The Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) might celebrate its overtures to communities and individuals outside its ideological perimeter—the latest being Sarsanghachalak Mohanrao Bhagwat’s session with a congregation of Islamic clerics, ostensibly to mitigate Muslim alienation and antipathy to the Sangh fraternity, especially the BJP. But make no mistake. When it comes to inducting and accommodating heavyhitters from outside the saffron clan’s circumference, the RSS freezes.
The BJP’s spectacular success in electoral politics doubtless forced the Sangh to try and assimilate parivar outsiders who came with a cachet that could enhance the BJP’s appeal and possibly its votes, like a celebrity from the cinema world or an individual belonging to a caste outside the BJP’s purview. The Sangh’s— and, by extension, the BJP’s—net to snag trophies is spread across a vast expanse.
However, the welcome carries a quid pro quo—it is not one-sided, marked with a profusion of garlands and warm words. The red lines drawn by the Sangh are firmly etched beneath the ceremonial trappings. A lateral entrant must adhere to the precepts and practices laid down by the family head, and no dodging is brooked. Insubordination, even from a faithful, is never tolerated. Over time, some lateral entrants stayed the course, willingly or unwillingly; but those who ostensibly felt suffocated by the rigours of school-masterly discipline strayed away, quit and at times disappeared into oblivion.
The exit of Jagdeep Dhankhar, who last week resigned as the Vice President and chairman of the Rajya Sabha, is still riddled with unanswered questions, although his resignation letter maintained the departure was prompted by health concerns. Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s belated expression of commiseration with Dhankhar revealed how angry the PM was. Dhankhar was ushered into the BJP in 2003 as a prize catch from the opposition (he had served the Congress and the Janata Dal) and a peasant leader from the powerful Jat community.
The subsequent events were grist to the rumour mill, but did no favour to Dhankhar. Did he try to upstage the ruling NDA coalition by being nice to the opposition in admitting the Congress’s motion and starting the impeachment process against Justice Yashwant Varma in the Upper House before taking cognisance of the treasury bench’s motion? Did his mild censure of the government’s alleged inability to sort out farmers’ issues anger the high-ups? Did he expect more perks than what are officially sanctioned to a VP?
Unless and until Dhankhar opens up like another fellow Jat discard of the Modi regime, former Governor Satya Pal Malik, or spills all in a memoir, the speculations will swirl. But the BJP and the government couldn’t care less. They are sanguine in the belief that such episodes are glitches in the life of a dispensation and will not hurt electorally.
The real test lies in who succeeds Dhankhar: a BJP/Sangh faithful or an outlander. Among the names which surfaced, that of Ram Nath Thakur is being repeated persistently. The son of Karpoori Thakur—the former Bihar chief minister who was reviled by the upper castes in his lifetime and iconised after death—Thakur junior is from the nowsought-after extremely backward caste of Nayi (barbers). Karpoori Thakur pioneered moves for OBC reservation, but couldn’t take them forward because of upper caste pressure in the pre-Mandal era. The NDA government posthumously awarded him the Bharat Ratna when Mandalism became kosher.
While Thakur junior’s pedigree sits well with the BJP’s goal in Bihar, which votes later this year, he is from the Janata Dal (United), an ally, which doesn’t qualify him as a faithful. Dhankhar had to leave despite being a BJP member. The BJP-JD(U) alliance has had as many downs as ups, and CM Nitish Kumar is not wholly trusted by Modi. Can the BJP afford to have a VP who may not do its bidding, or have an in-house nominee who will ask no questions and expect no answers?
Brajesh Mishra, PM Atal Bihari Vajpayee’s principal secretary and India’s National Security Advisor, stood out as a lateral entrant who never ever ingratiated himself with the RSS or BJP, and yet survived Vajpayee’s tenure with considerable elan. A former diplomat, Mishra was the son of D P Mishra, a former Congressman who was Madhya Pradesh CM. He effectively straddled the space between diplomacy and realpolitik in the Vajpayee regime.
Although a BJP member who went on to head the foreign policy cell, Mishra would tell the few friends he had in the party that he was there because of Vajpayee and not the RSS. Obviously, that riled the Sangh, that pulled out all stops to get rid of Mishra but didn’t succeed. To buy peace with the Sangh, Vajpayee appointed L K Advani as the deputy PM. What upset the Sangh was Mishra countered its whisper campaign against him by ‘leaking’ news of financial irregularities in the allocation of petrol pump licences to Sangh functionaries. The allegation peeled away the veneer of incorruptibility the Sangh wore for decades.
Yashwant Sinha, former finance and external affairs minister, was also an outsider (he was a bureaucrat who resigned and joined Chandra Shekhar’s Janata Party) who succeeded in the BJP, but for reasons different from Mishra’s. When the BJP won the 1998 election, Vajpayee was set to appoint his confidant Jaswant Singh as his finance minister. By then, Sinha—who was PM Chandra Shekhar’s finance minister—worked hard to convince the RSS and its economic wing, the Swadeshi Jagran Manch, that if he was given finance he would fulfil their agenda and keep foreign investors out. The RSS was convinced and a day before the ministers were sworn in, persuaded Vajpayee to drop Singh and induct Sinha. Already vulnerable in a coalition government, Vajpayee acquiesced.
Years later, the story had a happy ending for Singh and an unhappy one for Sinha. In 2002, following a financial scam, Sinha was moved to the foreign ministry and Singh was instated in his place. Singh’s moment of glory came when Organiser, the Sangh-aligned weekly, praised him for promising to look after the interests of the not-so-well-off and give the ministry a “humane” face. In the end, the issue of lateral entrants versus the faithful is embedded in power politics, of which the RSS is a stakeholder.
Radhika Ramaseshan | Columnist and political commentator
(Views are personal)
(ramaseshan.radhika@gmail.com)