RSS starts three-day meeting in Nagpur

Mumbai: The Hindu nationalist Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS), ideological parent of the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), started a three-day meeting in Nagpur on Friday that will determine the future course of its relations with its various affiliates and the Narendra Modi government at the centre.

The meeting of RSS’s Akhil Bharatiya Pratinidhi Sabha, or congress of representatives, is also expected to elevate sah sarkaryavaha or joint general-secretary Dattatraya Hosbale to the post of sarkaryavaha, or general-secretary.

In the RSS hierarchy, the post of general-secretary is the second most important position, next only to Sarsangh Chalak, or chief, who is considered to be the organisation’s philosopher and guide. Day-to-day functioning of the organisation is overseen by the general secretary.

While the RSS chief’s appointment is for a lifetime or till the time he decides to step down voluntarily, the general-secretary’s tenure is for three years. The Pratinidhi Sabha elects the general-secretary.

Hosbale will be replacing Bhayyaji Joshi.

“Even if it is decided present general secretary Bhayyaji Joshi will step down, he will continue to play role of coordinator between government (Modi cabinet), party (BJP) and Sangh Parivar,” an RSS functionary said on condition of anonymity.

Former RSS spokesman M.G. Vaidya, not ruling out the possibility of Hosbale’s elevation, said: “That’s what the buzz is, but we should wait till tomorrow evening or Sunday morning.”

Though Krishna Gopal, another joint general-secretary, is the RSS’s pointsman with the BJP, Joshi was in charge of the gearing up entire RSS machinery before last year’s Lok Sabha elections, in which the BJP won a majority on its own and formed a government with its allies in the National Democratic Alliance (NDA).

Joshi shares a personal rapport with Modi and unofficially performs the role of a mediator between the government and the RSS, the RSS functionary cited above said.

“The custom in RSS is general-secretary is younger to the RSS chief. However in 2009, Mohan Bhagwat became RSS chief in extraordinary circumstances, so the post of general-secretary went to the senior-most RSS functionary Joshi, who is four years elder to Bhagwat. And in 2012 it was decided to continue with Joshi because general elections were too close to bring changes at highest level,” Nagpur-based RSS watcher Dilip Deodhar said.

“If at the end of this Pratinidhi Sabha meeting, Joshi steps down, it will be considered to be part of natural succession process. However, if he has to continue in the post it will meant, internal struggle within Sangh Parivar is far from over.

“If Joshi continues, it means he needs the strength of the position of the general-secretary to mediate between various organisations of the Sangh Parivar and BJP and if Hosbale takes over, it means the RSS has at least managed to make them agree upon terms of engagement with each other”, he added.

Other organizations from the so-called Sangh Parivar, or RSS family, like the labour union Bharatiya Mazdoor Sangh (BMS) and the Swadeshi Jagaran Manch (SJM), the organization’s economic wing, have opposed the Modi government’s economic reform agenda.

While BMS has opposed labour reforms by the Modi government and also by BJP-led state governments such as Rajasthan and Maharashtra, SJM is critical of the government’s moves to increase foreign investment limits in sectors such as defence and insurance; it has also opposed the Modi government’s proposal to give the go-ahead to field trials of genetically modified (GM) crops.

On his part, Modi has been unhappy with activities like a campaign against so-called “love jihad” and the “ghar wapsi” programme led by the Vishwa Hindu Parishad (VHP), another member of the Sangh Parivar, which may hurt the BJP’s electoral fortunes in Bihar and West Bengal, where polls are due to take place later this year and next year, respectively.

“The friction between the BJP and various organizations of Sangh Parivar will continue irrespective of who occupies the post of general secretary,” political commentator Kumar Ketkar said. “The strategy of the RSS is that it wants to keep Modi government under control through these various organizations, but at the same time it wants to ensure this friction doesn’t get out of control and the BJP continues to be in power at centre and state level to implement its larger design of a Hindu Rashtra.”