Like other accomplished politicians, Vajpayee has also fired a missile with multiple warheads. For, there is little doubt that through the fast he also seeks to strike a chord in the large constituency of the politically uninitiated which, he hopes, might help him counter adversarial moves being made against him by the most influential sections within the RSS, though none of this - at the level of basic beliefs - takes him away from the RSS lodestar.
Is this the end-game for Vajpayee? The answer must lie in the future, but it is time the country became conscious of the RSS-BJP relationship, for the equation between these two symbiotically-linked bodies is likely to have a determining influence not only on the political fate of the present Prime Minister, but also on his successors if they derive, as he does, from the RSS stock. It is also perhaps necessary for the country to get to understand the RSS itself in relation to the functioning of democracy in India
If Vajpayee wins out ... the RSS may find it difficult to recover from the shock, or be able to offer resistance to a future challenger from within, despite its image of ubiquitousness, based no doubt on the traditional secretiveness to its ways. On the other hand, if Vajpayee is made to bite dust by the fountainhead of Hind-centric politics, the episode would serve to hand out an object lesson to future mavericks.
This would be the case even if it turns out that what we are witnessing today is not organisational or ideological tension between the Prime Minister and the RSS, but something much narrower - a contest of wiil between an ambition-driven senior political figure, committed to held his supreme position in national life, and the political mother that bore him. All the same, the issue, the issue has come to be framed in political terms on both sides, with strong ideological emotive undertones.
While Vajpayee seeks to emerge as a moderniser wounded by foes within, a Prometheus straining to break his shackles, his erstwhile mentors attempt to draw biood in the name of the country's sovereignty, which they, like the opposition, say is not secure with the present Prime Minister at the helm ...
The RSS, of course, is being hoist with its own petard. If it is true that Vajpayee has not for a long time been one of its favourite commanders, why was he put forward to the electorate as the BJP's Prime Minister, should the party succeed to power? Ws it merely cleverness, since Vajpayee was the best known RSS-BJP face to appeal to the wider electorate? Did the RSS really not approve of the things its best card proclaims in the course of electioneering and immediately after while framing the national agenda of governance? If so, why did it not make its reservations known right then? When did it begin to feel let down or betrayed by Vajpayee? It will be in the public interest if information on these matters was made available to guide an open debate. On his part, the PM too needs to be more transparent than he has been. Did he actually differ with the RSS credo all along? In that case, why did he not simply refuse to be Hindutva's PM-in-waiting? Or, was it only emphasis on which he differed, not core beliefs and policy? If so, what explains the goings-on today when divergences between him and his parent organisation seem so acute?
The people need to be taken into confidence on all these things, for it is their interests that suffer if Parliament remains immobilised, policy-framing and implementation routinely face defeat, and BJP-run state governments are riven on the Vajpayee question, both factionally and on issues of substance. Until now the Prime Minister has given a glimpse of his thinking only once, and very briefly. In a late December interview on a private television channel he said he listens to the RSS but "simply ignores" (unsuni, in Hindi) what he does not agree with. In all fairness to the public domain, this cries out for elaboration ... (Source: The Indian Express, 1 February, 1999)
