The relationship between BJP and RSS is a mystery ordinary mortals cannot penetrate.The RSS supremo seemed to be firing salvos in a direction that covered the BJP headquarters.There has not been any noticeable response from BJP.Its former president J.P.Nadda had quipped just before the election that BJP now no longer needed RSS’s help.Following the massive slide in its vote-share and number of seats the RSS Supremo would seem to have made a number of astringent remarks on the BJP’s top leader.There have also been veiled homilies on the need to curb arrogance and learn how to run things in a spirit of humility and respect for others.The press had gone to town speculating about the message such oracular deliveries carried.
The relationship between these two entities,the RSS and the BJP has had its moments of dissonance.As is well known both Bhartiya Jan Sangh and BJP had been formed as the political arm of the RSS after the RSS was directed to cease all its political activities.But it was understood that the RSS would be in the driver’s seat ultimately.The chief political leader was to be selected by it.But the snag was that the rough waters of politics required a power to manoeuvre that could take it out of the scan of RSS.Hence there arose the need to reassure the real boss of the fidelity of the political partner.During the time of Vajpayee both Vajpayee and Advani had to make a hurried visit to RSS office in Delhi to declare that they had not actually joined the hated secular democratic club.During the first term of the present incumbent cabinet ministers proceeded ceremonially to the same place to report on their performance.So a serene relationship can not be taken for granted.So this new development needs some scrutiny.
The buzz mentioned above seemed to have died down when there was some kind of enigmatic or coded response from BJP circles.A matter that caused some turbulence in news bulletins.It was given out that the Home Minister Patel during the first Nehru government had issued a circular to the central secretariat that no one with RSS connections should be considered eligible for appointment in the central ministries.Appointment was subject to background check on this point.This rule prevailed for several decades.But when the first Modi government, triumphant upon winning its laurels, came upon it there was the expected ruckus among top bureaucrats.But leaders of the government had scrapped that order with disdainful smiles.It was yet another step to dispose of the obsolete Nehruvian junk.And it had all ended there.
Then why should some BJP leader crow about the annoying banana peel once more at this late hour.Then the matter seemed to have got buried in some haste and the headlines spoke now about government employees now being allowed to attend RSS rallies and functions.Again that seems a little odd.As if in all these years of the Amrit Kaal any government employee attending an RSS event had received the trademark midnight knock on the door from the police.On the contrary sometimes the police might even go out of its way to provide transport to such auspicious events.
Mysteriously the RSS has now deepened the mystery by acknowledging gracefully the generous gesture of BJP. The average reader will surely shrug off this riddle as an obscure exchange of civilities between two venerable feudal potentates bred on elaborate ceremonies.But perhaps it has a coded meaning that is revealed by scrutiny.
The Leader having got used to his supremacy in all matters of government perhaps got irritated at the presence of another Supreme leader breathing down his neck in areas where religion and Hindu culture cut across politics and government.He had lately got intimations of his own divine non-biological origins,very much like many heroes of our sacred epics.So,it is reasonable to assume he had gone ahead to fix his own date for the ritual ‘animation of the image'(Pran Prstistha) of Lord Rama in cold defiance of the objections of the Shankaracharyas and assorted Hindu saints and performed the prescribed rituals as the sole master of ceremonies.Which left the original Vishwamitra to the Rama of the Kali era out in the cold.A piquant situation like a medieval period in Europe when two Popes were claiming the loyalty of Christendom.
However the other pontiff seems to have nursed his injuries in silence biding his time.When the election results burst like a thunder-clap he muttered his sombre warnings and admonitions in clear but appropriately veiled words.The press however seized upon the meaning with raucous glee to the discomfiture of the first claimant to precedence.
The latter however seems to have hit upon an appropriate retort and rattled skeletons long buried in the cupboard.The ban, it could well be parsed on the other side,could still be re-imposed.For when it was first set aside it was done through a merely official decision.This time the matter could be raised in the Parliament,and things being what they are,who knows what might happen there.The addressed party certainly could read the coded message and most probably used intermediaries to cool down the temperature and offer reconciliation,which was accepted with alacrity.Hence the strange alteration of the matter at issue from prohibition of government employment to RSS sympathizers to prohibition of government employees attending RSS functions.The thanks sent from RSS to government for this clearly different decision makes sense in such construal.
Hiren Gohain is a political commentator
