No longer any family secrets

That is how the BJP remained in power for six years. Why does a Karunanidhi or Mamta reject the RSS but accept Vajpayee, an RSS product? This needs some history. Pandit Nehru, the most popular leader after Gandhiji, had almost made it his personal agenda to finish off the RSS. He outlawed it and turned it into a political untouchable, though later he did partly make amends and invite the organisation to participate in the Republic Day parade in 1963. Later, however, Indira Gandhi unleashed a war on the RSS. From then on abusing the RSS became the political index of one’s commitment to secularism and minorities. This is how minority-centric politics began demonising the RSS in the public domain. Yet, the organisation grew in strength every time the government banned it. Nevertheless, the wrong perceptions created about the RSS continued to affect its larger acceptability.

This is where the political work of RSS through the Bharatiya Jana Sangh, later the BJP did the churning for the Sangh. RSS’s increasing strength manifested in the growth of the BJS/BJP which competitive politics could not ignore. A CPI had to partner the Jana Sangh in Bihar in 1960s. Along with the BJP the CPM had to support the VP Singh government in 1990 when the Ram temple movement was at its peak. Thus the BJS/BJP proved a rewarding investment for the Sangh.

But in 1998 a new situation emerged. It was the other way round, the BJP getting others’ support to rule. That is their tacit acceptance of the RSS and soft landing of the RSS in national life. The only man who could achieve this for the RSS, and did it, was Vajpayee. He admitted many times he was a Swayamsevak at heart. But he was an admirer of Pandit Nehru too. He was comfortable with both, though others saw this as a contradiction in him. He understood that the reality of the RSS was different from the perceptions about it.So as a personal political alternative he carefully cultivated a trans-RSS image. This is what helped to lure allies to the BJP later. Just as the BJP needed Vajpayee to secure the allies, the allies also needed Vajpayee as an excuse to support the BJP.

But this also forced the BJP to reformulate its agenda to suit his image – thus undermining the very political escalator of the BJP, the Ram temple movement. The complex nature of the coalition stalled the Ayodhya agenda, disappointed the RSS cadre. Added to that, the performance of some BJP ministers did not do RSS proud. The RSS, which was seeking an alternative political culture, found it difficult to digest this. Had the RSS expectations been more moderate, the disappointment levels would have been considerably less. Greater expectations only meant more disappointment. So the Vajpayee government lost many loyal friends. The BJP had to pay this political cost for leveraging on Vajpayee.

Sudarshan was giving open expression to the views of thousands of disappointed ideological loyalists. Here he was perhaps right. Yes, the Sangh family had also to pay its share of ideological cost to keep the BJP in power. But it also gained substantially in terms of popular acceptance transcending its ideological confines. It opened up for the RSS constituencies denied to it by the political establishment, for interaction with the world at large. Those ideologically different from the RSS also understood the necessity to work with it, handle it, thus ending its isolation and increasing its general acceptability. For an organisation that aims to build the nation into a global power, larger acceptability beyond its ideological fault lines is crucial to accomplish its mission. So the wider acceptability which the RSS gains through political process is thus critical for the RSS agenda.

The RSS does not seem fully conscious of the vital contribution that the BJP makes here to the RSS agenda. This is what Sudarshan’s remark on BJP and Vajpayee confirms. But more critically the incident also undermines the functioning of the RSS and allied organisations as an ideological family. The adherents of RSS and parivar regard theirs as a large conglomerate of mass and class organisations working for national resurgence subsuming narrow interests. In a country which has a historic impulse to disunite, the RSS parivar is a welcome contrast. In this sense the Sangh work is building an alternative behavioural model which may prove a national asset in this competitive world.

Its work of character building and nation building should not be impeded. Will the fallout of Sudarshan’s remarks be this realisation in the Sangh family? Will they introspect?

The writer can be contacted at comment@gurumurthy.net