A government order overturning a ban on public servants being members of the Rashtriya Swayamsewak Sangh (RSS) appears to be a strong indication that the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) and the RSS, after the difficulties in their relationships in the recent past, seem ready for a rapprochement.
The order, issued on July 9, lifts a 58-year-old ban on government servants being members of the RSS, and while it elicited criticism from the Opposition, which said that the move was indicative of the BJP in government trying to create an “ideologically committed bureaucracy”, the ideological mothership of the current government praised the move.
“The present decision of the government is appropriate and strengthens the democratic system of India,” RSS spokesperson Sunil Ambekar said, adding that the organisation had a history of 99 years in the service of the country and society. “Due to its political interests, the then government had baselessly banned government employees from participating in the activities of a constructive organisation like the Sangh,” Mr. Ambekar added.
The internal message within the Sangh Parivar is that this was one way for the Modi government and the BJP to indicate that certain difficulties that arose between the BJP and the RSS, revealed during the recently concluded Lok Sabha election, were to be resolved.
“There had been a breakdown in communication between the Sangh and the BJP in the run-up to the polls, but mediation by a senior Sangh person, who had earlier held the post of coordination between the two, and is now too a member of the RSS executive committee, had ameliorated the situation,” a senior RSS office-bearer said.
The RSS had, during the Lok Sabha election, expressed its dissatisfaction in Maharashtra over the inclusion of the Ajit Pawar faction of the Nationalist Congress Party (NCP) into the Mahayuti (as the Nationalist Democratic Alliance or NDA is referred to in that State). Many said that the organisation that lends its organisational heft to the BJP during the polls kept away from campaigning for the junior Pawar’s NCP.
The BJP’s national president J.P. Nadda too had in an interview said that the BJP had needed the RSS in the past as it did not have the organisational wherewithal but was now “saksham” or able to handle elections by itself. This miffed the rank and file of the RSS. After the results, RSS chief Mohan Bhagwat’s speech on arrogance and on the continuing violence in Manipur were also important pointers to this uneasy relationship.
Apart from this order, Tuesday’s Budget presentation may see announcements of a few welfare programmes named after departed RSS men.
More than the substantive and outward message of the order, of removing the ban on participation of government servants in the RSS, the message to the constituency within tells a deeply political reasoning.
