The turbulence in the BJP and the RSS after the results of the Lok Sabha elections on May 16 have little to do with just a bad strategy and campaign having misfired. The RSS has long wanted to put in place a swayamsevak as the leader of the BJP. The model they have in the mind is that of Deendayal Upadhyaya, who was uncharismatic, but cerebral and a devout organisational man. The rise of A.B. Vajpayee and L.K. Advani, first as initiators of the Ramjanmabhoomi movement and subsequently as leaders running a government for six years, altered the equation between the parent organisation and its political wing. Vajpayee and Advani ignored the pressures and advice of the RSS in the name of running a coalition government. The RSS was a mute spectator: for instance, the RSS suggested trifurcation of Jammu & Kashmir but the BJP-led NDA government rejected the proposal. Its warning against disinvestment in strategic sectors of the economy fell on deaf ears.
The RSS chose to call it the ascendency of the personality cult, vyaktiwad, in the BJP. This was anathema to the ideologically driven organisation, where ideology and organisation have unchallenged primacy over individuals. After the 2004 elections and the loss of power for the NDA, the top RSS leaders systematically poured scorn on Vajpayee and Advani and called for a generational change in the leadership. The RSS was particularly unhappy with Advani’s remarks on M.A. Jinnah. Advani’s folly, the RSS felt, lay not merely in issuing a secular certificate for Jinnah, but writing words to the effect that he honoured Jinnah for single-handedly creating Pakistan. Worse still, Advani has said that the demolition of the Babri Masjid was the saddest day in his life, a perception the RSS does not share.
http://newageislam.com/india---secularism-has-to-come-to-stay--/current-affairs/d/1416
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