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| Back from Jammu, Bhagwat begins reading BJP’s nerves | | | ABID SHAH
New Delhi, August 28: Away from the hubbub of Delhi’s politics Jammu, indeed, offered until a few days ago a cool aloofness to the Rashtriya Swayam Sevak Sangh chief, Mohan Bhagwat, from the turmoil that the bigwigs of BJP are caught in right now in Delhi.
And as the RSS boss came down from Jammu to Delhi, a series of parleys awaited him here threatening to drag him deep into the troubled waters that peers from the BJP are struggling to swim through.
Yet unfazed by the tumult, 59-year-old Bhagwat, tried to understate BJP’s woes to assure a gaggle of media persons thronging at the Keshav Puram RSS office in Delhi’s Jhandewalan today that the BJP crisis would soon be blown over and it is yet not irredeemable.
But he did not fail to take a dig at its squabbling leaders, nor did he avoid setting the record straight about personalities, issues and ethos that shaped the present day India in what looked like a wide sweep away from the mundane and often petty concerns of day to day politics.
“The BJP is no more a kid (of the RSS). Some of the BJP stalwarts are senior to me. Sangh will not say anything about Atal and Advani. Nor it will give unsolicited advice. It is for the party to fix the age of the leader as also decide as to who should be the leader. The Sangh will also not shy from offering help and advice when sought.” And he invoked images of a villager who asked him with tear laden eyes as to what was going to happen to the BJP in a chance encounter with the poor villager that once Mr Bhagwat had had while on a tour of UP.
Deflecting volley of questions, the astute advocate of Hindutva often referred to his interview by a TV channel, Times Now. So much so that this looked like being used in a figurative rather metaphorical sense as well. He, however, admitted that his last night’s discussion for about an hour-and-a-half with the BJP president Rajnath Singh was not about hawa- pani or just climate, meaning that the two talked business but soon he said that was not the only business before the RSS.
About Jinnah that haunts the BJP like a genie ever since BJP leader, Jaswant Singh, wrote a book about the founder of Pakistan, Mr Bhagwat reiterated what he had earlier said at Jammu in rather a sharp and more blunt way by reminding that Jinnah called for direct action (against Hindus) and did not accept the togetherness of Hindus and Muslims as has been the case before the partition.
Mr Bhagwat eulogised Jawaharlal Nehru and Sardar Patel by calling them honourable leaders who shaped modern and independent India. Thus, he pronounced the RSS verdict against Jaswant Singh. Yet about Arun Shorie who had come down heavily against top leadership of the BJP soon after the expulsion of Singh from the party, the RSS chief turned out to be admirer of Shourie by calling him as a great journalist and intellectual.
With regard to Ayodhya, Mr Bhagwat reaffirmed that RSS supported it in the past, does so now and would always support in future the movement and efforts to build a temple in commemoration of the birth place of Rama at Ayodhya. And, thus questions were shot about the status of minorities and Muslims in the scheme of RSS and Mr Bhagwat returned them by exhorting media persons to look beyond plain public positioning in this respect. He said that the slightest contribution coming from any quarter towards strengthening and building the nation was welcome and would always be hailed and honoured.
And, thus, went on an hour-long tut-tut of the RSS boss with media persons leaving behind a heap of dope for political pundits to ponder over throughout the night and the next few days, or may be even weeks to come.
Yet the message that Mr Bhagwat tried to convey through his Friday Press conference clearly indicates that RSS intends to operate more at a broader social level rather than confining itself to political alone and thereby hold its status of a final arbiter vis-à-vis the affairs of not only the Sangh Parivar but also those that the country may face from time to time. After his recent Jammu sojourn, Delhi turned out to be just a stopover for him. And before it gets noisier here he intends to move to the cooler climes of Hardwar to attend to what was called as “organisational tasks” over there which have to be attended to even beyond Hardwar and cover the most of the country in weeks and months to come.
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