So, Prime Minister Narendra Modi is going to talk to the people of India from All India Radio on October 3, Dussehra, one of the biggest festivals of Hindus who mark this day as a joyous occasion when good triumphs over evil. Mr Modi’s speech to the nation will, in all likelihood, become a monthly affair, if not a weekly one. (mygov.in is holding an opinion poll on periodicity. Majority prefer it to be monthly, weekly is the second choice, fortnightly the third, and a daily speech, thankfully, is among the last preferences.) Mr Modi is going to, in all probability, stick to his favourite extempore format, making live simulcasting in Indian languages a very difficult task.
For the last nine decades this festival has also been important in the nation’s political calendar because the Sarsanghchalak or chief of the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh would deliver the traditional Vijay Dashami — as Dussehra is also called — speech from Nagpur’s Reshmi Bagh, the RSS headquarters. In the initial decades of the organisation, this speech was important only to those wedded to the ideals of the Sangh Parivar and its affiliates. Since the Vishwa Hindu Parishad initiated the Ram Janmabhoomi movement in the mid-1980s and the idea of cultural nationalism started becoming a mainstream idea, the annual sermon of the Sarsanghchalak began grabbing substantial space in the media. This was because the tone and tenor often influenced policies and programmes of the Bharatiya Janata Party and other RSS affiliates.
In the days when there was no Internet, reporters like me spoke to contacts within the RSS in Nagpur to secure briefings about what the chief, Balasaheb Deoras during my time, would say. The speech was important because the RSS chief rarely opened his mouth through the year, remaining an enigmatic recluse for the media. The Vijay Dashami speech was undoubtedly one of the biggest “events” in the RSS political calendar. Though in recent years Sarsanghchalaks like Rajju Bhaiya, K.S. Sudarshan and Mohan Bhagwat became more vocal, the significance of the speech remained because they’d give a macro-view of the Sangh’s approach to major challenges facing the nation, instead of focusing on day-to-day developments.
With his plan to address the nation — at least several hours before the early evening RSS event — Mr Modi seems to have stolen the thunder from the RSS event. But will Mr Modi’s Dussehra speech become more politically significant and attract greater public attention than what the Sarsanghchalak says?
Will people and the media compare Mr Modi’s speech with Mr Bhagwat’s and rate them, as is the general wont now? With this initiative is Mr Modi trying to become bigger than the RSS?
The RSS faced no challenge from Atal Behari Vajpayee during his days as Prime Minister because he did not usurp its ideology and did not intrude into the space of the RSS leadership. The relevance of the RSS remained because the organisation and its affiliates protested against several policies besides, of course, maintaining its distinct political identity. Mr Modi does not appear keen on providing the RSS with such an opportunity because only a rare policy of his has riled Nagpur.
In return for adhering to the basics of the Sangh Parivar’s ideology, Mr Modi wants to push everyone else to the brink of irrelevance. Mr Modi made public his bid to become Prime Minister in 2011 with the Sadbhavana programme. Since then, the Sangh Parivar witnessed a battle of nerves between him and the RSS top brass led by Mr Bhagwat.
Relations between the RSS and Mr Modi were sour during his years as chief minister over the question of primacy — was Mr Modi higher in the hierarchy than the Prant Pracharak? The most asked question then was if the RSS would accept someone like him as the BJP’s prime ministerial candidate or plug for someone more pliable, like Rajnath Singh, Sushma Swaraj or even Lal Krishna Advani?
Eventually the RSS accepted Mr Modi on his terms as the electoral mascot because its leaders felt that he was most likely to secure a victory for the BJP. They assessed Mr Modi would not deviate majorly from RSS programmes barring ones that could be explained to the cadres as “compulsions of governance”.
RSS leaders know Mr Modi better than anyone and are aware of his abrasive style and searing ambition. They realised he would eventually pose a threat to the existence of the RSS because Mr Modi immensely dislikes other power centres. Yet the RSS opted for the Modi-way to get its agenda back nationally, leaving its battle with him for another day.
There is one fundamental difference between Mr Modi and the RSS. While all his actions are aimed at consolidating personal power and influence, and RSS leaders also work on achieving the same agenda long-term basis ideologically and organisationally, they are not solely driven by personal ambition. In contrast, Mr Modi is not an institution builder. Take Gujarat, for instance: he did not build the party in the state that could effectively take charge after his departure.
As a result, within four months of his exit, the BJP lost three out of nine seats it held previously in recent bypolls. Despite Mr Modi’s ratings remaining as high as ever, defeat of BJP candidates indicates a crisis in the organisation. Mr Modi will undoubtedly steal the thunder from the RSS this Dussehra and may continue to do so for several years. What strategy the RSS devises to weather this storm and stage a comeback is to be seen. RSS leaders would like to believe that Mr Modi poses no threat to their influence, yet deep down they are aware that the longer he remains a political force, the greater the chances of the organisation’s marginalisation.
As it happens with every hyped event related to Mr Modi, there will be little debate on the appropriateness of a Prime Minister using a religious festival or occasion to preside over a government funded event. The RSS has this freedom, as do Imams to deliver sermons on festivals of Muslims. But the Prime Minister delivering a Dussehra address? This question would not have risen if Mr Modi had chosen any other day for his radio talk. But then it wouldn’t have set up a clash for TRPs with Mr Bhagwat. Mr Modi sends clear messages. It’s for us to perceive them.
The writer is the author of Narendra Modi:
The Man, the Times
