prefers to give the relationship a more positive spin, terming it ‘synergy’, the fraternal links ascribed to sharing a common Hindutva philosophy even as both proclaim their independence of each other. Nevertheless there is tendency to see the ubiquitous hand of the big brother in every organisational upheaval in the party. This week, when the BJP announced a new team of officebearers most reports fell largely into two categories. Those which suggested that BJP President Rajnath Singh had naturally taken the RSS’s clearance before going ahead and cutting to size his two principal rivals in the party, Narendra Modi and Arun Jaitley. The other version was that the RSS was upset, since Rajnath had acted on his own. Since the RSS is a cloistered, secretive society, where minutes of meetings are rarely kept and decisions are verbal, it leaves its motives open to endless speculation — particularly as it rarely issues public denials or confirmations. RSS workers are justifiably aggrieved that the organisation is made the perennial scapegoat for everything that goes wrong with the BJP. If the RSS writ is as all-pervasive in the party as people assume, then the BJP when in government would not have strayed so completely from the RSS core agenda, whether on the economy or foreign policy. BJP leaders considered close to the RSS have not necessarily flourished. Murli Manohar Joshi’s hardline Hindutva is far more in tune with RSS thinking and yet it is the more pragmatic and liberal Atal Bihari Vajpayee and the organisationally more savvy L.K. Advani who always grabbed the top slots in both party and government. The umbilical cord which bound the RSS with the Jana Sangh was all too transparent. Smarting from the Congress government’s treatment after Mahatma Gandhi assassination, the RSS felt the need to float a political party to protect its interests. Shyama Prasad Mookerjee was an outsider carefully chosen to lead the JS, but the entire manpower and organisation structure was from the RSS. Vajpayee, Advani and Nanaji Deshmukh were pracharaks loaned to the fledgling party by the mother organisation. In the case of the Jana Sangh’s successor, the BJP, the connecting links have frayed, although not snapped. As the party grew a large numbers of workers and leaders had no link with the RSS. Though even now most senior leaders — whether Advani, Vajpayee, Rajnath Singh, Modi or Jaitley — have risen through the sangh parivar network. Those who have not — like Sushma Swaraj, Varun Gandhi or Yashwant Sinha — realise that for survival in the party it pays to have amicable relations with the RSS bosses. Whenever the BJP is in trouble the RSS is called to bail it out. The RSS is an integral part of most BJP election campaigns. Its cadres take charge of the nitty-gritty of the organisation, whether arranging for microphones or laying out the durries at election rallies. Often the RSS is expected to even produce the audiences. It is not as if the RSS has not taken its pound of flesh in return for favours rendered. One of the most visible instances of RSS suzerainty was at the swearing in of Vajpayee’s first cabinet in 1998 when K.S. Sudershan looked triumphant in the front row and Vajpayee crestfallen since he had been forced to drop Jaswant Singh as finance minister at the eleventh hour at Sudershan’s instance. By his second term in office, however, Vajpayee had mastered the art of dealing with the RSS while charting his own course. He mollified discontents by dispatching RSS veterans to the comfort of Raj Bhavans and by occasionally making noises about the temple at Ayodhya. It was clear that the real centre of power was 7 Race Course Road and not the RSS zonal headquarters at Jhandewalan. After the BJP’s unexpected defeat of 2004, the RSS again began to bare its fangs. Sudershan’s public criticism of Vajpayee and Advani in a ‘Walk the Talk’ interview created a ripple in the entire sangh parivar and many even in the RSS felt that he had overstepped the line. When Advani negated all that the RSS had stood for by describing Jinnah as secular, the RSS came out openly to force a change of guard. Rajnath Singh was appointed party president only with RSS approval. Nevertheless Advani and Vajpayee continue to be the most popular and powerful figures in the BJP even today, and the RSS cannot ignore them. Outsiders who perceive the sarsanghchalak’s position in the RSS to be absolutely supreme are ignorant of its organisational make-up. In the RSS decisions are arrived at through consensus and conclaves. The sarsanghchalak may have the ultimate say, but unlike his taciturn predecessors, who rarely made a public declaration except on Vijaya Dashmi, Sudershan has diminished his own position by speaking too much and out of turn and patronising wrong candidates for promotion even in the BJP. He also has the disadvantage of being more than a decade junior to both Advani and Vajpayee in the sangh parivar, where seniority is respected. Many are not aware that while the sarsanghchalak is the titular head, it is the general secretary who is the hands-on organisational boss. This makes Mohan Bhagwat effectively more powerful than Sudershan. In any case the RSS leadership is not monolithic and does not speak with one voice. If the RSS finds it difficult to have total sway over the BJP today it is because the RSS, like the BJP, is plagued by internal differences. After all, there is a symbiotic relationship between the mother organisation and its most visible offspring.
