ANTIQUES SHOPS

An article in the latest official newsletter of the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS), the ideological fount of the BJP,  has criticised Gujarat Chief Minister Narendra Modi for his style of functioning – and sought to pre-empt the chatter that the Gujarat strongman is the party’s inevitable candidate for prime ministership.

The article, in the most recent issue of the Panchajanya, is a fairly balanced critique of Modi, and seen in its entirety, can be said to offer “constructive criticism” of one of the BJP’s leading lights: it even has passages that offer glowing praise for Modi for having emerged from the ordeal of the countless court cases and investigations into the 2002 riots case – and for having overseen good governance in Gujarat.

But it also criticises Modi’s “style of functioning”, particularly in the context of his recent exertions to get Sanjay Joshi removed from the national executive of the BJP;  it also observes pointedly that the BJP has “several chief ministers and central leaders” who are capable of being candidates for prime ministership – and a final decision on that must wait until after the general election.

That last observation is being perceived as a signal that Modi isn’t the inevitable candidate for prime ministership – in the way that he and his supporters have been projecting the outcome of the recent meeting of the BJP national executive.

The article has been authored by senior RSS ideologue and former Panchajanya editor Devendra Swaroop, and to that extent can be said to represent the prevailing mindset of the BJP’s mother organisation.

“Narendra Modi‘s role in the Sanjay Joshi episode at the BJP’s national executive meeting in Mumbai is worth pondering over,” the article observes.

Modi had held back from attending the meeting until Sanjay Joshi, with whom he has had a tortured relationship for long, was forced to resign from the national executive. Party president Nitin Gadkari capitulated, evidently in order to secure Modi’s support for his own second term in office.

The backroom deal had invited criticism from senior BJP leader LK Advani, who noted in his blog that recent developments in the party gave it much to introspect.

The Panchajanya article said that by making Joshi’s presence at the national executive a “prestige issue”, Modi had given the media an opportunity to spread misinformation about the Sangh and the BJP.” It wondered why Modi, who it said abided by the RSS ideology, had been so intolerant of  Joshi, a fellow RSS worker.

The article also criticises Modi’s detractors in the Gujarat unit of the party -particularly former Chief Ministers Keshubhai Patel and Suresh Mehta -for their recent attempts to mobilise the Patel community by playing the card of ‘identity politics’. Swaroop suggests that they have been instigated by the Congress, which had failed to entrap Modi in the riots cases.

But Swaroop also used the issue to flag Modi’s failings as an organisational leader. The mere fact that senior leaders had felt compelled to opt for such low-blow methods underlined the need for Modi to review his style of functioning, he added.

But perhaps the most significant comment in the article is  the one that relates to the BJP’s choice of whom it should project as prime ministerial candidate as it prepares for the 2014 election. Recent media commentaries – and Modi’s own exertions – appear to treat the matter as settled, and that Modi is the “inevitable” leader.

But the article pours cold water on the idea. “There is no doubt that besides the chief ministers of its states, many among the BJP’s central leaders too have the competence required of a Prime Minister,” it said.

In fact, Swaroop argued, the BJP should not name its choice for Prime Minister ahead of the elections. The BJP, he emphasised was a democratic party, unlike the Congress, which was steeped in “dynasty politics”.  The right way to proceed after the election would be for the members of the BJP parliamentary party to elect their leader.

The RSS advice also reflects the dilemma within the BJP over the wisdom of projecting Narendra Modi as its General who will lead the charge ahead of the election. As we’d noted, the perception that Modi is positioning himself as a candidate has triggered a backlash within the party – and among its allies in the NDA.

It has also prompted Left-leaning commentators in the media to launch a full-throated attack against Modi. Praful Bidwai notes in a recent column that “Modi must be stopped in his tracks”.

The RSS, writes Bidwai,  ”is looking for a quasi-fuehrer, an uebermench, the Supreme Leader, behind whom BJP cadres can rally in a war-like formation — no matter how incompatible such bellicosity is with democratic processes, and how it vitiates India’s social and political climate.”

The RSS, he adds, “gambles that many potential allies who are supposedly allergic to Modi could be made to fall in line with his leadership depending on how many seats the BJP wins in the next election.”

Criticising parties across the spectrum – from the Left to the Samajwadi Party to the BSP to  the National Conference and many others – for having aligned themselves with the BJP in the past, Bidwai claims that the BJP has used such opportunistic alliances to advance its Hindutva aganda on the sly.

India’s top industrialists too have rallied behind Modi as an ‘efficient, development-minded’ leader, Bidwai notes.  ”This combination of big capital and Hindutva could prove the undoing of the rule of law and Indian democracy,” he says.

Bidwai’s prescription: “Modi must be stopped in his tracks – to start with, in Gujarat.”