It’s not our job to chant ‘NaMo, NaMo’: RSS chief Mohan Bhagwat

New Delhi: Relations between the RSS and BJP have been fraught over the years – more recently, on the question of endorsing a leader with a personality cult – but chief Mohan Bhagwat’s reported open disapproval in chanting ‘Namo, Namo’ at a recent cadre meet has split it wide open again between the BJP and the ideologue.

Bhagwat at the RSS’ Pratinidhi Sabha in Bangalore on Sunday has reportedly instructed his cadres not to cross its “maryada” by chanting “Namo, Namo” — “Hum rajneeti mein nahin hain. Humara kaam ‘NaMo NaMo’ karna nahin hai. (We are not in politics. Our work is not to chant ‘Namo, Namo’. We must work towards our own target)

He said it was not the job of the RSS to be a Chanakya to the BJP’s Samudra Gupta Maurya, ‘The Indian Express’ reported. He said it was better to be detached: “Humaari apni maryada hai. Humme maryada nahi todni hai (We have our own limits. We must not cross our limits),” he said, according to sources quoted in ;The Indian Express’ report.

Bhagwat was addressing delegates during the “mukt chintan” (open forum) at the meeting.

RSS and Narendra Modi — even though the BJP Prime Ministerial candidate was a product of the Sangh — have not quite been friends for the last several years. As chief minister of Gujarat, Modi has successfully undermined the RSS’ influence in the state, once its stronghold.

But the promise of victory can broker many compromises. The RSS has worked behind the scenes to bring naysayers in the BJP to rally behind Narendra Modi as Prime Ministerial candidate – announced in a two-day meet last September that was attended by the RSS and top BJP leaders.

But the RSS realises that its future is linked to the BJP's electoral success. That is perhaps why Bhagwat was quick to tell cadres this Sunday that the organisation’s efforts to bring BJP to power was in the “national interest”. But that endorsement too was tongue in cheek – “the question is not who comes to power, but who doesn’t,” he is reported to have told workers. Bhagwat then asked his cadres to hold their own even while working for the BJP.

The need to win has forced the RSS in the last one year to make many contrary and conciliatory moves vis-à-vis the BJP. However, Modi’s popularity, feedback from pranth pracharaks, the need to get out of the Opposition with a vision for the future have all swung it in favour of the BJP’s Prime Ministerial candidate.