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The Rediff Special/ Virendra Kapoor

What do the RSS know of governance that they should seek to direct Vajpayee's functioning?

The winter of Bharatiya Janata Party's discontent has just begun. The coming weeks and months will further add to its troubles. While the uneasy coalition that Atal Bihari Vajpayee leads might yet survive the guiles of J Jayalalitha for another couple of months, there is little or no prospect of a qualitative improvement in the governance of the country.

Of course, the recalcitrant allies are a major headache for the prime minister. But if truth be told, a far bigger pain for Vajpayee is his own party and the larger Sangh Parivar.

Vajpayee is not able to make peace with the RSS. Nor is he ready to sever links with it. The antipathy is mutual. It is an uneasy relationship that has survived for nearly four decades based on the need of both to exploit each other's strengths. The RSS needs the mukhota (mask) to gain wider access and respectability. And Vajpayee needs the cheerleaders and organisational apparatus to convert the popular enthusiasm for him into electoral capital.

This love-hate relationship between the RSS leadership and Vajpayee has subsisted for so long that one cannot seriously envisage a parting of ways at this juncture. The stakes are so high for the Sangh Parivar that the RSS leadership will do well to exercise restraint while seeking to alter the content and direction of official policy. It should eschew the temptation to play the superboss to the Vajpayee government.

It is, of course, foolish for anyone to expect that the RSS will lay off completely and leave the governance to the BJP. Not for nothing did it toil ceaselessly these past seven decades to have someone else -- and that, a someone who is at pains to disavow faith in its world-view -- enjoy the fruits of its labour. The RSS might claim to be a cultural organisation, but its present-day bosses have a political agenda. But it cannot seek to push that agenda without jeopardising the survival of the fragile coalition.

The recent hullabaloo over Murli Manohar Joshi's ill-conceived attempt to saffronise education ought to have taught the RSS leaders the limitations of a 17-party government. Yet there are dark hints that the RSS leaders have become a thorn in the PM's side. If whispers emanating from quarters close to the prime minister are to be believed, the RSS has hobbled Vajpayee at every step, interfering in postings, transfers, policy matters, et al.

Vajpayee cannot tick off the RSS leaders. Nor can he surrender completely to their dictates. Of course, it would have been easier for him to grant the RSS bosses all their wishes were they truly the repositories of wisdom and common sense they seem to delude themselves into believing that they are. Not unlike the steep fall in the quality of leadership in all other walks of life, there has been a perceptible decline in the calibre of senior RSS leaders as well. In any case, what do they know of governance that they should seek to direct and monitor Vajpayee's functioning?

Admittedly, the RSS's alleged negative role in the BJP's governance is vastly exaggerated. Vajpayee's own lack of killer instinct is largely responsible for the mess. He comes across as a weak man who can be pushed around by a Mamta Banerjee today and a Jayalalitha tomorrow. (By the way, after lying low for a while, I am told, Jayalalitha is once again itching for public attention. She is said to have written to the prime minister threatening to withdraw support by the middle of this month.)

His laid-back, easy-going style of functioning doesn't make for purposeful hands-on governance. Even his differences with the RSS can be sorted out should Vajpayee take the initiative. Instead, he seeks to withdraw into his shell and sulk. That way lies a catastrophe for the entire Sangh Parivar.

On their part, the leaders of the RSS would do well to lessen, and not exacerbate further, the tension between senior BJP leaders.

The BJP is divided down the line. While Joshi has the ears of a senior RSS leader, Vajpayee and Advani are at loggerheads over personnel, policy and other matters, be it the party organisation or government. There has been such a diminution in the moral authority of the RSS leaders in recent years that they cannot bring about an amicable rapprochement between the two senior-most BJP leaders. The Vajpayee-Advani cold war has vitiated their capacity to provide good governance.

But the message of the people's mandate in the recent poll is clear: govern or get out. Unless the government gets its act together, there would be no stopping the return of the self-same Congress that wrought havoc on this nation for over 45 years. The bipolar polity that seems to have evolved in Delhi, Rajasthan, Madhya Pradesh etc too would add to the BJP's woes. For, in the absence of the spoiler third force, the Hindutva party would be hard put to beat back the challenge from the Congress which, since the emergence of Sonia Gandhi as party chief, has been able to present a facade of unity.

It was the absence of infighting in the MP Congress, and the heavy presence of bickering in the BJP in the state, that accounted for the latter's unexpected defeat. BJP president Shashikant 'Kushabhau' Thakre could not put the party in order in his own home state.

There is no denying the truth in Sushma Swaraj's pithy comment on the outcome of the assembly poll. "Is ghar ko aag lag gayin ghar key chirag sey (This house was set on fire by a lamp from the same house) " is what she said when the poll results in Delhi brought doom and gloom for the BJP.

If Vajpayee and Advani are at odds at the Centre, in Delhi it was virtually free-style wrestling between Sahib Singh Verma and Madan Lal Khurana, with Sushma herself trying to exploit the fight to carve out a faction of her own. In Rajasthan, Bhairon Singh Shekhawat was hobbled by the RSS component in the BJP state unit. In Madhya Pradesh, the Thakre-Patwa combine created a mess in the distribution of party tickets, leaving all others totally dissatisfied.

The point is that there is no great enthusiasm for either Sonia Gandhi or the party she leads with an iron hand. The vote was against the BJP. Not for the Congress.

The people are angry with the BJP for its failures. Unless they begin to deliver now, the BJP will soon find itself back on the Opposition benches with some two dozen members. In their disgust with the acrimonious coalition politics, the people might be ready to go back to the same corrupt and criminal Congress that they rejected with utter disdain a few years ago. Vajpayee, Advani and the RSS leaders will be guilty for such a terrible denouement. Transfer of power and wealth will then proceed apace under the Italian-born Sonia Gandhi.

Sangh Parivar and swadeshiwallahs, stand warned.

The Rediff Specials

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