Stand up to the RSS

There are times in a political party8217;s life when it must make a momentous decision. At other times a momentous decision is forced upon ...

There are times in a political party8217;s life when it must make a momentous decision. At other times a momentous decision is forced upon a party. L.K. Advani8217;s BJP finds itself visited by the latter predicament today. Instead of shrinking into frantic huddles to devise firefighting stratagems, the party8217;s senior leadership would do well to grasp the gauntlet the RSS has uninhibitedly flung at it in full public view. RSS chief K.S. Sudershan8217;s statements in an interview to The Indian Express Editor-in-chief Shekhar Gupta on NDTV8217;s Walk the Talk programme are an unsubtle declaration of overweening power 8212; power over the BJP. At twenty-five, the BJP is certainly old enough to prick the RSS8217;s bubble.

Should the BJP summon the resolve, it may discover something that has been staring it in the face awhile 8212; that the future, and political possibility, is on its side. In the standard story so far, the BJP8217;s rise and rise to a position of strength in the Indian polity is eventually traced back to its being born of the RSS. The party8217;s future growth is painted as being dependent on the umbilical cord that keeps it intimately entwined with the RSS. This narrative calls for urgent re-imagining. It has been inadequately acknowledged, even by the BJP itself, just how much the BJP has grown beyond the RSS. The political party that clawed its way up from that infamous 2-seat tally in 1984 has done so primarily by enlarging its repertoire. It has now expanded well beyond that early ideologically-charged and exclusivist call to arms which pandered to the RSS worldview of a Hindu community in incessant and fearful ferment. It now notably includes the skills of sober bargaining and astute negotiation with other parties and points of view that the party has picked up under Vajpayee8217;s stewardship of the NDA. It also includes, happily, a whole new vocabulary with which to articulate and debate matters of policy and governance. Today, the BJP is a political party that has been in power and knows that to rule again in a complex and diverse polity like India, it must keep reaching out. It must maintain soft borders.

The BJP should also realise that a full-fledged political party cannot support a centre of gravity that is outside of itself. As a ruling party, it can only fuel speculation of extra-constitutional centres of power to its own detriment. There is every reason, then, political as well as pragmatic, to show the RSS its place in this moment of crisis that the RSS has thrust upon it. If the BJP chooses not to do so still, it will be seen as a confession: the BJP does not see itself as a modern political party in its own right.