By Radhika Ramaseshan

With elections in sight, the Sangh’s pursuit of hawkish Hindutva is inescapable and real. And Modi knows well how to couch the terms of engagement with the RSS

Only the credulous would dismiss Surendra Singh’s political construction as a fanatic’s fulmination. Last week, Singh, an Uttar Pradesh legislator, proclaimed that the 2019 election would force a choice between “Islam or Bhagwan” and “India or Pakistan” on the country’s voters. Singh had infamously defended his colleague, Kuldeep Singh Sengar, who is accused of raping a young woman. Surendra Singh is not part of the RSS’s so-called “lunatic fringe”, represented by the Vishwa Hindu Parishad, the Bajrang Dal, the Hindu Jagran Manch and similar entities that claim ownership over communal violence when it suits them politically, and divest responsibility when it does not.

He is a card-carrying member of the BJP whose Jammu contingent is in solidarity with the masterminds of the rape and murder of a child carried out in a temple in Kathua. Make no mistake. With a year left before the next mandate is exercised, the RSS — the patriarch presiding over an expanding family sworn to upholding “Hindu sovereignty”— has moved from the backroom to the centre stage to conceptualise, strategise and execute the political moves the BJP and its other progenies will adopt. So far, the BJP was the cat’s whiskers after Narendra Modi made good his intent to install majority rule. The lesser offspring whined and yelled for attention. The RSS refused to indulge the crybabies fearing the perceived softness might upset its equilibrium with the Modi government. Not any more. Every child of the Sangh will be as important as the other.

Shortly after the RSS’s apex policy-and-decision-making body, the pratinidhi sabha, met at Nagpur in early March, the commanders moved in to reset the VHP, which had lain dormant after the death of its patriarch, Ashok Singhal, into its original militant character. The 54-year-old organisation — which catapulted to glory when the “movement” to rebuild a Ram temple in Ayodhya fired up large parts of India — was lost for direction as the Modi sarkar blew hot and cold towards the Ramjanmabhoomi-Babri Masjid issue, using figures like Yogi Adityanath to reassure the faithful that all was not lost.

The VHP was in the throes of an internecine power struggle between two surrogate warriors, Modi and Pravin Togadia, who used the incumbent VHP head, G Raghava Reddy and a rival, Vishnu Sadhashiv Kokje, to fight their battles. Modi and Togadia had been political associates in Gujarat, but their respective ambitions caused a divide that grew deeper with time.

In December last year, at a VHP executive meeting, Togadia nearly lost his case when a section pitched strongly for Kokje. Apparently, he staved off the crisis with the help of a Sangh senior who exercises a sort of veto power in crunch situations. Togadia resorted to histrionics and portrayed himself as a victim who was “hounded” by the powerful, especially after the Rajasthan cops pursued him in Ahmedabad for a case relating to communal incitement in 2002.

At the Nagpur executive session, Togadia’s purported saviour found himself in a sticky situation when a campaign to replace him with a younger person gained traction. The story goes that the RSS veteran managed to save his job, in return for which he withdrew his ‘patronage’ of Togadia, agreed to anoint Kokje as VHP president, and dump Reddy.

Knowing that Togadia would not depart without kicking and screaming, the Sangh used the ruse of ‘electing’ the VHP chief through a secret ballot conducted on Sunday in Gurugram. No surprises, because Togadia’s Reddy was decisively voted out by Modi and the RSS’s proxy candidate, Kokje.

Cheers for the ouster of Togadia, a minority-baiter? As one Togadia exited, the Sangh ensured that five more stepped into his shoes. In the recast VHP executive, Milind Parande, the new secretary-general who replaced the low-profile Champat Rai, was a national joint coordinator of the VHP’s militant arm, the Bajrang Dal, and is a real pro at mobilising crowds in Ayodhya. So also Vinayak Rao Deshpande, the organisational general secretary. After taking over, Kokje, a former high court judge, declared that the VHP would seriously work to build a Ram temple, bring a central law to proscribe cow killing, and abrogate Article 370 and 35A in J&K. Of these three issues, a Ram temple seems the most workable, at least in terms of whipping up the “right” atmospherics before a legal verdict comes in. The other two are constitutional and legal impossibilities.

Modi and the BJP are neither helpless nor prisoners of the RSS’s ideological obsessions. Modi, a ‘pracharak’, is a creature of the Sangh and knows exactly how to write or rewrite the terms and language of engagement with the parent. That the PM took his time to react to the killings of Mohammad Akhlaq, Pehlu Khan, Ummar Muhammad and Junaid by cow vigilantes, and lately to the political rapes in Unnao and Kathua, and in anodyne language, is eloquent proof of how deeply yoked he is to the RSS.

source: http://bangaloremirror.indiatimes.com

SAWM India, in association with School of Media, Communication and Culture, Jadavpur University, will launch the book, THE WAY I SEE I: A GAURI LANKESH READER in Kolkata. Professor Chandan Gowda, Translator and Editor of the book, and Pamela Philipose, Public Editor, The Wire, and a founder-member of SAWM. will be present. The program will be held on January 29, the birthday of Gauri Lankesh, Venue: H L Roy Auditorium, Jadavpur University.