India: It's high time the RSS dropped the fiction of being apolitical and distant from BJP matters

Editorial, The Indian Express, June 13 2013

Coming out
It's high time the RSS dropped the fiction of being apolitical and distant from BJP matters

The spectacular revolt by the BJP's founding father, L.K. Advani, the day after Narendra Modi's elevation as chairman of the party's campaign committee, was brought to an early end by an afternoon phone call from Nagpur. In withdrawing his resignation, Advani decided to accept RSS sarsanghchalak Mohan Bhagwat's "advice", announced party president Rajnath Singh. This is a rare moment. Through the years, and even during the recent drama over Modi's promotion and then Advani's resignation, the BJP has profusely denied RSS involvement in its affairs. For the party president to admit, then, that the truce between the party and its senior-most rebel was brokered by the RSS is a departure from standard practice. This belated spirit of candour must now be taken a step further. The BJP must confess to the real nature of its relationship with the RSS. In turn, the RSS must drop the fiction of being a non-political organisation. After all, it is well known that it pulls the strings in India's main opposition party, that Nagpur is to the BJP what 10 Janpath is to the Congress. The RSS should now consider entering the political mainstream. That might restore some credibility to the BJP's constant — and justified — targeting of the Manmohan Singh government for genuflecting to an extra-constitutional authority.

Admittedly, rumours of the BJP's total prostration to RSS diktat all the time may be exaggerated. And the RSS itself is often incorrectly painted in monochromatic hues. Yet, it is true that ever since Advani was made to step down as party chief by the RSS in 2005, in the wake of the controversy over his Jinnah speech, the BJP has not found a centre of authority within. As a result, the RSS has stepped into the leadership vacuum. More than three decades after the BJP was formed by the Bharatiya Jan Sangh breaking away from the Janata Party on the dual membership issue, which led to the fall of the Morarji Desai government in 1979, the back and forth between the two outfits has settled into a fact of political life. But the micro-management of the BJP by the RSS has been a relatively recent phenomenon. It is also a serious distortion, this primary accountability of a political party in a democracy to an organisation that does not ever put its agenda to a direct electoral test.

As the BJP readies to take on the Congress in the general election, it is time to acknowledge that it has lost to the RSS. It is possible to say that it never really put up a fight. For a while, Advani seemed to be making the point about the BJP's autonomy. But given his own record of opportunistic compromise with the RSS, he was ill-suited to the cause.