Turmoil In The Saffron Brotherhood !

 BY R.K.MISRA

There is turmoil in the saffron brotherhood as the old order clashes with an emerging one led by personality dominant Prime Minister Narendra Modi who brooks no opposition and covets complete control.

It is this tectonic shift  that is causing friction between the ‘plates’ within the larger saffron-fold.Thus you see the TDP-BJP pact under strain in Andhra Pradesh, the BJP-PDP governance unease in J&K, the Shiv Sena straining at the leash in Maharashtra and the poll imbroglio in Nagaland.

As the man in total command of the Government and the party, both national governance as well as the ruling party’s politics rotates on a single axis, Narendra Modi. It is he who exercises a cast iron control over the administration through a network of civil servants-both serving and retired-personally loyal to him. By last count there must be seventy such officers-serving and retired- from Gujarat alone sprinkled all over key governance positions, outside his parent state. The latest is retired IAS officer P.K.Pujari(1981) who has taken over as Chairman of the Central Electricity Regulatory Authority(CERC) while state’s chief electoral officer B.B.Swain and IPS officer Rajiv Ranjan Bhagat(Gujarat 1998) stand cleared for take-off to Delhi with more lined up on the runway.

A tamed bureaucracy is easy to deal with, the party is a different kettle of fish altogether. There is a handpicked and selected chief Amit Shah to handle this onion-peal institution. For all the speculation that surfaces from time to time, Shah remains intensely loyal to Modi and possesses the uncanny ability to read a manual in a mere nod of his boss. Modi, nevertheless remains the political strategist and man-Friday Shah, the executioner though the state space is interspersed with favourites like Kailash Vijayvarghiya in Madhya Pradesh and Gulabchand Kataria in Rajasthan,to cite just two examples.

Not only his governance but Modi’s national politics is also an extension of his state stint-euphemistically termed the Gujarat model. Sent packing from the state after  Shankersinh Vaghela’s rebellion in 1995,Modi returned to Gujarat  as chief minister in 2001.His 13 year stint in the state was marked by the decimation of all or any who could prove a threat to his dominance of the party. Ditto, the government. These ranged from  the likes of veteran Keshubhai Patel, Atmaram Patel, former chief minister Suresh Mehta to A.K.Patel, late Haren Pandya and former union textile minister Kashiram Rana to name a few. These were replaced by a leadership personally loyal to him. Interestingly, all the Sangh parivar organs during Modi’s tenure in Gujarat were split down the middle into those owing allegiance to him while those who did not were deemed opponents.

It is the same pattern which has unfolded in Delhi. The tantrums surrounding the sidelining of RSS stockmate Sanjay Joshi in the 2014 pre-parliamentary poll era and the margadarshak mandal ‘exhibits’ post it ,are  ample proof. Both Jan Sangh-BJP veterans of RSS stock-Keshubhai Patel in Gujarat and L.K.Advani in Delhi-mentored Modi. Both reduced to picture postcards have all the time to ruminate at leisure.

Dr Pravin Togadia,the current international President of the VHP is also a vintage mate of Modi. The two youthfuls had been together in choreographing a lot of ‘backstage’ performances within the Gujarat BJP.  Togadia and many other BJP leaders who occupy a vintage perch in positions of power today, also figured in a high profile public stripping of  a minister of their own government, Atmaram Patel  at a function attended by the then Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee and the then chief minister Suresh Mehta in Ahmedabad on May 20,1996.

It was a fall-out of the internecine politics of the BJP where the ruling group(keshubhai Patel-Modi-Togadia) targeted the rebels owing allegiance to Shankersinh Vaghela. Criminal proceedings were initiated against Togadia and 40 others and they were charged, among others, with attempt to murder. Keshubhai Patel returned to power in 1998 and his government promptly moved to withdraw the case but it lingered in judicial alleys.

The case hit headlines afresh last month when the court issued warrants for the arrest of the 41 including Togadia days after he named Prime Minister Modi and alleged victimisation at the hands of the Centre. On January 30,the Court took up the matter and the 21 year old case was over in less than two hours with Togadia and the rest free birds !

Togadia was quick to send a placatory message to the Prime minister.”Let us sit together to resolve our differences. You sit with Nawaz Sharif of Pakistan and the maulvis of India. We can come together too for the betterment of the country. Iam an old friend, we have had meals together”.

Earlier in December Togadia survived a scare at the VHP meet in Bhubaneswar  where he almost lost his leadership. He holds Modi responsible for his plight and made it known at the meet.

Togadia’s VHP also figured in it’s vocal opposition to the release of Sanjay Leela Bhansali’s magnum opus Padmavat. The film, actually became a political football in the tug of war within the saffron brotherhood. It was a saffron plug and play performance.

Veteran political analyst Radhika Ramaseshan in her syndicated column hit the nail on the head when she pointed out the near absence of  any violent Karni Sena reaction in the four states which are ruled by BJP’s  rajput chief ministers,UP(Yogi Adityanath), Uttarakhand(Trivendra Singh Rawat),Himachal Pradesh Jai Ram Thakur and Chhatisgarh(Raman Singh) while Haryana,MP,Rajasthan and Gujarat had a torrid time. Vasundhara Raje, Shivraj Singh Chauhan (Kirar caste), Manoharlal Khattar and Vijay Rupani are not rajputs. In the internal dynamics of the present dispensation, Raje and Chauhan have long been ripe for the binning.

Though a pracharak himself, Modi’s relations within the saffron brotherhood after becoming chief minister in 200I has been an uneasy one. His virtually personal animosity with fellow sangh cadremate   Sanjay joshi and late Haren Pandya is well known. In January 2004,former deputy head of RSS for Gujarat Laljibhai Patel,a respected name had gone on indefinite fast in support of farmers terming Modi  autocratic and vindictive.The veteran had again in October last year led a farmers agitation in Gujarat. Modi’s skirmishes with the VHP in Gujarat too go back to November  2008 when it’s general secretary Ashwin Patel was arrested on charges of sedition under his orders. The arrest was in the aftermath of L.K. Advani’s visit to Mohammed Ali Jinnah’s mazar in Pakistan and the VHP’s trenchant critique that swept the then chief minister in it’s swirl.

Interestingly the RSS was muted in it’s reaction to the Gujarat election results terming it as ‘alpvyap vijay’ or borderline victory that reflects popular disapproval.

A day after the results a message was sent to BJP chief Amit Shah through Ramlal, the party general secretary(organization) expressing the RSS reservations over the inappropriate use of language, the violation of certain norms which are the hallmark of  the Sangh’s moral code and the need for introspection. The one page message was handed over to Ramlal who is a link between the mother institution and the political, governance outfit, on December I9 last year  by two joint general secretaries of the RSS for onward transmission.

Even in the run up to the Gujarat polls, it was the RSS which flashed the first warning signal of the defeat the ruling party was facing in the state leading to the slew of corrective measures by the Modi government at the centre. Apart from reservations on some of the government measures like demonetisation , GST, agrarian unrest and now Rajasthan by-election results , it is  the Prime Minister’s penchant for absolute power and causing schisms to root out contrarian beliefs within  the brotherhood as well as allies that is cause of concern in the parent body.

 For now the TINA factor works but those at the helm are aware of the fate of the Congress after the ‘Indira is India’ contagion afflicted it. ‘Congress-yukt’ BJP seems headed the same way. On January 27, the BJP central committee announced the list of 44 of the fifty-one  names for the ensuing Tripura Assembly elections. All the congress MLAs who had switched sides had found a berth in the BJP. On the downside, prominent Delhi Congressman Arvinder Singh Lovely, who had switched sides to the BJP returned to the parent outfit last week.

Reckless expansion in a cadre-based party can be contaminating.

Moreover,floating feathers never nest an enduring abode!!