As “the party with a difference” suffers painful organisational upheavals, its cadres pour scorn over their bosses, lampoon them as Humpty Dumpty, Tarzan and other cartoon characters, bay for the blood of those who have “betrayed” the BJP, and hoarsely exhort party loyalists to “bombard the headquarters”, imitating Mao during the Cultural Revolution—perhaps with equally disastrous results.

Many observers are dismayed at this explosion of virulent recrimination in the BJP. Some even rue that the party is blurring its line of demarcation from the Congress, which lacks a culture of inner-party debate. This betrays astounding naivety. The BJP has never had such a culture. Its core political and organisational concepts derive from the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh, which is profoundly undemocratic and doesn't ever elect its leaders.

The truth is, the BJP simply cannot comprehend the causes of its second consecutive defeat in national elections in structural or strategic terms linked to changes in the balance of social forces, economic processes, Hindutva's receding appeal and the attraction of inclusiveness in a society as badly divided and afflicted by deprivation, and hence in need of healing, as India is. The Congress made just this appeal, and won. The BJP remained stuck in Hindutva, too-clever-by-half leadership projection, caste arithmetic and image management. It's now blaming individuals for its losses.

The person who has been most ruthlessly attacked and suffered the greatest loss of stature is none other than the BJP's tallest functioning leader, perennial Prime Ministerial aspirant LK Advani. Mr Jaswant Singh has pilloried him for his “consuming ambition” which prevented him from defending his long-standing colleague against summary expulsion for writing a book on Jinnah. Mr Arun Shourie, aware that he's unlikely to get a BJP Rajya Sabha ticket again, has accused him of being a prisoner of a self-serving coterie. Mr Yashwant Sinha has mercilessly mocked him. And “adviser” Sudheendra Kulkarni has deserted his camp.

The “Iron Man” has become an object of ridicule and the butt of inner-party jokes. Worse, he has been told by RSS chief Mohan Bhagwat that he must stop pretending that he's the shadow Prime Minister and quit as the Leader of the Opposition in the Lok Sabha. The RSS is also clear it wants Mr Rajnath Singh to make way for a younger leader once his term as BJP president expires.

This is not, as it might seem, a way of levelling the two competing power centres that exist in the BJP: one around the unelected Core Group dominated by the Advani faction, and the other controlled by the party president's loyalists. Mr Rajnath Singh will complete his full term as party president at the end of 2009. He cannot have a second term unless the party constitution is amended. And Mr Singh, a provincial petty-minded politician devoted to intrigue, lacks the leadership qualities and stature to bring this about.

The RSS's real target is Mr Advani, who breached his understanding with the RSS reached last year that he would be the BJP's Prime Ministerial candidate for the 2009 general election, not beyond. When the election results came in, Mr Advani offered to step down as the Leader of the Opposition, but unilaterally decided to re-usurp that position. The RSS has treated Mr Advani with apparent deference, but the thrust of its message, that he must hold no office by virtue of his “leadership” of and past stature in the party, is clear and unequivocal.

The BJP is in the grip of its worst-ever crisis. At its heart is more than a power struggle, vicious and no-holds-barred as this is. Its true dynamic lies in a total collapse of organisational authority, political disorientation and strategic bankruptcy. There are no institutional mechanisms, mediating agencies or leaders in the BJP which can arbitrate between its warring leaders and end the night of the long knives.

This has allowed the RSS to dictate terms to the BJP openly and brazenly. The RSS decided that the BJP must make a transition to leaders aged 55 to 60 years. And four such leaders duly landed at Mr Bhagwat's feet. The RSS decided to read the riot act to Mr Advani. And its top officials descended on New Delhi to do so. The RSS wants the choice of the next party president to be extended beyond the Advani coterie of Arun Jaitley, Venkaiah Naidu, Ananth Kumar and Sushma Swaraj. So Messrs Manohar Parirkar, Nitin Gadkari and Shivraj Singh Chauhan are suddenly in the running.

The RSS is now micromanaging the BJP. It will probably insist on vetting all candidates to the party's organisational posts. And it'd be a surprise if it doesn't demand veto power over the party's political line. In some ways, this function is new.

This doesn't deny that the RSS has overtly intervened in the BJP's affairs in the past. There was sarasanghachalak KS Sudarshan's famous “midnight knock” in 1998 insisting that Prime Minister Vajpayee not swear in Mr Jaswant Singh as his finance minister the next morning. In 2002-03, the RSS thrust the Ram temple construction agenda down the government's throat (although the Supreme Court put paid to that). In 2002, party president Jana Krishnamoorthy reorganised the BJP regionally under RSS pracharaks. It has remained under their organisational influence ever since.

Even more notoriously, after the BJP's 2004 electoral debacle, the RSS summarily replaced Mr Venkaiah Naidu as party president with Mr Advani. In April 2005, Mr Sudarshan demanded in a “Walk the Talk” interview with Shekhar Gupta that “ there should be a generational shift in BJP also…” and that both Mr Vajpayee and Mr Advani “should step aside. And after stepping aside, they should watch the new leadership come up…”

This was as clear a directive as could have been. Mr Vajpayee shrewdly said he held no post and there was no question of his stepping aside. But Mr Advani refused to quit. Months later, the RSS succeeded in sacking him by using his remarks praising Jinnah as “secular” during his mid-2005 Pakistan trip. Mr Advani's departure became a certainty once the RSS dissociated itself from his remarks, as did the BJP. All he won was a little bit of time.

What is new about the present RSS-BJP relationship, shaped by the BJP's election defeat and the unprecedented turmoil in the party, is both the scope and quality of the RSS's interference in its day-to-day affairs. Even BJP leaders without an RSS background like Mr Shourie accept this. Indeed, Mr Shourie pleaded for it, when he said to Shekhar Gupta that the RSS should “take over” the BJP. Although the RSS responded by saying it cannot run a party, its expanding influence is a stark reality.

This inaugurates a new phase in the BJP's evolution. As long as the Vajpayee-Advani duo was in a position of strength, and especially while the BJP held power at the Centre, they could carve out a certain degree of autonomy from the RSS in the day-to-day running of the party and government—without breaking with Hindu communalism ideologically, or the RSS organisationally. Neither leader had the courage of conviction to put the BJP on the path of moderation or turn it into a conservative Right-wing party—comparable to, say, European Christian Democrats—while discarding its Hindu-communal baggage.

The RSS adopted a low profile, but remained the BJP's mentor, political guide or hegemon and its organisational gatekeeper . It coordinated relations with the rest of the Sangh Parivar. It conceded some policy space to the BJP in governance, especially in economic matters. But behind the scenes, it always asserted its overall primacy, especially that of the Hindu-nationalist agenda. A key to this was the BJP's dependence on RSS pracharaks to mobilise votes for it during elections through door-to-door campaigning.

In recent years, this dependence has probably grown not least because the BJP's social base and appeal have shrunk. Thus, RSS leaders claim that some 40 percent of the BJP's total vote in the last election came from the Sangh's work. The RSS influence is even stronger in the party organisation than in the Parliamentary party. Thus, while only 30 of the BJP's 116 Lok Sabha members come from the RSS, as many as two-thirds of the party's national executive members have RSS backgrounds.

That means the RSS will overtly and blatantly tighten its hold on the BJP, further damaging the party's credibility. Unless the BJP again takes to the politics of passion and mass mobilisation, it's likely to become a rump party, much like the Jana Sangh, albeit bigger in its Lok Sabha presence than the latter, with its 20-35 seats. Even such a party cannot be written off. But it'll be a far cry from a force that's about to come to power. (IPA Service)