After the grand victory of the Bharatiya Janata Party in the 2019 Lok Sabha election, India also witnessed a presidential style oath-taking ceremony of Prime Minister Narendra Modi and the other cabinet members. While the speculation of Cabinet allocations was still on, the oath-taking ceremony had many takeaways and messages which should be decoded.
The Rise Of The RSS In 1925
I believe the NaMo 2.0 government was the ultimate goal of this Hindu Nationalist party BJP which was established in the year 1980 after the Janata Party was dissolved. In 1984, the BJP contested its first election and won only two seats. Looking back at history, in the year 1951, Shyama Prasad Mukherjee formed the Bharatiya Jana Sangh which after the emergency merged with the Janata Party and several other parties, but by 1980, the Janata Party was dissolved.
The BJP reflects the ideology of a non-political organisation which is known as Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS). The RSS was formed in the year 1925 by Dr Keshav Baliram Hedgevar. The motto of the RSS was to consolidate the Hindus and train them. Hedgevar after the formation of the RSS never participated in any anti-British activity, therefore, the RSS was not part of the freedom movement. In early life, Hedgevar was part of the Home rule movement which was certainly anti-British and led by freedom fighter Bal Gangadhar Tilak.
The ideology of the RSS is based on the philosophy of Vinayak Damodar Savarkar who is popularly known as Veer Savarkar. He was part of the Hindu Mahasabha and worked on popularising Hindutva. According to history, Savarkar opposed the Quit India movement of 1942.
By now, it must be clear that BJP is the party that carried forward Savarkar’s idea to create a Hindu Rashtra; this was not possible during India’s independence struggle because the RSS was not a political organisation and the Bharatiya Jana Sangh had very little power. After the demolition of the Babri Masjid in the year, 1992 for the first time, the BJP, with the ideology of Hindutva came to the forefront.
They presented a virulent history where they showed that the Muslim invaders of India devastated the country and demolished the Hindu structures and lives. Thereafter in 1996, the BJP formed the government but it stayed in power for only 13 days. In 1998, the BJP formed a coalition with various other parties and formed the government in the center led by Atal Bihari Vajpayee; that government was in place for one year and eventually there was another election in which a coalition government won. Vajpayee became the PM and stayed in office for the full term.
Since it was a coalition government, the parties found common ground and did not get the chance to spread the Hindutva ideology above everything else.
The Blue-eyed Boy Of The RSS
Narendra Modi was the blue-eyed boy of the RSS. He left his house to become a ‘pracharak’ (someone who works full time for the Hindu nationalist Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh organisation in India) like many others. But, Modi had charisma. He was appointed as the state coordinator of Gujarat to organise the Ram Rath Yatra held by Lal Krishna Advani. He performed the work successfully and also took part in the Ram Janmabhumi movement.
The RSS realized the strength and the leadership quality of this man and reportedly communicated the same to LK Advani, thereafter Advani in the backdrop started working to develop Modi into a politician. Later, he became the Chief Minister of Gujarat.
The RSS realized that Modi was the hope for the Sangh Parivar and that he could play a significant role in establishing Savarkar’s ideology. It was not an easy task in India but the RSS also realized that the coddling of minorities by the Congress would backfire and that would be the moment to establish Hindutva. The UPA government led by the Congress party became weaker by the day and the 2014 election was a final blow to them. The BJP and RSS realized that this was the best time to launch Modi as the face for India’s future leadership, especially as the people were losing faith in the Congress party.
In 2014, riding the anti-Congress wave and with their movement against corruption, the BJP created the Modi wave which was fuelled by the people’s anger against the Congress regime. Modi got a majority and formed a very strong government but the ultimate goals were yet to be achieved.
Modi 2.0 And The Ultimate Goal
Before the 2019 election, many of the Indian people were angry at their leader because of the state of the economy and unemployment, but unfortunately, the Opposition remained divided and Modi was able to turn the nation’s attention away from real issues. The BJP campaign narrative focused on national security. The Balakot air strike and Pulwama attack made his narrative stronger. In the backdrop, Amit Shah and RSS did their groundwork.
After the humongous win of the party in the recent elections, breaking all records, Modi reached the top again and realized that this was the time to flaunt the BJP and its Hindutva ideology . He gave the top three cabinets to the people who have been BJP presidents; Rajnath Singh, Amit Shah and Nitin Gadkari. By bringing Shah to the forefront, he made it clear that the grassroots narrative of Hindutva should come in the limelight and that this was the ultimate goal of the BJP.
Modi also gave power to Pratap Chandra Sarangi an MP from Odisha which I believe was a smart trick on his part. The media welcomed the man but seemed to forget about his questionable past. Mishra is from the Bajrang Dal and he was the state coordinator of Bajrang Dal at the time when Australian missionary Graham Stewart Staines and his two sons were killed in Orissa’s Keonjhar district on January 22, 1999. Bajrang Dal members were believed to be behind these murders.
“The Commission had justified its non-examination of the role of the Bajrang Dal on the ground that it was not an illegal organisation, suggesting thereby that legal organisations cannot plan and execute such awful crimes. It simply accepted the testimony of the State coordinator of the Bajrang Dal, Pratap Chandra Sarangi, in which he denied any Bajrang Dal role in the killings, without cross-examining him. The Commission concluded that the motive for the crime was to express one’s anger against the conversions of poor and illiterate tribal people to Christianity. But its finding that these conversions were not necessarily inspired by Staines caused doubts about the validity of this factor as the possible motive,” noted an article in Frontline magazine in the year 2000.
Referenced from: ‘Narendra Modi: A Political Biography‘ – Andy Marino