HVK Archives: So near yet so far: RSS fed up with old BJP story
So near yet so far: RSS fed up with old BJP story - The Asian Age
Pradyot Lal
()
21 October 1996
Title :So near yet so far: RSS fed up with old BJP story
Author : Pradyot Lal
Publication : The Asian Age
Date : October 21, 1996
Disquiet and a sense of deja vu - these are the two
dominant emotions within the Sangh Parivar even as the
"war" on UP governor Romesh Bhandari is well and truly
declared.
But much more than the sheer anger and frustration at
another manifestation of the "so near and yet so far"
syndrome in Uttar Pradesh, postures obscured from the
brave noises being made in public indicate a noisy, no-
holds-barred battle within the Sangh Parivar.
Rashtriya Swayamsewak Sangh chief Rajendra Singh is said
to be quite unhappy over the failure of the Bharatiya
Janata Party to make political capital out of a rather
favourable terrain, and his customary oration on Vijay-
dashmi in Nagpur is likely to pinpoint political
failures.
A highly-placed RSS source at their headquarters in
Keshavkunj here said even when constitutionally and
politically the BJP may raise a point or two about the
raw deal meted out to the party by respective governors
in Gujarat and UP, the focus has to be on the inability
to convert good scenarios into a winning position. In
fact, it is very much the beginning of the night of the
long knives within a discordant parivar.
While the UP reverse is being directly attributed to Mr
Atal Behari Vajpayee, the Gujarat disaster, with the
imminence of rebel leader Shankar Sinh Vaghela becoming
chief minister with Congress support, is an albatross
around Mr L.K. Advani's neck, and that is where the fun
and games really begin.
Mr Advani's extended terms as party chief will come under
pressure, and Dr Muslim Manohar Joshi, with his excellent
equation with the BSP, will be emboldened to try his luck
at yet another stint as party chief after having a rather
disastrous first term earlier this decade.
But the problem is going to being with the RSS headquar-
ters - especially the feeling in its top echelons that
"car sewaks" have quite taken hold of the party, using
their socio-economic clout to capture vantage positions
in the BJP hierarchy. Mr Singh, as it is, started his
reign as the RSS boss with firm and categorical stric-
tures against the luxuriant life styles of BJP leaders
who hold positions in governments run by the party. His
ire was specially reserved for Rajasthan chief minister
Bhairon Singh Shekhawat, and then Delhi chief minister
Madanlal Khurana.
Subsequently, with RSS second-in-command H.V. Seshadhari
taking the lead, the issue of BJP vis-a-vis the rise of
the intermediate castes in the North came up in the
Parivar. Mr Singh. regarded to be the most political of
the RSS bosses till date, has also been particularly
concerned about the BJP's continued identification with
the upper castes. Samajik Samrachna - or social recon-
struction - was supposed to have been.his definite con-
tribution, but the reality has not quite matched his
projections. The dominant feeling in UP, inspired by the
Brahminical order led by Mr Kalraj Mishra, is that Mr
Kalyan Singh has failed to deliver. Gujarat, in any
case, has for quite sometime been held as a failure
against Mr Advani. Specifically, his cold- shouldering
of Mr Vaghela, when the latter was only wanting an audi-
ence with him a few months ago, is a sore point with many
senior members of the party's national executive.
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