Mohanrao Bhagwat (second from left) and Sushil Kumar Modi at a programme organised by Dadhichi Deh Daan Samiti at the Patna planetarium on Monday. Picture by Nagendra Kumar Singh

New Delhi, July 22: RSS “sarsanghachalak” Mohanrao Bhagwat sermonised on what an ideal Indian leader should be.

According to him, a leader who “not only performs” but is capable of leading every section of the population that has “varied cultural roots”, including the “mutthi bhar” (handful) of those whose ancestors might have been “invaders” (read Muslims).

Bhagwat’s discourse, that was delivered on Sunday in Patna to the RSS cadre, was treated as a straight message to Narendra Modi because it emphasised three points: the kind of leader India expected in an ambience marked by “disappointment and hope”, his ability to perform, deliver on his promises and catapult India to a “mahashakti” (superpower) pinnacle and above all, his skill in carrying the country’s diverse social and religious groups.

Sangh and BJP sources said now that Bhagwat and his colleagues had unambiguously placed the command for the 2014 elections under Modi, despite persistent resistance from L.K. Advani and Sushma Swaraj, they had taken it on themselves to ensure that the Gujarat chief minister did not trip up even before taking off properly.

Lately, a string of controversial statements from Modi pushed the BJP on the defensive. Even savvy spokespersons such as Ravi Shankar Prasad flubbed their lines when they were cornered on TV about the “kutte ka bachcha” analogy.

Read together with Modi’s remark about the Congress donning a “burqa of secularism” when in trouble and his assertions of his “Hindu and nationalist” antecedents, the message was he was returning to his RSS ideological moorings and moving away from the development and governance trajectory he had mapped for himself before moving to Delhi.

Media commentators of the “liberal” but right-of-centre genre, who were warming up to the Gujarat CM because of his economics and business agenda, were left cold by the “puppy” kind of gaffes. BJP sources admitted that it was not good enough that Modi merely pandered to their core voters. “He has to expand and expand by tapping a youthful and aspirational class that has no time for the Sangh’s old shibboleths,” a young BJP office-bearer said.

Bhagwat offered a way out for Modi. In Patna, he said: “If there is hope, there is also disappointment. If the scene is white, it is also black. The country needs one leader who delivers and performs and is also able to take along with him all sections of society.”

Bhagwat went on to say that such an “ek nayak” (single leader) needs to be possessed with the “sarvagun sampanna” (all the attributes and virtues of a model leader). He, added the RSS chief, should be capable of leading a people whose ancient credo was “unity in diversity” that had a place for even the “mutthi bhar” of “invaders”.

In his speech, though, he did not name Modi ostensibly to keep up the Sangh’s façade of being “non-political” and staying off the BJP’s affairs.