The Rediff Special

'When the whole society is corrupt, how do you expect to throw up a non-corrupt leader?'

But the Jan Sangh survived him, Golwalkar having never carried out his threat. He once also told Yadav Rao at a luncheon meeting of Sangh activists in 1967 that a strong RSS could demolish or create a hundred Jan Sanghs. The two conclusions to be drawn from all is that, for all his apprehensions, he felt the Jan Sangh to be developing along the lines he desired, and that the RSS was capable of staying the course. No one in the RSS is as sure now.

Shankarsinh Vaghela's ability to break the BJP government in Gujarat and set himself up as chief minister has seriously unnerved the RSS. After the near fall of their government in Rajasthan, Bhairon Singh Shekhawat appears terribly vulnerable. Faction-fighting in the party in Madhya Pradesh and Sunderlal Patwa's maladministration have seriously dented the BJP's claim of being able to give good government.

And then, the inability of the BJP to get an absolute majority in the last UP assembly election, despite their having been a triangular contest with the Samajwadi Party and the Bahujan Samaj Party, has provoked serious questioning in the top levels of the BJP and the RSS about the BJP's future. One top BJP leader confessed to reporters in the aftermath of the UP poll, "We do not have any emotional issue left." And, neither the BJP nor the RSS have a clue about how to combat the growing corruption and casteism in the BJP.

The BJP's position is that it ought to be seen as a political party operating in a "polluted environment" and that it should be left to its own devices. There is even visible tiredness among senior and middle-level party leaders while fielding questions about RSS perceptions about them. BJP's president L K Advani said last week, "The RSS is a separate organisation. The BJP is a separate organisation. They take their decisions independently. There is ideological affinity... But political decisions are taken by the BJP. And organisational matters are dealt with by the RSS."

Advani has probably made the statement to many reporters before this. RSS leaders also understand the need for BJP leaders to function autonomously, and to be seen to be doing so. But the pace of deterioration has been so rapid that both sides decided to shed pretences this January and have H V Seshadri, the RSS general secretary, spend considerable time at the Virar convention of the BJP. The last time a senior RSS leader attended a Jan Sangh/BJP conference was 40 years ago, and it could now be a case of too little, too late.

"We cannot stop the corruption in the BJP" says the RSS's Devendra Swaroop, candidly. "When the whole society is corrupt, how do you expect to throw up a non-corrupt leader? It is even difficult now to say who is corrupt and who is not corrupt. It is only a matter of degrees. Without money you cannot contest a ward election. And a non-corrupt politician cannot win an election." Adds Mahesh Sharma, the BJP's Rajya Sabha MP from Rajasthan, "You cannot fight elections without black money. Even the voters are corrupt."

Is the RSS and the BJP leadership giving up then? "Not at all," says Seshadri Chari, the editor of the Organiser, the RSS mouthpiece. "The BJP leadership is seized of the problem. And, of course, we in the RSS are not sitting tight and watching the degeneration." But it is going to be an uphill task.

The BJP is not the old Jan Sangh. While a smallish core is formed of those pracharaks who came from the RSS (like Vajpayee and Advani), and the layer outside it is of non-RSS men (like Shekhawat) who felt an ideological affinity, it is the outer, most numerous, non-ideological layer of those attracted to the BJP because of its power prospects who are causing the most trouble. "They are infecting the two inside layers," said an RSS functionary.

One possible cure is injecting more RSS pracharaks into the BJP. "That is a possibility," agrees Chari. "The states will need, to start with, at least two dozen pracharaks each. But, of course, this has to be acceptable to the BJP." Will it be? Govindacharya, himself a former RSS pracharak, is unimpressed. "Why should it be that only the RSS has value-based people? We should we just become an extension of the RSS? We should function in the field on our own. The RSS has never believed in spoon-feeding."

Perhaps, it has not. But it is also for the first time that a feeling has grown in the RSS that the BJP has become too big for it. "The growth of the BJP has outstripped that of the RSS," says an RSS functionary. "This is but natural. But it has produced asymmetries in the Sangh Parivar. Why do you think the BJP government collapsed in Gujarat? Because, the RSS was never strong there."

This is a fact that Govindacharya cannot deny. But he is unwavering in his belief that the BJP alone can -- and should -- put its house in order. At Virar, a scheme was mooted to re-educate the non-RSS BJP members of the Sangh ideology, and Govindacharya is seriously going about putting up a sort of school for this purpose.

The RSS, meanwhile, has begun its own high-pressure campaign to educate BJP MPs. Seshadri, the general secretary of the RSS, has held nearly half-a-dozen meetings with them, and a view is being simultaneously articulated that what the BJP needs at this time is not an individualistic, charismatic president but an RSS-style collective leadership.

Kind courtesy: Sunday magazine

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