RSS head Mohan Bhagwat meets Vajpayee, discusses politics

Mohan Bhagwat, the Sarsanghchalak (supreme head) of the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS), has met Atal Bihari Vaypayee, retired leader of the Bharatiya Janata Parry (BJP) and former Prime Minister.

Photo: Mohan Bhagwat, RSS Sarsanghachalak

Mohan Bhagwat called on Vaypayee to inquire about the veteran leader’s health and to discuss “the current political situation in the country,” a statement issued by the RSS said.

The 85-year-old Vajpayee, who is also chairman of the BJP-led National Democratic Alliance (NDA), is now keeping off active politics owing to his poor health.

N C Jhingta, Vajpayee’s secretary, told reporters that the meeting between Mohan Bhagwat and Vajpayee lasted about 30 minutes.

The BJP currently is beset with internal squabbles and issues regarding leadership post its debacle in the recently concluded Lok Sabha elections. The party has been unable to find its direction in the aftermath, and infighting has been at its zenith.

Mohan Bhagwat had, a week before, met a number of leaders of the BJP in an effort to ease the severe crisis in the party that emerged after veteran leader and former Union Cabinet minister Jaswant Singh was expelled from the BJP.

The BJP expelled Jaswant Singh over his book titled Jinnah – India, Partition, Independence.  The party alleges that, in his book, Jaswant Singh has unduly eulogized Mohammad Ali Jinnah, the founder of Pakistan, and made “defamatory references” to Vallabhbhai Patel, the first home minister of India.

It may be noted that the BJP-ruled Gujarat banned Jaswant Singh’s book just two days after it was released at a function in New Delhi.  Jaswant Singh later filed a petition in the Supreme Court challenging the Gujarat government’s ban on his book. Several BJP leaders said that the expulsion was a mistake. To add to that, Rajasthan BJP leader Vasundhara Raje refused to step down from the post of the Opposition leader when ordered to do so by the party president Rajnath Singh. Veteran BJP leader and ex-minister Arun Shourie also criticised the leadership, and openly asked the RSS to take over control of BJP.

Mohan Bhagwat refused to do anything of the sort during a rare interaction with the media during a press conference. However, behind the scenes, Mohan Bhagwat has been meeting the so-called generation-next BJP leaders, as well as the current leadership to sort out the mess in the party.

Bhagwat’s meeting with Vaypayee and other senior leaders of the BJP indicates that the RSS, the ideological guide and guardian of the BJP, is clearly and decisively intervening in the party’s affairs.

Meanwhile, L K Advani, unarguably the tallest leader in the BJP at present, is facing the biggest crisis in his political career with the RSS going ahead aggressively with its agenda of installing younger leaders at the BJP’s top echelons.

What Mohan Bhagwat said in Haridwar a few days ago is very significant in this context – Bhagwat had openly stated that “it was up to L K Advani to decide his future role.” And, in the new scheme of things that is unfolding in the BJP, Advani, who has dominated the party for a long time, is finding little or no role for himself.

What will worry Advani most will be the choice of the next president of the party. Even as most of Advani’s loyalists still hope that he will have a major role in choosing the next president, there are many in the party who believe that the successor to Rajnath Singh, the present president of the BJP, will be chosen by the RSS Sarsanghchalak.

The names reportedly being considered for the post of BJP president include those of Manohar Parikkar, former chief minister of Goa, and Shivraj Chauhan, chief minister of Madhya Pradesh. It is important to note that all the leaders being considered for the BJP’s top post are hardcore loyalists of the RSS and do not belong to the so-called “Delhi-centric coterie” which was nurtured and propelled by L K Advani himself.

Reports indicate that Mohan Bhagwat is looking outside of Delhi for “new faces” – and, young ones, at that) to be inducted into the BJP. In fact, it is said that Bhagwat has with him a list of around 80 young people who are eligible to lead the party.