'BJP’s organisational reshuffle shows that Modi has effectively pushed the RSS to the background'

[Sukla Sen]

That's a key point made, stepping well beyond the routine rhetoric of the bulk of the "secularists".

In fact, the moment Modi got himself ensconced in Delhi, he started pushing the boundaries. Afterward, with his confidant, Amit Shah,  having been appointed as the Union Home Minister, could make the balance, finally, tilt in his favour.

It deserves to be noted, as long as the BJS/BJP - both creations of the RSS, remained struggling aspirants for power (at the Centre), the old equation remained tightly in place.

With Vajpayee becoming the Prime Minister, for the first time, things had come under considerable stress.

Now, Modi - in his second term, has been able to pretty much reverse the old equation. And, that too, without any noticeable hiccup. 

The control over the levers of state power played a decisive role.

The band of Rip Van Winkles would, however, take their time to take note, if at all.

<<But mainly, it [i.e. the last organisational reshuffle] demonstrates how the BJP’s leadership – by the all-powerful duo of Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Home Minister Amit Shah to be precise – has now put its unmistakable stamp of dominance on its patriarch, the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh. It shows that the BJP under Modi in the most authoritative fashion has relegated the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh to the background.

...

Among the three that the BJP has dispensed with, Chauhan and Adityanath are not as representative of the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh as Gadkari is. For the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh, Gadkari is like a child born and brought up by the organisation in its home in Nagpur. Hence, one needs to look at Gadkari’s exclusion from the Parliamentary Board and Central Election Committee as yet another example of the dwindling of the primacy of Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh compared to the BJP.

But this loss of primacy has not happened in a flash and without provocation from the patriarch. The things have come to this pass over the past two decades, with the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh exercising its authority over the BJP in the first decade and beginning to pay for it over the next.

In this the tug-of-war, Gadkari has been used by both sides as a key player. In that sense, Gadkari is the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh’s unintended victim – but the BJP’s intended target.>>

(Excerpted from: 'BJP’s organisational reshuffle shows that Modi has effectively pushed the RSS to the background' at <https://scroll.in/article/1030936/bjps-organisational-reshuffle-shows-that-modi-has-effectively-relegated-the-rss-to-the-background>.)