Narendra Modi, Sushil Kumar Modi

New Delhi, July 4: One Modi was the show-stopper, the other came without any fanfare.

The Gujarat chief minister was the scene-stealer at the wedding reception hosted by BJP president Nitin Gadkari for his son on Monday at the capital’s Ashoka Hotel as several guests jostled their way to reach him. They touched his feet, got his autograph and clicked pictures with him.

That he had emerged as a power centre unto himself was reinforced when he ensconced himself on a sofa, slightly away from the high table seating L.K. Advani and Sushma Swaraj in a VVIP enclosure. Two general secretaries were glued to Modi as sundry functionaries, MPs and MLAs genuflected and then went to Advani.

The BJP’s other Modi, Bihar’s deputy chief minister, arrived and departed in virtual anonymity. “Here comes the secular Modi, the favourite of the capital’s secular journalists,” quipped a party official when Sushil Kumar Modi walked in well after the Gujarat Modi left.

When Narendra Modi arrived at the power-packed social do with Suresh Soni in tow, it was intentional.

By now it’s a given that the Gujarat leader hates sharing his walking, talking and living space with anyone, however obscure the person may be. And Soni’s name barely rings a bell outside of the RSS “parivar”.

But for Gujarat’s Modi, the togetherness with Soni at the wedding reception was a political statement aimed at his party and the RSS clan at large.

Soni is the RSS’s sah-sarkaryawah, its joint general secretary that places him third in the hierarchy. The buzz in the Sangh was even after Modi solicited the blessings of sarsangchalak Mohanrao Bhagwat and his deputy Suresh Joshi for his prime ministerial aspirations, Soni wasn’t taken up with the idea.

Indeed, the first display of disaffection on Narendra Modi’s ambition surfaced in the BJP’s in-house journal, Kamal Sandesh. The editor, Prabhat Jha, is supposed to be close to Joshi and often acted as Rajnath Singh’s conduit to him when Singh headed the BJP. Those familiar with the “parivar’s” internal intrigues deduced that the edit couldn’t have gone if Soni hadn’t green-flagged it.

So did the chief minister unbundle the reservations he harbours about the Sangh and visit its Delhi headquarters at Jhandewalan before the reception? “It’s possible,” said a “swayamsevak”, adding, “The idea was to tell the BJP that the RSS stands united behind him.”

Narendra Modi’s politics — that thrives on symbols and signals, created and tweaked entirely to give himself heft — is now focused on rectifying the perception that his relations with the RSS are patchy.

On Tuesday, the news that three veteran Gujarat pracharaks — Bhaskarrao Damle, Narendra Panchasar and Ramesh Gupta — were eased out of the RSS’s state executive panel because they were “anti-Modi” left several swayamsevaks stupefied.

“They were dropped because they were old and infirm and incapable of discharging even the small jobs they were assigned and not because of Modi,” a swayamsevak stressed, off record.

However, he admitted that Damle, 90-plus, was “close” to Modi’s bete noire, Keshubhai Patel, and attended the meetings convened by BJP rebel Gordhan Zadaphia.

Damle also spearheaded the agitations against the Narendra Modi government’s land acquisitions. “He was a thorn in Modi’s flesh so the ouster suits him. However, that was not the RSS’s idea. But Modi’s spin doctors projected the episode as his victory,” a source said.

Sangh sources said Sushil Modi too had done the Jhandewalan parikrama (perambulation) but the purported visit couldn’t be independently confirmed.

Even if Sushil Modi had, BJP sources said he had “reasons” to given the backdrop of the BJP’s uneven equations with ally Janata Dal (United) and Modi’s own comments against the Gujarat chief minister. “He has to prove that he remains a loyal swayamsevak,” a source said of the “secular” Modi who began his career in the Sangh.

The BJP’s ministers and MLAs from Bihar rubbed the point that the “secular-communal” debate, instigated by Nitish Kumar’s demand for a “secular” leader to lead the NDA and Sushil Modi’s endorsement, had rankled them. They lustily cheered the Gujarat Modi.

In this make-or-mar moment in the BJP’s history — it needs a leader like Narendra Modi for a chin-up but an excessive projection might shrink the scope of its alliances — ironically both the Modis need the RSS on their side. Even though they are presumed to stand on different sides of an ideological breach.