The Parivar's mastermind

Mohan Bhagwat: Influencer-In-Chief

Kingshuk Nag

Rupa, Rs 500, Pages 206

Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) sarsanghchalak, or chief, Mohan Bhagwat is 68 years old. He has been at the helm of the 93-year-old RSS for nearly a decade, and is likely to continue for at least seven more until 2025, when he turns 75, and RSS completes a centenary.

The RSS dream of establishing a Hindu Rashtra in its 100th year rests heavily on the shoulders of Mr Bhagwat, and the electoral fortunes of its political arm, the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP).

Mr Bhagwat took over as the sixth RSS chief on March 21, 2009. The 59-year-old, one of the youngest RSS chiefs of recent years, could do little because the BJP faced a rout in the Lok Sabha polls two months later, but soon got down to the job of rebuilding the BJP as well as the RSS.

He cajoled L K Advani to give up his ambition, helped appoint Nitin Gadkari the party chief, but also accepted, when the time came, that Narendra Modi, and not Mr Gadkari, was the leader who could lead the Sangh Parivar to a glorious electoral win in 2014.

Mohan Bhagwat: Influencer-in-Chief details the changes Mr Bhagwat has brought about in the Sangh Parivar since 2009, but is hesitant to look at what the future might hold for Messrs Bhagwat, Modi and the rest of the parivar as it prepares for the 2019 Lok Sabha polls.

Kingshuk Nag, author of this biography, has looked at 2019 exclusively from the prism of identity politics. He suggests the Sangh Parivar could look at electorally harvesting in the rest of the country the Hindu-Muslim divide of Assam and West Bengal over the controversial national citizens register and galvanise Hindus on the issue of constructing a Ram temple in Ayodhya.

The author only fleetingly refers to the criticism of RSS affiliates, like the Bharatiya Mazdoor Sangh, of Mr Modi’s demonetisation decision and his government’s hurried implementation of the goods and services tax (GST), or the opposition that Sangh Parivar outfits mounted to its land acquisition Bill in 2015.

There is little mention of the countrywide farmers’ protests after the June 6, 2017 firing on farmers in Mandsaur in Madhya Pradesh, which has principally shaped the opposition narrative to the Modi government or even the confusion that has beset the RSS leadership in its response to mob lynchings of not just Muslims but also Dalits over cow slaughter.

The biography, however, should be of interest to those keen to understand the changes that Mr Bhagwat, the least educated of the six RSS chiefs but someone who has done more to increase its profile in the public imagination, has brought to the Sangh Parivar in the last nine years.

As the RSS prepared to mark its 93rd foundation day this year’s Vijayadashami, it embarked on an unprecedented public relations outreach. Mr Bhagwat led from the front – getting former president Pranab Mukherjee to address a gathering of RSS volunteers at the Sangh’s headquarters in Nagpur in June, hosting Nobel laureate Kailash Satyarthi as the chief guest at the Vijayadashami celebrations in mid-October and delivering a three-day discourse in mid-September at New Delhi’s Vigyan Bhavan.

Around this time, leading publications and media outlets published books and articles on the RSS. Notable were Walter K Andersen and Shridhar D Damle’s The RSS: A View to the Inside and Ratan Sharda’s RSS 360°: Demystifying Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh. Mr Nag’s biography of Bhagwat has added one more book to that list.

Mr Bhagwat’s effort was to reach out to moderate Hindus, many of whom had supported Modi-led BJP in 2014 but are now disillusioned, and exhort them to keep the faith in 2019. Pranab Mukherjee and Kailash Satyarthi’s visits, Mr Bhagwat’s discourse in New Delhi and the books are RSS’s attempts at putting on display its more benign face in front of the Hindu intelligentsia, while the Vishva Hindu Parishad and other outfits run riot in northern India.

The book has little new on Mr Bhagwat the individual. Eldest of four siblings, he studied in Chandrapur, 150 km from Nagpur. He was born on September 11, 1950 and is six days older than Mr Modi. “It is tempting to conclude that there is a great bond between the two gentlemen,” the author writes.

“It is believed that Bhagwat senior inducted L K Advani into the RSS and for a short time mentored Modi as well,” he adds. Indeed, in his book, Jyoti Punj, Mr Modi had devoted a chapter to Mr Bhagwat’s father Mukundrao and identified him as one of his mentors.

According to Mr Nag, Mr Bhagwat was a voracious reader of Marathi pulp literature, fond of singing and is a storehouse of jokes. When once on a bus a friend requested him to sing, Bhagwat obliged by singing, “mere samne wali khidki mein ek chand ka tukda rahata hai”, from the Hindi movie Padosan.

Mr Bhagwat quit his veterinary officer’s government job within six months of joining in 1975, and moved to Akola in Maharashtra as an RSS district pracharak. He quickly moved up the RSS hierarchy. Comparisons with RSS founder K B Hedgewar were frequent, not least because of Mr Bhagwat’s walrus moustache that had prematurely greyed.

Mr Bhagwat, however, considers Madhukar Dattatreya Deoras, or Balasaheb, the third RSS chief, as his role model. Mr Bhagwat is also the first Marathi Brahmin after Deoras to be RSS chief. The biography captures Mr Bhagwat taking forward much of the work that Deoras had initiated – accommodating more Dalits and OBCs in the hierarchy, expanding social work under and research in writing a “non-Marxist” history of India.

One of the more visible changes brought by Mr Bhagwat is the RSS shedding its voluminous khaki shorts (“knickers”) for coffee-coloured trousers. Mr Bhagwat wants gurukuls of ancient India back and admires the Finnish education system. The book talks about Mr Bhagwat’s work in north-eastern states, his agenda for “non-Hindu” Kashmir, Kerala and West Bengal and his views on the uniform civil code.

Predictably, the book voices the RSS prejudice in blaming Muslims for India’s failure to have a uniform civil code. The author and his interlocutors in the RSS would have done well to read the Law Commission report on the subject brought out by the Modi government this year, which talks of not just religious, but also India’s ethnic heterogeneity, as the reason to not have a uniform civil code.

The author ably captures the challenges RSS faces because of the democratisation of its hierarchy that some in the Sangh believe has “diluted” its core “Brahminical” ideology, as also the corruption that proximity to power has brought. Mr Nag criticises RSS attempts at appointing its own people to head key institutions and organisation. Given its lack of talent pool, most such men and women are “C-listers” in their respective fields.

The book attempts to discuss the Bhagwat-Modi relationship. The most interesting episode of the last few years being Mr Bhagwat and his lieutenant Suresh Bhaiyyaji Joshi frustrating Mr Modi’s efforts at ensuring Dattatreya Hosabale’s elevation as the second in command in the RSS. The author states the appointment of Yogi Adityanath as Uttar Pradesh chief minister was Mr Bhagwat’s choice, and the Sangh sees him as the successor to Mr Modi in 2024.

Mr Nag writes that many in the Sangh Parivar see in Mr Bhagwat to be Lord Krishna driving the chariot of Arjuna, (in this case Narendra Modi), “advising him and leading him to victory”. As the author puts it, “One is not sure if Modi would like such a comparison!” However, Mr Gadkari, who was Mr Bhagwat’s initial choice to be BJP’s prime ministerial candidate, may not have such problems, particularly if the party falls significantly short of the majority mark and has to present a more moderate face to potential allies.

A shorter version was published in print on December 6