Opinion Drawing a line
Modi-led BJP must ensure RSS is kept out of government formation, and seen to be kept out too.
Modi-led BJP must ensure RSS is kept out of government formation, and seen to be kept out too.
A new government is taking shape, the choices for important portfolios are being deliberated on, and the spotlight is on prime minister designate Narendra Modi and senior BJP leaders. Many of these negotiations, though, appear to be happening under the auspices of the RSS. Of course, both the BJP and RSS have denied that the latter directs or remote-controls any decision on the government. But for Modi and his party, this is a testing moment. They must remember that the disaffection that felled the UPA had much to do with the smudging of the lines of accountability, the sense that authority was divided at the top of its government and that there was a centre of power without responsibility outside it. While a Modi government is unlikely to invite similar apprehensions — given that a muscular decisiveness is seen to be an important part of his appeal — there is still room, perhaps, for a cautionary note: the RSS should not just be kept out of matters of government, it must be seen to be kept out too.
It is possible that the RSS has contributed to Modi’s victory. In this election, across the country, its cadre visibly threw itself into active campaigning, mobilising discontent against the previous government, pitching strongly for Modi. It did this not out of personal affection for Modi — in fact, his unstoppable rise in the BJP was initially feared and even resisted by RSS seniors who saw it as a take-over by a personality cult — but arguably because it sensed that he was the best hope to propel the BJP into power. As they prepare to form government, however, Modi and his party must draw the lines visibly. The Sangh may be the ideological mothership, but this massive mandate for the BJP was not, in any sense, an endorsement of the jaded and backward looking beliefs of the men in Nagpur. It was a vote for the promise of good governance and the vision of development Modi projected so persuasively.
As chief minister of Gujarat, Modi had put a clear distance between the state and the BJP’s sibling organisations. He had resisted their attempt to infiltrate institutions or impose their cultural agenda, and he had won. Now he must allay fears about any pressure from or patronage to the Sangh at the Centre.
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