RSS-BJP Struggle for Hindu Hridaya Samrat Intensifies | Arun Srivastava

MARXISTS, COMMUNISTS AND those who claim to be ardent followers of Marxist-Leninist ideology ought to take a few lessons from the latest RSS action; dump Narendra Modi – the public face of the saffron ecosystem – to protect and preserve the basic philosophy of the politics of Hindutva. Modi though, during his ten years of rule, put his best efforts out to prepare the ground for hastening the RSS mission of turning India into a Hindu Rashtra, the parent organisation disapproves of his outright political line of radicalised Hindutva. For the sake of the philosophical line of the organisation, the RSS is not even hesitant to oust Modi from the oragnisation.

The battle for dominance between Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath and his deputy Keshav Prasad Maurya, a protégé of the Modi-Shah duo, is the prelude to the ‘big fight’ between Narendra Modi and RSS Chief Mohan Bhagwat for the coveted crown of ‘Hindu Hridaya Samrat’. The nasty mauling that the BJP suffered in the Lok Sabha elections – Hindus refusing to responding to his call to put 400 seats in his kitty – makes it clear that he has ceased to be the Hindutva icon. It is quite interesting to discover that only 11 per cent of the Hindu votes supported the BJP’s Hindu Rashtra agenda. The other 25 per cent, out of 35 per cent votes that the party got, were either for development or for Modi, the individual.   

With RSS leadership determined to find a replacement to Narendra Modi, lieutenants of Modi have adopted an aggressive posture, no doubt at his dictate. They have declared war against BJP leaders close to the RSS. So much so, RSS Chief Mohan Bhagwat, who till now had given Modi a long rope, has decided that Modi must go.

It is quite significant that only on 18 July did Bhagwat publicly observed at a village-level cadre meet in Gumla of Jharkhand, that ‘man wants to become Superman and even Bhagwan (god)’. As usual he did not name Modi directly, but political observers are in no doubt it was sure that the self-anointed, non-biological Modi was his focus.

Bhagwat’s views, ‘is there ever an end to progress? Development is such a thing that once we reach it, we realise we can go further. When we reach our goal, we see that there is still more to go… man then wants to become a superman… in movies they show Superman who has extraordinary powers. So, a human wants to have such power… but he doesn’t stop there. He then wants to become a Dev. But Devtas say Bhagwan is bigger than us, so then he wants to become Bhagwan’, has wider implication.

Primarily, Modi himself has been responsible for this situation. His non-political advisers like Amit Shah, who is unfamiliar with the concept of basic political alchemy, has made him dream that he is the maker of the destiny of the crores of Indians. So much so, he even dared to challenge the authority of the RSS. After the Lok Sabha elections, the chasm between the BJP and RSS further widened. His arrogance was manifest in party chief J P Nadda’s statement that the BJP does not need the RSS. Narendra Modi, yet to come out of the autocratic hangover, has posed a serious threat to his own political survival, eroding the relevance of the BJP. Now it may sound an overstatement, but it is tomorrow’s reality that Modi is facing the greatest danger to his political life from the RSS.

The Hindus have sent a clear and loud message that Modi is not acceptable to them. He failed to judge the Hindu psyche. The average Hindu has never been part of a violent community. Since its formation in 1925, the RSS has been desperately trying to inculcate a sense of aggression and turn the community violent, but it has not succeeded. In the 2024 Lok Sabha elections, Dalits, backwards and minorities who constitute 80 per cent of the population felt that Modi was taking the country to a dangerous direction, and dumped him. 

The RSS did not object to Modi becoming the prime minister for the third time; though he was not elected by the members of the BJP parliamentary party, the RSS did not object. It still nursed the hope that Modi would realise the implication of the shifting of the support base. But he refused to take lessons from the defeat and his arrogance and autocratic narratives continue to dictate the saffron ecosystem.

It would be wrong to construe that the RSS, the BJP and Modi are different. Absolutely not. All the three continue to have one common cord – the anti-Muslim politics. For RSS the only primary requirement was that its politics of Hindutva must not be radicalised. It was radicalisation and excessive use of violence that ultimately led to decimation of Hitler’s autocratic rule. RSS held that in the hurry to project himself as the undisputed leader of the Hindus, Modi was radicalising Hindutva. He was using it for immediate gains. RSS was absolutely clear in its perception that Hindutva must not be given a bad name.

In his quest to become God, Modi continued to bulldoze his opponents. The RSS way was slow but steady indoctrination and isolating the Other by insinuations and insidiously. In this backdrop, RSS is left with no other alternative, but to defeat Modi on his own turf. It was more than coincidence that on the same day Yogi openly challenged Modi and his authority by replacing the chief secretary loyal to Modi, by his own favourite Manoj Singh.

In a shrewed move, to project himself as the true benefactor of Hindus, Aditynath  issued a directive that all shopowners, especially the roadside vendors, hawkers and petty cartowners, on the kanwaria routes (a sectarian pilgrimage route), had to display their names for the public while the Kanwarias would be on their way to perform Jalabhishek of Lord Shiva. Immediately, allegations surfaced, as expected, that this was to identify the Muslim vendors on this pilgrimage pathway. Adityanath presumed, Hindus would be happy. The answer furnished by a State official that ‘it was done to avoid confusion’ is certainly not tenable.

Of course,  Yogi resorted to this tactics to outwit Modi and refurbish his image of being a true crusader for Hindutva. His action was construed as a kind of ‘Economic Jehad’ against the Muslims as in In UP, Uttarakhand and Haryana, Muslim vendors have traditionally served all Hindu pilgrimage routes and this was seen as positive action against the Muslim traders and vendors. However, what actually was the reality was, this was a State government order from 2010, not implemented so long. The Adintyanath government had decided to implement the decision. With the courts stepping in to stay the ‘name display order’, peace has now returned to the matter for the time being.

Meanwhile, to bring peace between the pro-RSS lobby and the pro-Modi lobby in State and Union governments, a meeting of both factions was convened on July 20 by joint general secretary, Arun Kumar. However, the meeting was cancelled as BJP leaders from the Modi camp leaked the information to the media before the meeting. A senior RSS leader said, ‘the RSS wanted this meeting to be a secret but the BJP leaders spilled the information. The Sangh doesn’t want to appear like a peacemaker between BJP leaders who have been fighting and blaming each other for the party’s sliding popularity graph in the heartland.’

Arun Kumar had especially summoned Yogi Adityanath, Deputy CM Keshav Prasad Maurya, Second Deputy CM Brajesh Pathak and BJP State President Bhupendra Chaudhary to the meeting. Apart from these names, some State-level officials were also instructed to attend the meeting. Yogi Adityanath had, in fact, canceled all his programmes to attend this meeting. But sensing the mood of RSS leaders and the CM, Modi loyalists preferred to engineer a cancellation which will, for the time being, stop a critical analysis of the failures and fallacies of Modi and his aide Amit Shah.

Yogi was ready with documents and evidences to prove his charges against Modi and Shah of plotting against him. For public consumption, it was said that the meeting was postponed as the RSS leadership did not want news between the Sangh and the government to be published in the media. The RSS also did not intend to send the message among the people that it favoured one particular group or leader. It wants to maintains the façade of neutrality.

The most important reason for postponing the meeting was the fear that RSS will lose face in case supporters of Modi did not agree to its suggestions and abide by its decisions. A negative message would then go out to the people that Modi has challenged the authority of the RSS.

Postponement of the meet saved Modi and Shah from public humiliation. A detail deliberation would have exposed their machination to project Yogi as a failed ruler and a casteist leader. The importance of the cancelled meeting increased when Modi loyalists and Yogi supporters engaged in public outrage. The RSS leaders had already arrived in Lucknow. But the meeting was postponed at the last minute. It is believed that the Modi loyalists kept away at the instructions of Amit Shah.

The RSS intervention has not saved the situation completely. The mission of the RSS to review the disappointing performance of the BJP in the Lok Sabha elections has not succeeded yet. No one can say when the next meeting will be held. But Yogi struck fast and first, even before Modi loyalists could comprehend the situation. 

Senior leaders point out that Amit Shah has been primarily responsible for creation of this crisis, endangering the position of his master Modi. For last five years, he has been busy conspiring against Yogi and trying to replace Yogi with his favourite, Keshav Maurya, the deputy chief minister. But Yogi, enjoying the support of the RSS leaders, continues to remain in office. Though not a RSS cadre, his hard Hindu posture and his maintaining sanctity and purity in personal life has helped him earn RSS favour. He is not only a diehard Muslim hater, but he is known to nurse apathy towards other Hindu castes, especially upper caste Brahmins and Bhumihars.

BJP has not only lost 37 seats, this defeat has been a serious set back for RSS. In the existing situation, it would be a tough task for it to execute its plan for expansion. In a tactical move, the RSS has tried to send the message, ‘it works for shaping public opinion  and does not get directly involved in elections, and that’s what the RSS has done this time too. (Sangh lagataar lokmat parishkar ka kaam karta hai aur seedhe chunaav ke karyon mein nahi lagta hai, aur woh kaam is baar bhi kiya hai.)’

As if this was not enough, for the first time during his month long functioning Narendra Modi has received a warning from his ally partners, Nitsh Kumar, Chirag Paswan and Jayant Choudhary to refrain from indulging in hate politics and keep the saffron vigilantes and cadres under check. The dictate of the UP government to the road-side shop owners in western UP has forced these leaders to caution Modi. Of course, they have their own political considerations, but they have told Modi in plain words that perpetuating this kind of politics would prove costly for him. The JD(U) of Nitish, LJP of Chirag Paswan and RLD of Jayant Chodhary are dependent on Muslim support for their political survival and certainly they will not sacrifice their future for Modi’s benefit. These leaders also wonder how could Modi not take lessons from the BJP failure in the Lok Sabha elections.

A senior JD(U) leader nursed the view that Amit Shah, more than Modi, has been responsible for creation of this situation. As Home Minister, he could have asked the UP chief minister, to be more circumspect. But he preferred to keep mum, obviously to show himself as the one who protects Hindu aspiration. The JDU leader also said that BJP leaders are resorting to this kind of politics just ahead of the assembly elections to Haryana, Jharkhand and Maharashtra, purely with the intentions to polarise the Hindus of these States in favour of the BJP.

Maurya, with the intentions of lowering the image of Yogi amongst the ground-level party cadres and supporters, had directly blamed Yogi and his ‘apathy’ towards party workers for the BJP’s seat loss this time in contrast to 62 seats in 2019. He had said that government officials had become too powerful under Yogi and were ignoring ruling-party workers. To exert the supremacy of Modi and Shah, Maurya had also said, ‘the organisation is always bigger than the government’, looking to obliquely blame Adityanath for the BJP’S electoral setback in Uttar Pradesh. His comments were believed to have the endorsement of the central leadership which was keen to be rid of the chief minister.

Insiders say that the RSS will now take its own independent stand and course.

[Edited by Papri Sri Raman]