RSS steps in to shore up Modi’s declining popularity

Mohan Bhagwat, chief of the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS), and his top aides travelled to Delhi from their headquarters in Nagpur last week to take stock of the political situation and devise measures to bolster the Bharatiya Janata Party’s position ahead of crucial Assembly elections due early next year.

RSS, founded 96 years ago, is today the main promoter of the Hindutva ideology propounded by Vinayak Damodar Savarkar, who was President of the Hindu Mahasabha for many years.

In 1947, unwilling to reconcile itself to Partition, the Mahasabha had raised the slogan “Akhand Hindustan” (Undivided India). It was, however, in no position to realise that goal.

When Gandhi was assassinated, along with the killer, Nathuram Godse, Savarkar was charge-sheeted as a co-conspirator. The court acquitted him as the prosecution failed to prove he was a party to the conspiracy.

The Government of India banned the RSS after the assassination and detained its then chief, MS Golwalkar. The ban was lifted and Golwalkar released after he accepted the government’s suggestion to draw up a set of bye-laws which will make RSS a cultural organisation.

Before the first national elections of 1952, the RSS took the initiative to float a political party,named Bharatiya Jana Sangh. Its first President was Syama Prasad Mukhrjee, a former President of the Mahasabha, and a member of the Interim Cabinet  formed by Jawaharlal Nehru on the eve of Independence.

Although Partition and the attendant communal violence were only five years behind, BJS could not make an impact in the early elections because of the tremendous influence wielded by the Congress as the party that had led the freedom movement.  Nehru branded it as a communal party. So did other opposition parties.

It gained political respectability momentarily when it was included in the Janata Party formed to take on Indira Gandhi’s Emergency regime in 1979 elections. The new party won and BJS leaders were in the Janata government headed by Morarji Desai.

Some constituents of the Janata Party demanded that the former BJS members must sever their links with the RSS. The BJS members then pulled out of the Janata Party and started functioning under the banner of Bharatiya Janata Party. Some non-BJS leaders too walked out with them.

While the other Janata constituents shrank or withered away, the BJP grew steadily. Small national parties and regional parties were now willing to join hands with it overlooking allegations of communalism.

The BJP-led National Democrayic Alliance was able to come to power at the Centre by the turn of the century.

BJP Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee’s bid to earn a second term with the slogan  “India Shining” failed. But after the Congress-led United Progressive Alliance held power for 10 years, the NDA was back in power in 2014 with Narendra Modi as the Prime Minister. In the 2019 elections the BJP secured a majority on its own.

Today the BJP is India’s largest party, with a much larger vote share than the Congress. Its phenomenal growth in the last four decades is due primarily to the greater interest the RSS has taken in its affairs than it took in the affairs of the BJS.  It has assigned more of its leaders and cadres to the party than at any time in the past.

It was at the RSS’s initiative that the BJP projected Modi as its prime ministerial candidate before the 2014 elections, overlooking the claims of more senior leaders like Lal Kishen Advani and Mirali Manohar Joshi, both former party presidents.

The current visit of the top brass of the RSS on an overt political mission to Delhi is only  the second of its  kind. The first occasion was in 2015 when Bhagwat and his team  went to the  capital to review the Modi administration’s work during the first year. It caused much embarrassment to Modi and was not repeated.

The stated purpose of the current exercise is to make preparations for the Assembly elections in Uttar Pradesh and a few other states next year. Interestingly, the BJP’s core leaders are also in session at the same time for the same purpose.

The RSS-BJP confabulations are taking place after a daring attempt led by Modi and Home Minister Amit Shah, reputedly the party’s master strategists, to seize power in West Bengal in the east and make inroads into Tamil Nadu and Kerala in the south failed miserably.

According to media reports, the RSS leaders are concerned over the fall in Modi’s popularity over alleged failures in handling the Covid pandemic. Despite early warnings about the second wave, the government did not take timely measures. This led to criticism from within the BJP too. Vaccines made in India were exported on a large scale, resulting in an acute shortage in the country when they were needed most.

The Covid story is not the first instance of action without adequate forethought. Demonetisation of high-value currency notes and rollout of goods and services tax regime during Modi’s first term had caused immense harm to the small and medium sectors of the economy.

Handling of the pandemic is not the only  issue of the second term that demands a re-look. Several laws drafted in haste and rushed through Parliament, making drastic changes in citizenship norms and the status of Jammu and Kashmir, have created an untenable situation. Will the RSS be able to help resolve the impasse created by these measures which were motivated by the Hindutva ideology?

Another issue that is certain to create problems for the BJP in the upcoming Assembly elections is the long-running agitations by farmers for scrapping the three laws enacted by the Centre last year to open the agricultural marketing sector to big business.  

The RSS initiative is no doubt timely. But whether it can satisfy the critics remains to be seen.