Young do change their views but old people cannot. For them only their old values remain relevant. For old minds of the Sangh, needs and thinking was stuck in times and era a century earlier. The Sangh was founded on needs caused by Mahatma Gandhi arousing conscience of the lower strata of the Indian society to fight for their political rights. If they were encouraged to be conscious of their birth right to fight to their political liberation from the British yokel, they would also sooner or later fight with the upper castes for a share in political power and on the basis of social supremacy merely because of their larger proportion. They could challenge successfully by sheer weight of their numbers. They had evidence to justify their fears as the consolidation of lower strata had got power in their hand in two states. Both states had power with the upper strata since 1952.

The fight in the name of religion was thus for retaining social superiority and political power. In fact Guru MS Golwalkar, second Sangh chief was reluctant to be in the political thicket. Dr. Shyama Prasad Mukherjee succeeded but his follower party chief retained isolation of the party since 1954 as Deen Dayal Upadhyaya believed other parties in opposition were equally as impure as the ruling Congress Party. The ceaseless fight by young leader Atal Behari Vajpayee against isolationist approach brought the party to be in the thicket of political arena in 1966. The pre-election understanding among opposition parties delivered the rude shock to the Congress in 1967. NaMo was then in his twenties.

There is no evidence of either his innocence or involvement in the communal carnage that enveloped Gujarat in six months after he replaced Keshubhai Patel as the chief minister in 2001. His consistent effort to improve the Muslim girls’ education speaks of him as a different kind of politician. Perhaps he was following footsteps of Vajpayee on realisation that without the secular approach the political power would make little headway. He launched his campaign to build an image for the elevation in the party hierarchy after Lal Krishna Advani was told to vacate his position after a shattering defeat in 2009. He won appreciation of top industrialists after the Beijing world economic forum meeting in 2011. He built his base in winning young minds with his economic approach but made clear his priorities only after Mohan Bhagwat endorsed his approval to NaMo leading the party in the 2014 election. Perhaps he knew that even the Sangh chief would not be in a position to discard him when in October 2013 he revealed his priority would not be temple. He was allowed to fight the election on his strategy as amusement. No one in the party believed in possibility of his victory.

His yet major mistake was in his putting trust in bureaucracy and not in political machinery. In formation of his government, he made same mistake as first Prime Minister of putting faith in honesty of bureaucrats. Or perhaps he was confident of his ability to deal with corrupt bureaucrats. But he had closed avenues of access to him for everyone directly. Only venue to reach him was the modern mechanism but people were not familiar with or comfortable in using it. Corruption was not eliminated but had become more costly as risks had multiplied. The men around him privately built a picture that he was working for two industrialists, both of Gujarat.

The Sangh Parivar was not concerned over it but was vehemently opposed to extending the economic comforts to vast numbers through rapid economic growth. His silence to calls for return to the old party agenda exposed his yet another weakness. His lack of majority that could and would stand by him in crisis within was used to make him aware of his weakness and follow dictates of the mentors. He stopped talking of economic development but began to resort to harsh steps that brought down the economic growth to a grinding halt. The Sangh could not resist nor offer critical comments to demonetization as he had listed the three nationalistic justifications for his step. It affected most the class that had consistently voted for the party. His lock down step may appear to be concern for life of every Indian but it came two weeks later to public announcement of the Sangh chief of disassociation with NaMo. Total number of suspected infection had not reached even mark of 200 by then. No one could contest his claim “Jaan hai to Jahan hai.”

Despite his climb down on his original promise of the economic growth, he had not given up his reverence for the Gandhian Path. He went on platform in South African railway station to bend down at the spot where Mahatma Gandhi had fallen after he was flung out of the train. The scene must have caused severe irritation and pain to the ardent disciples of the Sangh.

NaMo proved his hold over masses by winning 325 of 403 seats in the Uttar Pradesh Assembly in 2017 and the majority in the Lok Sabha in 2019 without delivering on any of electoral promises. His hold over the party, the media, and bureaucracy provides him ability to survive innumerable blunders. He left his party nursing wounds as he sought, in both the elections votes for the Modi government and not for the party. The Sangh chief also knows it. His public announcement that the Sangh did not recognize as its wing the BJP that stands behind Modi.

The major mistake was in the belief that even conservative minds will change with passage of nine decades. Conservative ideas get stuck on without change. The Sangh was created to establish the rule of the top Varna by describing it as the promoter of Hindu Rashtra. For four hundred centuries the OBCs and the Dalits were not permitted entry into any temple. They are for enlisting their support they are suddenly made the Hindu.