North, East, West secured, BJP-RSS gaze turns southward via Telangana, Karnataka

Insiders sought to underline the combine’s organisational and electoral focus on the two southern states through back-to-back visits by Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Union Home Minister Amit Shah within days of the BJP’s success in West Bengal and its retaining the reins in Assam and Puducherry in the recent Assembly elections.

In Karnataka, both Modi and Shah underscored the legacy of Lingayat stalwart and senior BJP leader B S Yediyurappa in Bengaluru on May 9, exhorting party workers to “make the lotus bloom in Karnataka”. Yediyurappa is a former four-time Chief Minister of Karnataka.

A day later, as the Vijay-led Tamilaga Vettri Kazhagham (TVK)’s Cabinet was being sworn-in in Tamil Nadu, Modi visited Telangana, which the BJP has never been able to electorally conquer since the state’s formation in 2014. After inaugurating several projects in Hyderabad, Modi recalled among party workers that the state had contributed one of the BJP’s lowest state tallies of Lok Sabha seats at just two in the 2024 polls, and asked them to ensure a BJP government with a “prachand bahumat (fierce majority)” in the state.

On the other hand, RSS sarsanghchalak Mohan Bhagwat inaugurated a temple in the name of Sangh founder Keshav Baliram Hegdewar in Telangana in April. As recently as May 7, days before Modi’s visit to both states, the RSS chief had visited Karnataka’s Chikodi, where the RSS’s first shakha historically took root in the 1930s, and spoke of a “demographic imbalance” in India at an event in Mysuru.

Neither the BJP nor the RSS have minced their words about the significance of Sanatan Dharma as the foundation of its ideology, placing it as synonymous with nationalism. However, while Sanatan Dharma mostly found mention in daily political discourse as somewhat of an umbrella term collectively denoting Hindu culture and traditions since the BJP’s ascent to power in 2014, this changed in 2023.

While Bhagwat termed it the “core nature of Bharat” in one event after another, Modi, following comments calling for the “eradication of Sanatan Dharma” made by DMK leader Udhayanidhi Stalin in 2023, clubbed the entire INDIA bloc of Opposition parties as “anti-Sanatan” forces. Since then, the term gradually transformed into an ideological bulwark for the RSS-BJP to take on regional political satraps.

According to sources, buoyed by its sweep of West Bengal, Assam and an albeit modest addition to its vote share in Tamil Nadu, the BJP-RSS combine has already begun reactivating its significant grassroots network in Karnataka and Telangana with a focus on the pitches of “dynastic politics among regional parties” and amplifying the narrative around “anti-Sanatan Dharma forces” as part of outreach that is scheduled to continue for the foreseeable future in both states as well as beyond them.

Old ties

Bordering the Sangh’s birthplace of Maharashtra’s Nagpur, the RSS’s organisational roots, as well as those of its most prominent leaders, lie in Karnataka and Telangana, where the RSS has been active since the 1930s, less than a decade after it was founded in 1925. Today, the two states consist of a regional bulwark with thousands of daily shakhas each.

These shakhas – over 4,100 in Karnataka and 3,400 in Telangana, according to the RSS – will gradually, sources said, form the core of the RSS-BJP’s electoral bid to consolidate itself in the south. Over its 100 years of existence, the RSS says its network of shakhas has reached close to 90,000 and the locations where these are based to more than 55,000.

“The Sangh has, historically, been immensely active on the ground in what is now the state of Telangana. In 1984, senior Jana Sangh leader with close ties to the RSS, Chandupatla Janga Reddy, had defeated Congress stalwart P V Narasimha Rao, who became Prime Minister seven years later, from Hanamkonda, underlining the strength of the organisation in the state,” said an insider.

“When it comes to Karnataka, the strength of the Sangh’s organisational ties and roots in the region is proven by the fact that some of the most prominent early Pracharaks came, and continue to come, from it,” the insider added.

Reddy was one of first two Jana Sangh MPs to make it to the Lok Sabha from what was then-undivided Andhra Pradesh. On the other hand, some of the RSS’s most prominent figures hail from Karnataka, one of the first expansion grounds for the Sangh.

RSS founder and its first Sarsanghchalak Hegdewar’s family hailed from Nizamabad in Telangana, and its third chief Madhukar Dattatraya Deoras came from Telugu lineage. Incumbent Sarsanghchalak Bhagwat’s predecessor K S Sudarshan hailed from Mysore, while prominent former Sarkaryawah (or general secretary) H V Sheshadri, current Sarkaryawah Dattatreya Hosabale, and BJP general secretary (organisation) B L Santhosh all trace their roots to Karnataka.

Old ties, new plank

From alleged forced religious conversions to allegations of “love jihad” in a state that in 2022 witnessed a row over Muslim government school students wearing the traditional hijab, community consolidation around “Hindu awakening” has seen the RSS’s footprint expand beyond the coastal regions of Dakshina Kannada and Udupi in Karnataka.

The Sangh is currently in the throes of statewide efforts aimed at increasing its grassroots appeal in regions such as Old Mysore through around 3,000 ongoing outreach events.

In Telangana, with liberation from the rule of the erstwhile Nizam and Indian nationalism at its core, the Sangh has consistently added more coverage to its outreach and, according to RSS records, touched base with almost 25 lakh households through more than 10,700 volunteers in 2025.

Having been assessed, sources said, to have had a significant impact on the NDA’s electoral performances, including in an increased vote share in Tamil Nadu, the dynasticism and “anti-Sanatan” factors are likely to be central to the BJP-RSS’s campaign for the two states.

“The dynasticism plank helped call into question issues related to corruption and anti-incumbency; more importantly, focus on the anti-Sanatan (dharma) statements of Opposition leaders such as Udaynidhi Stalin (of the DMK), Abhishek Banerjee (of the TMC) in West Bengal, and Congress’s Gaurav Gogoi in Assam, helped the BJP shed the ‘outsider’ tag from the common perspective of Sanatan Dharma,” a source said.

“There is no dearth of such sentiments which have been expressed by leaders such as Chief Minister Siddaramiah and his Cabinet colleague Priyank Kharge in Karnataka and Telangana Chief Minister Revanth Reddy. These issues will find place in the Sangh’s vimarsh (consultation) outreach after a few loose organisational ends are tied up, especially in Karnataka, and later in the official campaign for these states,” the source added.

“While specific issues will vary depending on the ground situation from state to state – forced (religious) conversions in Punjab (which goes the polls in 2027) may not find as much traction on the ground as Muslim appeasement through the caste survey by the Congress government in Karnataka – the electoral lessons in regards to the Sanatan Dharma narrative from West Bengal and Tamil Nadu are invaluable and will continue to find place in strategies for future state elections,” another source said.