By saying that Narendra Modi and Amit Shah cannot win all the elections for the BJP and that the party workers must work harder at the grassroots level, the RSS chief has, for the first time, alluded to the political fallibility of the prime minister and the home minister.

Up until now, the two were regarded by their friends and foes as unstoppable with the epithet, Chanakya, being applied to Shah although the latter humbly dissociated himself from the praise of his admirers. With Modi’s oratorical prowess and Shah’s role in setting up a highly efficient organizational structure when he was the party president, the BJP had appeared to be well on the way to fulfill Shah’s dream of ruling from panchayats to parliament for the next 50 years.

Now, it has all changed. After the setbacks in Haryana, where the BJP failed to get a majority, in Maharashtra, where it was outwitted by the Shiv Sena which has formed a government with the NCP’s and the Congress’s help, and outright defeats in Jharkhand and Delhi, the BJP is coming to terms with the uncomfortable reality that Modi and Shah are vulnerable.

Hence, the RSS chief’s reminder to the BJP rank and file of the mortality of political life. For him, the BJP’s retreat must be deeply disturbing because it entails the unravelling of the Sangh parivar’s dream of ushering in a Hindu rashtra. After the frustration of dealing with the moderate Atal Behari Vajpayee, the RSS had finally found in Modi the ideal person to implement its longstanding project of delinking the country from Nehruvian secularism and setting it on the path of reasserting its Hindu roots.

With the government’s blessings, considerable progress has already been made in this direction by planting saffron apparatchiki in academic institutions and gubernatorial offices. In keeping with Hindutva beliefs, the Union science and technology ministry has decided to allocate funds for research into the uses of cow’s urine and dung in medicines, toothpaste and shampoos, provoking more than 100 scientists to lodge a protest. But countering such deracinated nay-sayers is a minor bump on the road to eradicate the Nehruvian concept of a scientific temper.

What matters for the RSS is the need for Modi and Shah to remain in power in the foreseeable future so that the parivar can effectively influence society on its outlook ranging from diet to dress and on the past when India, according to the saffron worldview, had everything from the Internet to aeroplanes.

However, the RSS also appears to have realized in the aftermath of the BJP’s electoral setbacks that haste is counterproductive. Just as Shah distanced himself from the hateful speeches of his party men during the campaign, Bhagwat has cautioned his followers against the use of the word, nationalism, because it reminds people of Nazism.

The advice is curious considering that the second RSS chief, M.S. Golwalkar, was an admirer of Nazi Germany, writing that it demonstrated “race pride at its highest ... (and) has also shown how well nigh impossible it is for Races and cultures … to be assimilated into one united whole, a good lesson for us in Hindusthan to learn and profit by”.

Considering that the BJP expects to electorally profit from this “good lesson” by trashing pluralism and demonizing Muslims, as is evident from Union minister Giriraj Singh’s regret that there was no exchange of populations between India and Pakistan in 1947, a retreat at this stage as the RSS suggests may neither be an easy tactical exercise nor convincing.

However, it is a welcome development if the RSS is waking up to the perils of hyper-nationalism. One of its leaders, Bhaiyaji Joshi, has also cautioned against the BJP’s recourse to such intensive nationalism by saying that those Hindus who are not with the party are not ipso facto anti-Hindu.

To what extent the BJP listens to these words of moderation remains to be seen, especially when Maharashtra Navnirman Samity leader, Raj Thackeray’s use of hyper-nationalism to boost his sagging political fortunes underlines the perceived value of this overt display of patriotism directed against Muslims

Where the BJP is concerned, much depends on how it performs in the forthcoming assembly elections in Bihar, West Bengal and Assam. While the BJP is likely to have a relatively easy run in Bihar, it will be a great deal more difficult for it in the two other states.

Arguably, if the BJP finds the going tough in West Bengal and Assam, the party may fall back on the kind of poisonous anti-Muslim speeches which its campaigners made in Delhi, ignoring what the RSS has said. (IPA Service)