At war: (Clockwise from far left) L.K. Advani, Nitin Gadkari, Ram Jethmalani, Yashwant Sinha and Shatrughan Sinha

A leader of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) — back in those days when the word dissidence did not exist in its lexicon — put it well. The party, ideologue K.R. Malkani used to say then, would swat a rebel with the flick of its fingers — “like squashing a fly in a glass of milk”. The flies are now buzzing around the party, creating a racket that the party has seldom heard. A week after a television channel unspooled the saga of party president Nitin Gadkari’s Nagpur-based company, Purti, and its “ghost” subsidiaries, with his chauffeur, a baker and family members being on the boards of these companies, heavyweight Member of Parliament Ram Jethmalani urged him to step down to stop the BJP from taking a “suicidal course”.

Former finance minister Yashwant Sinha has publicly aired his views against Gadkari, as has former actor and minister Shatrughan Sinha. Now Jagdish Shettigar has lent his voice to the clamour. Shettigar, an economist, is seldom heard. But when he speaks, he is taken seriously by the BJP’s parent body, the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS). Former dissident Jaswant Singh’s baritone may be missing, but the rebels have named him as a part of the group that’s unhappy with Gadkari’s reign.

Had the fulminations been spewed just by the Jethmalanis — father Ram and son Mahesh — the BJP maintains that it could have lived with it. “They are not vote catchers, they don’t have the charisma to enthrall a crowd, they lack a caste identity,” an office bearer says.

But Jethmalani senior chose his words with care when he attacked Gadkari. The three BJP seniors — Yashwant Sinha, Shatrughan Sinha and Jaswant Singh who, he said, were on the “same wave length” as him — cannot be ignored by the party high command. Yashwant, a former finance and foreign minister, is still the most articulate speaker the BJP has in the Lok Sabha. Shatrughan’s a crowd puller and his daughter, Sonakshi, already a Bollywood A-star, is expected to join the BJP soon or at least campaign for it. Jaswant has Yashwant’s profile and brings his own cachet to global diplomacy.

Clearly, the BJP is in trouble. State elections are being held across the country, and the general elections are slated to be held in 2014. And the party — instead of honing its armoury for the polls — is caught in a spreading web of dissidence.

The party leadership, and the hold that the RSS has over it, is in a shambles. In the first place, never has the central leadership been this vulnerable — and never have state leaders been this powerful.

“I will not be exaggerating when I say that our regional satraps, whether in power or out of it, have outgrown the central leaders,” says a party leader speaking on the condition of anonymity. “(Gujarat chief minister) Narendra Modi, (Madhya Pradesh chief minister) Shivraj Singh Chouhan and (Chhattisgarh chief minister) Raman Singh have won two terms, and Modi’s on his way to securing a third mandate,” he says.

He points out that the regional leaders are helping to keep many of the central leaders afloat in national politics. Modi underwrites Advani’s victory from the Gandhinagar Lok Sabha seat. Gujarat also sends Arun Jaitley to the Rajya Sabha while Sushma Swaraj’s win from Vidisha (Madhya Pradesh) is facilitated by Chouhan.

Elsewhere too, regional leaders are flexing their muscles. Former Karnataka chief minister B.S. Yeddyurappa, ousted from the chief ministership on graft charges, is on the warpath. Yeddyurappa — who, his detractors acknowledge, built the BJP up in Karnataka and delivered to it its first government in south India — resigned from the BJP on Friday to start a regional party. BJP sources fear that he might ensure its rout in state elections next year.

In the northwest, Vasundhara Raje, the charismatic Rajasthan leader, nearly emulated Yeddyurappa when Gadkari and the RSS attempted to undermine her clout by propping up a parallel power entity. She retaliated with a show of strength that attracted a majority of the BJP MLAs and nearly split the party before Gadkari worked out a truce.

In the heartland, where the BJP has shrunk rapidly after the Ram Mandir high, former Uttar Pradesh chief minister Kalyan Singh, a poster boy of the 90s, is about to rejoin the party after a spell outside. But realising the BJP needs him more (he is a backward caste leader and a Hindutva symbol) than he needs it, Kalyan is dictating pre-conditions that include powerful organisational positions for his son and grandson.

For those like Kalyan and Yeddyurappa life outside the “saffron brotherhood” was previously unthinkable. Today, their confidants say they question the RSS’s “moral halo”.

The RSS once ruled over the BJP with an iron hand. But the coming of the National Democratic Alliance, and the ascendancy of party leaders such as Atal Behari Vajpayee and L.K. Advani, clipped the RSS’s wings over the years. The retirement of Vajpayee and the marginalisation of Advani have led to the re-emergence of the RSS. In the last few years, it has once again been calling the shots. Gadkari, for instance, is being backed by the RSS.

“The RSS is frustrated because its shakhas (camps) are virtually non-existent and its membership has dwindled. The BJP is its only gateway to power politics. So under Gadkari, it has appropriated the party like never before,” a source says.

In the BJP’s formative years, the RSS had to reckon with the stewardship of formidable personalities such as Vajpayee and Advani. For a while, Advani tried to confront the RSS through his loosely-banded quartet of Jaitley, Swaraj, Karnataka leader Ananth Kumar and Andhra’s Venkaiah Naidu — known as the “Dilli Four”. His exertions never took off because the Dilli Four was at war with itself, each striving to be the first among equals.

Today, the RSS has openly been intervening in the party. Instead of one organising secretary — who in the past used to be the Sangh’s eyes and ears in the BJP — the RSS now has four secretaries: Ramlal, Soudhan Singh, V. Satish and Murlidhar Rao. Two of the party general secretaries — J.P. Nadda and Dharmendra Pradhan — are from the RSS’s student front, and a third, Thanwar Chand Gehlot, is of Sangh vintage. The eighth to represent the RSS in the party is Bhupendra Yadav. They are said to constitute Gadkari’s “core” team but nobody can vouch for their real loyalty. “Sometimes (they are) with the RSS, at times with Modi, now and then Jaitley. Who can say,” a cynical leader says.

The remark underlines an important development: that despite the supposed “take-over”, the RSS’s authority is not what it used to be. Many blame RSS chief Mohanrao Bhagwat and his unbridled support of Gadkari, after the corruption charges, for the “erosion” in its position as the pater familias.

December is when the contours of how the BJP shapes up in the run-up to the 2014 elections are expected to emerge. “We hope the Sitaram Kesri period will end,” an office-bearer says, alluding to how the Congress unravelled under Kesri’s presidency with the departure of stalwarts such as Mamata Banerjee and Mani Shankar Aiyer.

The Congress was salvaged by the emergence of Sonia Gandhi. Who will be the BJP’s saviour? The party’s waiting with bated breath for December 20 when the Gujarat verdict will be out. Should Modi acquit himself for a third time then “there’s no stopping him”, says a party leader. “We will demand that Narendrabhai be brought to the Centre,” says a young MP.

But there are doubts over whether the RSS, after a hard-fought battle to reclaim ownership of the BJP, will cede the space to a larger-than-life persona like Modi. The buzz in party corridors is that the RSS, in a bid to regain its lost glory and stem dissidence, will not insist upon Gadkari being given a second term as party president when his term ends on December 19.

In the coming weeks it will become clear whether the party is going to continue on its “suicidal” path — or try and salvage itself.