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Arvind Kejriwal and his Aam Aadmi Party's (AAP) defeat in the Delhi assembly election is a turning point in Indian right wing politics. It marks the end, at least for now, of the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh's (RSS) covert dalliance with an activist-turned-politician who grew into a formidable adversary to the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP). In fact, it is likely the last time that the RSS would invest in a non-BJP outfit on the national stage. To understand it, we have to go to the roots of RSS's ambitions and opportunistic collaborations of the past 75 years or so.
To be sure, from 1980, when the BJP was born with Gandhian Socialism as its ideological credo until 1989 when it was born again, baptising itself in the Hindutva wave of the late eighties, the party remained the prodigal child for the RSS. In fact, for the most part of the decade, the Sangh was besotted with the Congress, even considering Rajiv Gandhi as its chosen one for a brief while.
The Roots
The beginning of Sangh's involvement in mainstream electoral politics is generally marked to be in 1951 when Syama Prasad Mookerji founded the Jan Sangh with its help. Balasaheb Deoras, RSS chief from 1973 to 1994, has said the organisation acutely felt the need for political ears when it was banned following Mahatma Gandhi's assassination. It required elected representatives to speak for it in hostile legislatures and Parliament. Deoras was keen that RSS swayamsevaks join all political parties. The ideal proposition was they would be working in different parties during the day and attending shakhas together in the evening.
The Sangh's aspiration was never limited to becoming the biggest organisation in the country but to be an all-encompassing, omnipresent one, with people trained in its nursery leading every aspect of national life. Explaining founder KB Hedgewar's target of training 3% of the urban and 2% of the rural populations in the Sangh ideology, Deoras's predecessor, MS Golwalkar, once said: “When Doctorji talked about one percent in the rural areas, he meant one capable of leading the remaining ninety-nine.”
A Coveted Instrument
That's the reason why the RSS had its eyes set on the Congress Party and the genesis of the raging rivalry between the two. The pre-1947 Congress Party was the Big Tent of Indian politics. After Independence, it slowly broke up, with Communist outfits, socialists and Hindu nationalists exiting with big chunks of it over the next few decades. The Jan Sangh, and later the BJP, not only appealed to the majority Hindus but also were inimical to minorities. This is not to say that the RSS wanted all of them conjoined in a political set up with equal rights and powers, but merely that if it managed to take control of the largest and most diverse outfit of the time, the Congress, it could achieve its goals quicker. Holding the ideological reins of the party in power, it could dictate the rules of political and social engagement in a young country.
While the RSS plays down Golwalkar's political forays because of its constitutional commitment (written to abide by a condition to lift its 1948 ban) to stay away from politics, he did make several attempts. In 1937, Golwalkar himself contested for the post of general secretary of the Hindu Mahasabha when it held organisation elections for the first time, and despite GD Savarkar's backing, lost to Indraprakash. He tried to get entry for RSS volunteers into the Congress but was thwarted by Jawaharlal Nehru. He again reportedly tried this after Nehru's death, appealing to Lal Bahadur Shastri, Gulzarilal Nanda, MC Chagla and Swaran Singh to let RSS men into key organisational positions, but to no avail. Golwalkar then used the cow as an instrument of political mobilisation as he himself confessed to Verghese Kurien, India's milkman. It did not deliver immediate political dividends but ended up creating much mayhem in the Capital. It did, however, help Jan Sangh gain political space in Uttar Pradesh and Gujarat.
In the post-Emergency and post-liberalisation periods, the RSS aligned with Socialist and Marxist parties. It stood in opposition to Manmohan Singh's economic reforms, the entry of multinational corporations and computerisation, issues that took attention away from Hindutva and Mandal politics.
Struggle With Power
The political calibration and opportunistic alliances continued until the first BJP-led government was in power with Atal Bihari Vajpayee as the Prime Minister, not the person the RSS really wanted in charge. The RSS and the BJP were in their adversarial phase after the government fell and the United Progressive Alliance (UPA) government, led by Manmohan Singh, came to power in 2004. Some enraged Sangh leaders even suggested severing ties with the BJP and floating a new party. Narendra Modi, then chief minister of Gujarat, was yet to get RSS backing for a national role. The gradual patch-up between the then rising Gujarat stalwart and RSS began only in 2008, but the latter was already preparing the groundwork to unseat the Congress-led UPA government, which was going after its leaders.
Simultaneously, the Sangh identified corruption and black money stashed abroad as key issues to corner the Manmohan Singh regime. It covertly backed the newly minted Magsaysay award winner Arvind Kejriwal to lead that fight. While officially, the RSS kept its hands off Kejriwal's anti-corruption movement, its volunteers mobilised support for agitations from all over the country. In private conversations with BJP leaders, RSS chief Mohan Bhagwat even held up Kejriwal and his anti-corruption stand as an example of probity in public life worthy of emulation.
Kejriwal, The 'Neutral' Politician
Kejriwal eventually transformed his agitation into a political party and himself into a politician, promising to use power to uplift Delhi's lot. Although the RSS did not officially back him, many in the organisation continued to view him with admiration, and this is said to have converted to quiet electoral support too, which partly accounted for the vote swing between the Lok Sabha and assembly elections. He became arguably the only major politician in the country projecting ideological neutrality; spouting Bharat Mata ki Jai, Vande Mataram and Inquilab Zindabad in the same breath. He unhesitatingly embraced Jai Shriram, wore a skull cap at Iftar parties, recited the Hanuman Chalisa on national television, and alluded to himself as an avatar born on Lord Krishna's birthday.
While Kejriwal adopted Hindutva lite, a chasm emerged between the RSS and the BJP, which peaked during the Lok Sabha elections when party president JP Nadda said the party didn't need the RSS anymore. Kejriwal lost no time in indirectly making a pitch for support to the RSS. A BJP-RSS patch-up has been, however, under way. While some sections of the RSS are still miffed with the BJP, the organisation is back at work on the ground and BJP leaders are nodding in acknowledgement. RSS volunteers worked alongside BJP cadres in Haryana, Maharashtra and Delhi. Prime Minister Modi tweeted about Mohan Bhagwat's Vijaydashami speech last year, something he had not done for almost a decade. Devendra Fadnavis-led Maharashtra is inducting RSS volunteers as ministerial staff across the government.
On his part, Kejriwal is not one to give up. He is likely to focus on making inroads in new political territories, perhaps in the South. Meanwhile, with major irritants out of the way in the North, the Sangh Parivar united again, and major state governments under its thumb, project Hindu Rashtra is about to shift gears.
(Dinesh Narayanan is a Delhi-based journalist and author of 'The RSS And The Making Of The Deep Nation'.)