Family feuds

Once again discordant noises are emanating from within the Sangh Parivar, with the RSS sarsanghchalak, K.S. Sudarshan, making some very unambiguous statements in an interview he gave to a TV channel recently. Apart from reiterating his known displeasure over the Vajpayee government8217;s position on economic liberalisation, his comments concerned those very issues that were regarded as contentious and which had been deliberately relegated to the back burner after the NDA experiment was embarked upon. From the scrapping of Article 370 to the building of the Ram mandir at Ayodhya, this is well-trodden territory. The sarsanghchalak certainly knows the constraints the BJP faces with regard to these issues. That he chose to go ahead nevertheless and air his differences so openly indicates the impatience that has become increasingly more manifest after Sudarshan, a known hardliner, took over the RSS leadership some months ago.

The signals from Nagpur over the last few weeks have, of course, been unequivocal in their clarity. Not only had the Swadeshi Jagran Manch, regarded as the economic wing of the RSS, registered its acute displeasure over the government8217;s economic policies in its conclave in Agra, it went one step ahead and stated that it intended to mobilise public opinion against them. The RSS too had held a recent council meeting at Ahmedabad in which it is believed to have made a detailed analysis of the current political situation. Thus far, the organisation had confined itself to trying to influence government policy through private audiences and personal contacts. Now, from all indications, it hopes to play a much more pro-active role, if Sudarshan is to be taken at his word. As he put it, 8220;If it felt that certain policies were not correct, the RSS would take these issues to the people.8221; For an organisation that makes no pretense of being democratic and is not, in any way, accountable to the people of this country, tospeak of 8220;taking issues to the people8221; is being ingenious, to say the least.

The BJP has chosen to, politely but firmly, put the RSS in place and quite rightly so. After all, ultimately, it has to answer only the people who voted it in and its partners in government. Party spokesman Venkaiah Naidu, while acknowledging the RSS8217;s right to voice its views, categorically stated that as part of a coalition, the BJP was not obliged to agree with it. It seems the BJP leadership has at long last realised that heading a complex coalition like the NDA requires extraordinary restraint. BJP president, Kushabhau Thakre, when asked whether the National Conference government should be dismissed for having passed the resolution on autonomy, even remarked that if two brothers quarrel it is not proper that one of them should be thrown out of the home. This is a sentiment quite removed from the one that Nagpur has been expressing. This new note of autonomy, vis-a-vis the RSS, that the BJP has sounded is all to the good. In a fast-paced, forward-looking world, any political party ambitious about itsfuture cannot afford to be shackled by organisations that remain impervious to change.