The Sangh chief always pretended to have no interest in politics even after Guru Golwalkar had to spend long in detention in 1948 because the Prime Minister Nehru suspected, without evidence of involvement of the Sangh in assassination of Mahatma Gandhi. The home minister Sardar Patel had said after due verification that the Sangh was not involved. But both had interest in keeping Golwalkar in detention. Nehru was steaming off his anger at his failure to protect Gandhi and Patel was using the detention to impose the democratic norms in the Sangh structure and functioning culture.

Golwalkar resisted Shyama Prasad Mukherjee’s enthusiasm for the Sangh participation in elections. Only after several rounds of discussions, he agreed to allow formation of the Bharatiya Jan Sangh to function as its political wing. He also agreed to allow select Sangh functionaries to serve in the political wing. Deen Dayal Upadhyaya successor to Mukherjee from 1954 to 1966 maintained isolation of the Jan Sangh from other opposition even though the vote share of his party remained stuck at only eight per cent. Atal Behari goaded the Sangh chief to allow the party to at least to reach electoral understanding with others in the opposition. Golwalkar relented to see the amazing results. The Congress lost power in eight states and its majority in the Lok Sabha became razor thin of 30 members more than half. The experiment collapsed for various reasons. The massive mandate to Indira Gandhi in 1971 disheartened her opponents.

The Jan Sangh merged to form the Janata Party in 1977 but overshadow of the Sangh did not allow others to fully trust the former Sangh leaders to prompt Vajpayee to separate and launch new secular edifice. He shunned the influence of the Sangh in April 1980 but after the 1984 election disaster he had to admit that only heads had congregated in new edifice but legs were missing as the Sangh had refused to lend services of the Sangh as the election machinery. After futile efforts to be a political force, he and others surrendered to the Sangh in May 1989. Since then the BJP became from independent party to be only wing of the Sangh.

As the Prime Minister from 1998 to 2004, Vajpayee had realized he could not wield political influence unless approved by the Sangh chief. A decade later and after two defeats, the party was faced with the political challenge in 2014 when the Gujarat chief minister Narendra Modi emerged to stake his claims. Only after the Sangh chief ignored resistance within and named him to lead the party, Modi exposed his fangs. He made it clear that he would contest the election on economic issues only and relegate other main themes imposed by the Sangh since 1989. His approach was terrifying as only economic issue was fraught with danger for 89 years old philosophy pursuit of the Sangh. The examples told that the economic comforts tend to make religious needs irrelevant. So Modi strategy spelt danger but the Sangh could not back out. Or perhaps, the Sangh did not expect the grand success to Modi. Hence it could afford to allow his indulgence. The outcome surprised everyone but shocked the Sangh as it indicated the futility of its work of nine decades.

The Sangh chief launched efforts in eight months to goad NaMo to come back to old themes. On the eve of the Republic Day celebrations Bhagwat spoke to rightist intellectuals to claim the BJP majority was won on the temple issue and the government must attend to it before people are disillusioned. The Prime Minister responded with enigmatic silence and no action to respond to the concealed threat. It was then the strategy was evolved to defeat him in the Bihar polls in 2015.

Soon after his victory leaders of three super powers came rushing to assess the man who had performed a political miracle to get a clear mandate for the symbol that had persistently failed since 1952 and that too after ten years of allegations of his communal approach. After the Bihar defeat, they became unavailable. Perhaps they could read in the Bihar defeat that NaMo was a secondary political entity. NaMo also gave up his goal of rapid economic development.

He adopted strategic measures to prove his political supremacy. Demonetization was part of it. So also was his winning astonishing majority in the Uttar Pradesh assembly poll in 2017, and astonishing victory in the Lok Sabha polls in 2019. He also won over the Bihar chief minister Nitish Kumar to coalition with his party.

His demonetization did not affect the deprived class and the Dalit as much as it caused hardships to the traditional vote base of the Party. The lock down may appear to have directly affected the working class in loss of jobs but then he provided them free food supply to survive. But its costs have to be met by the middle class in higher taxation from next year onward. It is difficult to confer that he was replying to the public statement of Mohan Bhagwat disowning him In March.

He remained unaffected as the lock down directive indicates. Even in the face of directive issued to the sevaks to keep away from supporting the BJP in Bihar, NaMo proved his politics can run to success without the Sangh. Even in the face of all prediction of dismal performance of the NDA in Bihar and clear disaffection he told power and put the BJP on top with 73 seats, twenty more than in the last election. He has given option to the party men to choose either him or the Sangh. Vajpayee had failed but NaMo told the Sangh to get off his wagon.