Togadia Tales ; The End Is Just A Beginning

BY R.K.MISRA

Simple assumptions seduce while complex questions confound.

And so you have all manner of media pundits, simply writing off saffronista surgeon, Dr Pravin Togadia, until recently the international president of the Vishwa Hindu Parishad, who quit the organization after his nominee was trounced. Only the star-struck believer, the self-blinded media and the politically challenged  lacking knowledge of RSS functioning, would do so.

Togadia who had been the informal chief of the VHP since 2003, announced he was quitting the outfit after the VHP elected former Himachal Pradesh Governor, Sadashiv Kokje as it’s working president on April I4 in the first ever election of the VHP in 52 years.

One time close friends, it is no secret that Togadia’s relations with Prime Minister Narendra Modi had soured during his chief ministerial days and the vitriolic hindutva/ram mandir crusader was in his cross-hairs marked out for ‘political’ extermination’. With Modi acquiring lord and master dominion over his party and it’s federal government after the last general elections, and Togadia raising politically inconvenient issues like the law for the establishment of the Ram Mandir at Ayodhya, rehabilitation of the Kashmiri pundits in the valley and the raw deal to farmers, his future was ripe for the axe.

The BJP wanted Togadia out and when the feisty surgeon resisted, all manner of old cases began getting a new lease of life. This was the standard operating procedure in the Gujarat model for all political opponents of the then chief minister. Even Sangh Parivar set-ups were split down the middle with one section owing allegiance to the rulers in Gandhinagar getting all manner of state patronage while those opposed found themselves in the doghouse. In January 2004 veteran RSS leader Laljibhai Patel had gone on an indefinite fast in Ahmedabad and charged Chief Minister Modi  with trying to split the  Bhartiya Kisan Sangh,a RSS affiliate. He had also specifically singled out Amit Shah, then a minister in the Modi government for undertaking the dirty job. Again in October 200B, general secretary of the Ahmedabad VHP, Ashwin Patel was arrested on the eve of diwali and charged with sedition and defaming Chief Minister Modi and his government.

Earlier this year, there were media reports of efforts by the Modi camp to change the dynamics in the mother organization, the RSS in favour of their leader. It wanted Dattatraya Hosabole, considered a Modi sympathiser as the sarkaryavah to replace Suresh Bhaiyyaji Joshi but to no avail. Joshi was given a third extension by the RSS pratinidhi sabha in March this year.

It is in this backdrop that one must weigh-in Togadia’s resignation from the VHP. While the Modi-Shah combine may have carried the day in the ejection of Togadia and the RSS may have acquiesced in it for the moment-as it did in the case of Sanjay Joshi-there is a lot more to it than meets the eye . Just to refresh memories, Modi had boycotted the BJP national executive and refused to campaign in UP in 20I2 if Joshi, a respected RSS leader was not ousted from the party. Joshi subsequently quit the BJP but remains a  respected part of the RSS.

Contrary to what is being made out Togadia who has given his entire life to the Sangh Parivar, including a lucrative medical practice, figures very much in plan ‘B’ of the RSS for the 20I9 general elections when the Modi government completes it’s first term and reaches out for a second one.

The RSS think-tank is aware of the fate that befell the Atal Bihari Vajpayee government when it went to the people for a repeat term in 2004 on the back of it’s ‘India shining’ blitzkrieg and came a cropper.

It is also aware of the fact that the dazzle of the Modi shine is wearing out and given this, a repeat performance of 20I4 is ruled out in 20I9. This has given rise to numerous permutations and combinations that the RSS think-tank is working on.

One of these conditionalities is the scenario when the BJP strength is considerably whittled down and it has to either fall back majorly on the NDA constituents or even outside support. There is a section within the mother set up which believes that in such a case the present Prime Minister with his autocratic and naturally arrogant demeanour will not be the right choice to lead a stitched together coalition.

The RSS is also learnt to be concerned at the erosion in the fringes of the core voter base and the disillusionment which is setting in. Togadia voices such a following. This mass could at worst go over to the opposition which is showing signs of grouping together in 20I9 or at worst become inactive. In either case, in the face of an opposition grouping the erosion of support is a matter of concern for the mother organization which deploys all it’s organs in full strength in the general elections.

Togadia is learnt to be part of plan ‘B’ which is aimed at holding back this class of voter who form a strong support base for the BJP from straying into inimical territory. Togadia  may have been taken out of the VHP as a concession to Modi but he still remains very much a part of the larger Sangh Parivar like Gujarat leaders Gordhan Jhadapia, another VHP hand or veteran Keshubhai Patel who had strayed  away to form a new political entity but returned at the call of the mother-mentor organization. Ideologically rarely do people nurtured by it leave the Sangh , not even Govindacharya, the man who actually tilled the north-eastern states which Modi-Shah harvested recently. Govindacharya was ousted, so to say, after his ‘mukhota’ remarks at Vajpayee.

With just about a year to go for general elections, Togadia is expected to grow shriller in his campaign against Modi in the days to come. You can bet on it that this rolling stone is expected to gather quite some moss for he is intrinsically a part of the RSS strategy which wants a second term for a BJP led NDA. Preferably with, but even without  Modi.