Till the Bharatiya Janata Party won the elections, it maintained a facade of a disciplined party with an aura of ideology, with the resolve to ‘Make India Great Again’. It has a leader who does not entertain factional fights and leads the party with an iron will. But as the party lost the majority in recently held Lok Sabha elections, the mask is off. Since Uttar Pradesh has shown that the BJP is vulnerable and can be defeated, now factions are revealed and power-seeking politicians with repressed ambitions are out to kill each other.
UP is the state that is politically the most volatile, and before other states can react, it gives signals about the future. This was the state that in 1977, had defeated the strong person of Indian politics, Indira Gandhi, in her own constituency of Raebareli. This state had the temerity to unseat a sitting prime minister through the judicial route. This was also the state that created a roar against electorally the most powerful prime minister, Rajiv Gandhi, on the issue of Bofors. This is the state where Indira Gandhi’s grandson, trying to take on her mantle, lost from Amethi in the last elections. When Narendra Modi wanted to become the Prime Minister, he had to choose Varanasi.
UP most unexpectedly gave the BJP 73 seats along with its ally, Apna Dal, in 2014, which heralded a new era in Indian politics, the Modi Era. The same UP is now hinting that if the BJP does not course-correct, then the empire will crumble and even Modi won’t be able to save it. And Modi, with his brilliant political mind, sensed it. No wonder he looks nervous after the loss, and does not appear to know what to do. When the leader is nervous and has no clue about the future, then second- and third-rung leaders start playing games to save themselves or position themselves in the future power structure.
But the game that is being played in UP right now is not about Yogi Adityanath and Keshav Maurya, but is a sign that Modi, the invincible, is now weak and The House of Cards is open to all kinds of manipulations and to all kinds of treachery. Yogi knows that forces are out to stop him from emerging as the supreme leader once Modi retires. He knows that since no one in the BJP has the courage to pinpoint the real reason for the defeat in UP, therefore attempts are being made to make him the scapegoat. He knows that nobody will ask why Modi, who was supposed to win with 10 lakh votes, could only defeat his lightweight rival by only 1.52 lakh votes; how and why his victory margin shrunk; why BJP won most of the seats around Gorakhpur but lost many in the Varanasi region; and if all the tickets were distributed by the central leadership despite advisory from the chief minister that many candidates would lose if they are not replaced, then how Yogi can be blamed for the loss; nobody will ask if campaigning in UP was about Modi’s guarantee, why the state leadership is responsible for the debacle. Yogi might ask if the prime minister is ‘not biological’ and ‘the almighty connects with him directly’ then how lesser mortals like him can be accused of sabotage.
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But then, UP is not a story about Yogi. UP is a story about Modi and the future and about who will replace him. Keshav Prasad Maurya is only a pawn on the chessboard. Can anyone believe that he can openly challenge Yogi without any backing from the top? Maurya undoubtedly has an axe to grind. He thought he was the real claimant to the chair of chief minister in 2017 once the BJP returned with a thumping majority in the state. He was the party president, but then at the last minute, Yogi usurped the chair. But Yogi was not to be blamed. Even he had no clue that he would be the chief minister. He was nowhere in the reckoning till his name cropped up as the chief minister. He was chosen by the RSS, and Modi agreed.
Yogi was chosen with a purpose. The RSS knew that Keshav Maurya or Manoj Sinha could be good bets as CM, but neither had the X factor to emerge as Hindutva icons. If Modi was looking for a leader who could lead the government in UP, the biggest state in India, then the RSS was looking for a leader who could lead the Hindutva army. Modi was living in the present, but the RSS was planning for the future. If Modi was looking for a puppet who could dance to his tune, then the RSS wanted a leader who could be groomed to make people dance to the music of Hindutva. If Modi wanted a ‘bureaucrat chief minister’ who could tighten the nuts and bolts of the administration, then RSS needed someone who could tighten the screws of Hindutva vis-a-vis Muslims and Christians, and this is what Yogi did after being chosen as the commander-in-chief of Hindutva in UP. If Modi wanted someone who could play his game to win elections, then the RSS was discovering someone who could reclaim the ground that Hindus have lost in the last millennium. For Modi, it was a battle for elections; for RSS, it was a war to save civilisation.
It is this difference of perception that has made Modi vulnerable. Modi, being a hard-nosed swayamsevak all his life, knows that if L K Advani can be dispensed with for the sake of Hindutva, then exceptions will not be made for him either and, though it might not happen in the near future, the clues are surely there. Modi knows that he is only part of the process and not the end. And for the end, the process can be sacrificed. Because it is the end that defines the existence of the thought process that was planted by a few individuals led by K B Hedgewar in 1925. The project was Hindu unity. The goal was to make Hindus strong and ruthless so that they wouldn’t be enslaved in future like they were in the past. It is axiomatic to know that RSS did not start as a political force like Savarkar’s Hindu Mahasabha. It was roped in as a social movement. The RSS did not contest elections like Hindu Mahasabha did before and after independence. It did not form the government or enter into an alliance with any political force before Partition.
After Gandhi’s assassination, when RSS was banned, and M S Golwalkar was arrested along with thousands of RSS volunteers, RSS realised that without the ‘Kavach’ and ‘Kundal’ (celestial armour) of politics, it was a sitting duck like Karna was in the Mahabharata. This inspiration provoked them to form a political party called the Jan Sangh. However, what is more pertinent is that the RSS itself did not become a political party. I know that the argument can be put forth that it could not have become a political force because not entering politics was the condition for lifting the ban from the RSS, but the creation of Jan Sangh itself was a violation of that promise. Jan Sangh was an RSS creation. The reason RSS did not convert itself into a political party was because it wanted to save the purpose and the purity of the civilisational goal of Hindu unity.
Politics is the name of the adjustment, accommodation and compromises, but for RSS, Hindu unity was not for compromise. The role of politics was to provide cover fire to the soldiers of Hindutva. Modi knows that in the public eye, he might appear to be the real hero of Hindutva, but in reality, the true hero is Hindutva itself, whose flame has to be carried forward to the last mile of Hindu unity. Before Modi, Atal-Advani were the torchbearers and were considered indispensable. it was unimaginable how the BJP would move forward without them, but the party emerged more powerful in their absence. Similarly, the BJP will move ahead without Modi and might face hiccups in the short run, but the caravan will move with a new leader and a new political grammar. Therefore, to imagine that the RSS, which has allowed seven years to groom Yogi, will easily let him go into oblivion is incomprehensible unless the organisation has some other plan for the future.
The writer is Co-Founder, SatyaHindi.com, and author of Hindu Rashtra. He tweets at @ashutosh83B
