Sangh’s backroom boys

Mohanrao Bhagwat: The general secretary is the number two man in the RSS. More in touch with the BJP leadership than Sudarshan himself, the Maharashtrian sarkaryavah took the unprecedented step of repudiating Sudarshan when the RSS head first spoke on TV about the need for the old men of the BJP to resign. A veterinary doctor by profession, he is said to be a Hegdewar lookalike.

Suresh Soni: The RSS joint general secretary — a pracharak from Haryana — shot into the limelight during the Advani-Jinnah episode. RSS chief Sudarshan was travelling, and had asked his lieutenant Mohan Bhagwat to ensure that Advani’s resignation as BJP president was accepted. Mohan Bhagwat put Soni — earlier holding the post of All India Sharirik Shiksha Pramukh — in charge. Soni didn’t deliver, and now the buzz has it that he may lose his job.

Ram Madhav: The media-savvy spokesperson is one of the more prominent faces of the RSS today. Madhav, who used to translate the speeches of Rajju Bhaiyya into Telugu whenever the late RSS chief toured Andhra Pradesh, is fluent in both Hindi and English.

Madan Das Devi: One of the more senior leaders of the RSS, Devi was the interface between the RSS and the BJP. Now that he is ailing, the former chartered accountant’s role has fallen on Suresh Soni. Originally from Visnagar in Gujarat, Devi did a clever balancing act between the BJP and the RSS during the NDA rule.

K. S. Sudarshan: The 74-year-old sarsanghchalak — as the RSS supremo is known in the organisation — took over from Rajju Bhaiyya in March 2000, causing some concern within the then NDA government because of his image as a hardliner. Five years later, Kuppahalli Sitaramayya Sudarshan has conveyed to the NDA that its misgivings were not misplaced.

If there’s a genesis to a start, then it all began in Bangalore six years ago. The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) was holding its national executive meeting in the southern city, and the battle lines between the BJP and the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) were being quietly drawn. It was at one fractious meeting between the two groups ? and many more were to follow in the years to come ? that Lal Krishna Advani spoke about the need for ideological changes.

We must move with the times, Advani suggested to a group of adamant RSS men. Just look at how the communists have changed, he stressed. “The communists did a shirshasana (head-stand),” one of the older RSS leaders scoffed. “Do you want us to do that as well?” Advani ? then still an RSS favourite ? wouldn’t cede ground either. “Ideology needs to be dynamic,” he said.

Six years on ? and before yet another national executive, scheduled to be held in Chennai from July 21 ? the debate is far from over. Instead, what was earlier a matter that was quietly discussed behind closed doors is now like an unending soap. Just when an episode seems to be moving towards a conclusion, a new development breaks out, ensuring continuing debate.

For the RSS, things could never have been this bad. The organisation, known to work behind the scenes, is now involved in what seems like a free-for-all street brawl. The fight is between the RSS and Advani and neither side seems ready to fall into line. The RSS wants Advani out as party president and a new, younger leadership to take up the reins of the BJP. And used as it has always been to dictating terms to the BJP, the RSS doesn’t quite know how to deal with a stubborn Advani who has been refusing to toe its line. “The edifice of the Sangh parivar is based on trust ? and in Advani’s case, that is lost,” says a senior BJP functionary close to the RSS.

Lack of trust

Trust, clearly, is something of a rare commodity in the Sangh parivar today. For long years, the RSS had problems trusting former Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee, but had a comfortable relationship with Advani. Now, RSS chief K. S. Sudarshan’s lack of trust in Advani ? and vice-versa ? threatens to rock the group.

At the crux of it all is the RSS’s intention of making the BJP ? seen to be dangerously straying ? return to the RSS fold. “We want to control the party,” says a senior member of the RSS. “And this is not a feeling that started with Karachi. It’s been there for six years,” he says.

Karachi (where Advani spoke about M.A. Jinnah) ? both the RSS and BJP admit ? was merely a flashpoint. “Karachi was just a pretext to corner Advani,” says a BJP member. But the RSS is convinced that Karachi was the trigger as well. “His behaviour on Pakistani soil was deplorable because for 40 years, no Indian leader has betrayed the nation on foreign soil,” says the BJP functionary with RSS links.

However, long before Advani praised the founder of Pakistan, Jinnah, at his mausoleum during a trip to Pakistan in June this year, the RSS had decided that it needed to first oust him as party president to stake its claim to the party. In April, Sudarshan did something that no RSS leader has ever done before ? in an interview on television, he urged Advani and Vajpayee to make way for a younger team.

One of the problems, clearly, is that of age. Sudarshan’s predecessor, Rajju Bhaiyya, was an old RSS hand who had a relationship of mutual trust with Advani. But there is no love lost between Advani and Sudarshan, who took over the RSS in 2000. And curiously, it is the RSS ? perceived for long years as an organisation run by geriatrics ? that is stressing the need for young blood in the BJP. The RSS points out that within the organisation, similar changes have already been put into effect. “There are 38 provinces in the RSS and the praanth pracharaks are like CEOs. They are all between 40 and 45,” says a functionary.

Even at the top, the leaders are relatively young: Mohan Bhagwat is 53, Suresh Soni less than 60 and Madan Das Devi a little over 60. On the other hand, as another RSS man stresses, by the time elections are held as scheduled in 2009, Advani will be 83 and Vajpayee, 87.

Read between the lines is a message for the BJP’s top brass. “All of us respect Advani’s contribution and we want him to leave honourably,” says the functionary. “But everyone expects him to see the writing on the wall, too.”

The party, the RSS hints, is bigger than the individual. The NDA lost power, it argues, because the BJP moved away from the RSS. And Advani’s decision not to resign ? despite being asked to do so by the RSS ? is a sign, it believes, of the turn the party has taken. “We are for ideology and idealism-driven politics, not power-driven alone,” says RSS spokesperson Ram Madhav.

Toil and trouble

Now that the skeletons are all tumbling out of the RSS’s cupboard, members point out that the RSS has for long been gunning for the BJP president. Trouble started brewing soon after the National Democratic Alliance government (NDA), led by the BJP, formed a government at the Centre in 1998. The RSS saw the BJP as sidelining its principles ? the building of a Ram temple in Ayodhya and a Uniform Civil Code, for instance ? while arguing that the NDA would disintegrate if the government raised contentious matters. “But, within the parameters of coalition politics, we wanted the BJP to propagate our views to the extent possible,” says the RSS leader.

Clearly, there are not many in the RSS who believe that the compulsions of coalition politics forced the BJP to sit on the Sangh’s favourite issues. “Does the proposition that parties have to give up their ideology in order to be part of a coalition apply only to the BJP?” Madhav asks. “Which other party in which other coalition has declared that it will give up its ideology for the sake of the coalition?”

There were other troublesome issues as well. The Swadeshi Jagran Manch, an economic wing of the RSS, was a bitter critic of the NDA government’s policy of economic reforms. The RSS was sceptical of the government’s changing equation with Pakistan. And it saw in Advani an ineffectual home minister who refused to toe the hard line on issues such as Kashmir.

Other minor irritants cropped up from time to time. Old RSS men, used to summoning the BJP to its headquarters in Nagpur, or at the Delhi office in Jhandewalan, suddenly found themselves waiting in reception rooms at the Prime Minister’s Office or residence. The RSS suggested that every BJP minister keep an RSS man as an officer on special duty for easy communication between the RSS and the BJP. Few complied. “Put together, these small irritants became a big issue,” says the RSS leader.

There are some in the RSS who believe that despite being in governance for six years, the BJP did little to make the RSS happy. A functionary points out that the last BJP campaigns that the RSS supported were those undertaken when the NDA did not exist. “The landmark events, from the RSS’s viewpoint, took place when the Congress was in power ? such as the Ekatmata Yatra (against cow slaughter), shilanyas in Ayodhya, the opening of the locks of the structure,” says the RSS member.

There is a growing feeling in the RSS that the NDA rule did nothing to help the organisation. “Even when Pokhran and Kargil happened, the credit was hogged by Advani and Vajpayee, the RSS was forgotten,” says the RSS member. “The RSS gained nothing.”

For the RSS, it’s now a make-or-break situation. “There is a serious rethink within the RSS on whether it should continue its relations with the BJP or not because the feeling is that the purpose for which the Jan Sangh was formed has been defeated,” says the RSS functionary. The RSS is also discussing the option of pulling out its 25 pracharaks loaned to the BJP.

Changing base

There is a section within the RSS which even thinks that the RSS support-base could be transferred. “There is a strong base of nationalist-minded Hindus all over the country. They will not vote for anyone whom the RSS rejects. Our rationale is that with this support, we can do business with any party which agrees to safeguard our interests,” says an RSS functionary.

For the Nagpur-based organisation to survive, it believes the time has come to effect changes. “The Sangh feels that with the BJP out of power, this is the right time to have a mid-course correction,” the functionary says. If the BJP feels coalition politics is a reality and ideology will have to be diluted, then the RSS is ready to snap its ties.”

Not many believe that the situation will reach such a pass, but the battle for supremacy continues. The RSS wants Advani out before or at the Chennai session, and is concerned that a meeting of RSS and BJP leaders, usually held before every national executive meet, is not being convened this time.

Advani, on the other hand, is not ready to budge as well. He is said to have turned down a suggestion from a section of the BJP to postpone the Chennai meet to avoid a face-off. “That will be like admitting defeat,” he says.