It is a mixed bag of results for the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) if one goes by the trends emerging by 3 pm on June 4. It hasn’t performed that well in a number of states as compared to 2019 and 2014. However, it has done well to retain its dominance in a number of states and make some strong inroads in the southern part of the country.
The BJP has faced much worse situations in the past and has come out of it. And the situation isn’t that bad as it is made out to be. Perhaps the BJP under Narendra Modi has set up the benchmark for itself so high that a slight dip in the performance is seen as a ‘failure’ by many which is factually not true. It isn’t a small feat that after 10 years of ruling at the Centre, BJP’s tally is still almost one and a half times more than the second largest party. It still seems to be on the way to form the government.
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The BJP can easily regain the ground it has lost. But to do that it would have to work on its organisational apparatus. It would have to strike a balance between the ‘outsiders’ and its original party workers. This factor seems to have hurt the party badly in a number of parliamentary constituencies.
Meanwhile, there are attempts to build a narrative that the ideological mentor of the BJP i.e. Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh(RSS) will now have a firmer grip on the party in wake of its performance in Lok Sabha polls. The fact of the matter is that there is going to be no qualitative change in the relationship between the RSS and the BJP.
The RSS prefers to stay away from the day-to-day political affairs and it is too busy with its plans to expand its base as it completes 100 years in 2025. Some of the RSS workers are loaned out to the BJP as organisational secretaries and joint organisational secretaries at the state and the national level. These workers are generally full-time workers and known as ‘Pracharak’. Prime Minister Narendra Modi himself was an RSS Pracharak and he has also held the post of organisational secretary in the BJP.
There has been no clash of interests or tussle for power between the BJP and the RSS as they work in different spheres. The RSS leadership perfectly understands that politics has its own compulsions and the BJP is free to follow these compulsions. If anything has to be conveyed to the BJP leadership, that is done through the organisational secretaries and their deputies.
The RSS neither interferes in the governance or administration nor in the political activities of the BJP. It plays the role of an ideological mentor and would continue to do so. As a large number of BJP functionaries and political executives within the state and national level BJP and BJP-led governments have come from the RSS to the party, so the informal consultations between the mentor and the mentee are done regularly.
Since the days of the Bharatiya JanaSangh (BJS), the RSS’ relationship with politics has evolved on similar lines. When BJS, the predecessor of the BJP was formed in 1951, the RSS had loaned out some of its ‘Pracharak’ to the BJS. Atal Bihari Vajpayee, who later became Prime Minister was one of them. Similarly, Narendra Modi was loaned out to the BJP in 1980s by the RSS and he also became the Prime Minister.
So, there is no dichotomy between Modi and the RSS. No one has any ambition to dominate the other because Modi is an intrinsic part of Sangh. When he visited the Vivekananda Rock Memorial, he fondly remembered Ek Nath Ranade who built this memorial. Ranade was also a pracharak and a former general secretary of the RSS. It was during Modi’s tenure as Prime Minister that another RSS Pracharak Nanaji Deshmukh was given Bharat Ratna for his stellar work in the field of rural reconstruction and social reforms. Deendayal Upadhyay, who founded the philosophy of ‘Integral Humanism’ that became the official ideology of the BJP was also an RSS pracharak. On innumerable occasions the BJP leadership and Prime Minister Modi himself has paid glowing tributes to Upadhyay.
Whenever BJP’s chips are slightly down, the detractors of the party start pedalling the narrative of an imaginary power struggle between the BJP and the RSS leadership. The RSS is too busy in running more than 60,000 daily shakhas and two lakhs plus welfare projects through three dozen RSS-inspired organisations. It neither has an inclination nor any ambition to control the BJP.
The BJP’s cadre base has expanded substantially and it has a galaxy of leaders. With an able leader like Narendra Modi at the helm of affairs, the party is quite capable of steering itself. And it would chalk out its own course in days to come. For all those who are expecting a spectacular power struggle, there is likely to be huge disappointment. The RSS would continue to work for transforming the society and the BJP would carry on with its political activities. If some course correction needs to be done in wake of the poll results, the BJP would do that itself.
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