India: If Modi takes power, it will be absolute (Bharat Bhushan)

The Asian Age. June 13, 2013

If Modi takes power, it will be absolute

Bharat Bhushan

Despite taking back his resignation, the veteran Bharatiya Janata Party leader L.K. Advani has managed to rain on Narendra Modi’s parade. His resignation drama has flagged to the nation that Mr Modi’s elevation to the chairman of the BJP’s campaign committee – seen by his supporters as a half-way house to his being declared as the party’s prime ministerial candidate – was contested and not unanimous even within his own party. Irrespective of what happens to Mr Advani’s own political fortunes, this stigma of unacceptability – and, by implication, unsuitability -- for the top job in the country will stick to Mr Modi.

The moment Mr Modi was anointed the future face of the BJP, three things were clear. One, that the move came with the blessings of the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS). Two, that nothing would be the same again in the RSS, and its political front, the BJP. And three, that the future of all leaders opposed to Mr Modi in the party would henceforth be uncertain.

It is the prospect of these cataclysmic changes that perhaps prompted Mr Advani’s belated attempts to put brakes on Mr Modi’s rise as the sole leader of the BJP. He objected to the interference of the RSS in the running of the BJP, saying in his letter that he was unable to reconcile holding party posts “with the current functioning of the party and the direction in which it is going”. He was pointing a finger at the way the triumvirate of Mr Modi, party president Rajnath Singh and the RSS functionary Suresh Soni were pushing through decisions in the party.

Mr Advani’s second charge of the value system of the party being eroded and leaders only promoting themselves was a direct hit at Mr Modi and his acolytes, though the cap fitted Mr Modi best as he left no stone unturned to project himself as the party’s prime ministerial candidate for the next general election. However, it might also fit Mr Singh who, perhaps, expects to be the collateral beneficiary of the BJP increasing its seats in the coming general election but Mr Modi being unacceptable as the leader of an alliance that could form the next government.

Mr Soni was perhaps working for a larger ideological cause. For, in the projection of Mr Modi, the RSS has found the missing piece of the fascist jigsaw puzzle that the RSS had been trying hard to put together – the cult of the Fuhrer in the persona of Mr Modi. Mr Advani seemed to have recognised this but it was too late for him to recoil from the monster he had himself helped fashion.

Mr Modi’s hijacking of the BJP will have direct consequences for the relationship between the mother organisation – the RSS, and the BJP.

The RSS is shrinking and there is no infusion of new blood. A senior BJP leader is believed to have told the current RSS chief, Mohan Bhagwat, that he is like Bahadur Shah Zafar, the last emperor of India presiding over a crumbling empire. By contrast, the BJP has expanded all over the country because of its electoral successes. Its increased patronage-giving ability attracts hoards of direct recruits. Today it is the BJP that grants legitimacy to the RSS rather than the other way round. With Mr Modi effectively at the helm of the BJP, the importance of the RSS will decline further. He himself came as a nominee of the RSS and knows well how the system of controlling BJP units through organising secretaries nominated by the RSS works.

Once he has taken power, Mr Modi will not need the RSS and may in fact see it as an obstacle to his political authority. His predominantly corporate agenda is not shared by the RSS. Students of history might recall how Hitler had ordered the chief of the Storm troopers, Ernst Rhome, shot dead when the militia he led became a threat to his political power.

The BJP as a party that reflects many voices and many leaders within the Hindutva spectrum will cease to exist. Witness
what happened to all those who opposed Modi in Gujarat
-- Shankersinh Vaghela is in the Congress, Keshubhai Patel, Suresh Mehta and Gordhan Zadafia are sitting at home,and Haren Pandya is dead. The national party will also split between those who are with Mr Modi and those opposed to him.

Mr Modi’s intolerance of Sanjay Joshi even as a member of the party’s large national executive or of Nitin Gadkari as party president are straws in the wind for anyone who does not show unflinching loyalty to him. Consider that no action was taken against the office-bearers of the youth wing of the BJP who demonstrated outside Mr Advani’s house for not supporting Mr Modi – the same faces who were shouting “Dada hosh mein aao (Come to your senses, grandad)” outside Mr Advani’s residence were distributing sweets at the BJP headquarters the next day! Under Mr Modi, the BJP will, in effect, become a party driven by a single leader.

Alas, the owl of Minerva, as the saying goes, only takes flight at dusk. Only in the twilight of his life has Mr Advani understood the historical truth about the RSS, the way it controls its front organisations, and the fascist leadership it promotes. But this is only because he himself could not be the leader that the RSS wanted. That Mr Advani finally backtracked after some conciliatory assurances by Mr Bhagwat shows that

he has no ideological disagreements with the essential objectives of the RSS. He was only begging not to be publicly discarded as its chosen instrument.

Mr Advani could have gone down in history if he had had the courage to tell the RSS to stop its incessant propaganda against the minorities, to stop interfering in the BJP and worked towards severing the ideological links between the RSS and BJP. In the end, however, the old man failed to measure up to what the moment required of him.