<<Modi plays by his own rules, and it was unlikely that he was going to submit to the conventions of the Sangh Parivar. During his tenure as prime minister, the RSS has been carrying out instructions instead of issuing them. “Now the time has changed,” the senior RSS leader said. “The unusual groundswell among the Sangh’s cadres in favour of Modi has created a situation in which the traditional leverage that the Sangh enjoyed over the BJP has practically vanished. Instead of showing the political astuteness required to deal with the new situation, Mohanji seems to have simply left the ground vacant. Now the commands come from the BJP and are obeyed by the Sangh cadre. Mohanji has made himself redundant.”
The transformation has been smooth. Modi has put the entire Sangh Parivar in a perpetual election mode—by unceasing activity, by constant work aimed at the polarisation of votes, even sometimes by direct involvement in campaigning and booth management. With the aid of RSS cadre accustomed to strict subordination and devotion, Modi has succeeded in providing his regime with a firm inner structure. But the framework of the new system, which could satisfy the craving of the RSS rank and file for an authoritarian Hindu state, leaves Bhagwat and the office of sarsanghchalak in a peculiar position. A certain awkwardness is evident in Bhagwat’s relationship with Modi. According to some senior RSS leaders I spoke to, the two have not had a personal meeting since 2014—except on a few public occasions such as on 5 August 2020, when Modi and Bhagwat sat side by side to lay the foundation of the Ram temple in Ayodhya. Meanwhile, Dattatreya Hosabale, considered Modi’s man in the RSS, was elevated to the post of general secretary in 2021. The prospect of Hosabale’s elevation had earlier been resisted by a section of the RSS. Once Modi came to power again in 2019 with a much larger mandate, the opposition to Hosabale’s election died down. Hosabale is now positioned to enable Modi’s diktat with greater ease within the RSS. There is no question about who is in charge,” Ramesh Shiledar, a former pracharak and a contemporary of Bhagwat, told me. The RSS leadership used to have a major say in how its cadre would be used during elections, as well as on key organisational decisions of the BJP. This is no longer the case. “Sangh office-bearers rarely decide for themselves when it comes to political matters,” Shiledar said. “This change has happened because of the weak and short-sighted leadership of the Sangh under the present sarsanghchalak.” According to the senior RSS leader, “It’s not Narendra Modi or Amit Shah who is to be blamed. It is just that the regulating force that the Sangh had been has become non-operative. Mohanji should have resisted it. But he is so clueless that he has gleefully facilitated the shift.”>> (Excerpted from: <https://dsimian.com/2022/11/05/bhagwat-eclipsed/>. Originally carried at < https://caravanmagazine.in/politics/bhagwat-modi-supreme>.) -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Green Youth Movement" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to [email protected]. To view this discussion on the web, visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/greenyouth/CACEsOZi3WoOV1Oj9jOOBUYWTDwsGpx7BpSSjaC5nQLaRNVFSGQ%40mail.gmail.com.
