P Chidambaram is spot on, BJP is controlled by RSS

Finance minister P Chidambaram has finally put his hand on the elephant in the room. The forthcoming Lok Sabha elections, he said, are not about Narendra Modi but about the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh ( RSS). The contest is not between two individuals, Rahul Gandhi and Narendra Modi, but between two sets of ideas: those of the Congress and those of the Sangh Parivar.

He is spot on.

There is such obsessive hyper-ventilation over the persona of the Gujarat chief minister and his leadership calibre as to knock his political platform out of the frame altogether. This is illogical and immature. Narendra Modi’s choice as the BJP’s candidate for prime minister has been brought about with the active intervention of the RSS chief, who interceded with the BJP’s senior-most leader, L K Advani, to cease active opposition to that choice.

The BJP’s president is appointed by the RSS and whenever the party runs into internal problems, it is the RSS that sorts them out. The RSS can perform this role because its authority in the BJP is unquestioned. It is not just that the RSS set up the BJP as its political arm. The RSS also serves as the central command for the Vishwa Hindu Parishad, the Bajrang Dal, the Akhil Bharatiya Vidyarthi Parishad, the Vanvasi Kalyan Kendras and other such organisations whose active mobilisation the BJP requires for mobilisation of voters at the time of elections.

Democracy has a way of making the extremes unviable, forcing those who want to succeed in the democratic fray to move to the Centre. The RSS serves as a countervailing pressure on the BJP, insulating it also from the liberal instincts of individual leaders. It is useful to factor this into the fantasy that masquerades as public discourse on the sweeping redemptive potential of strong leadership.