The Hindu : Avoid personality cult, RSS tells BJP

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Sunday, Jun 08, 2003

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Avoid personality cult, RSS tells BJP

By Harish Khare

New Delhi June 7. The "leadership controversy" in the BJP may be officially over but the leaders in the Sangh Parivar continue to keep the pot boiling. It now appears that the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh chief, K.S. Sudarshan, has chosen to offer some advice to the BJP on how to conduct itself.

Sources in the BJP and the RSS were anxious to let it be known that Mr. Sudarshan telephoned the BJP president, M. Venkaiah Naidu, on Friday night because the RSS chief was concerned over the unending leadership controversy. The sources suggest that the burden of Mr. Sudarshan's advice was that the BJP should be focussing more on "ideology" and "principles" and less on "individuals".

Mr. Sudarshan is said to have drawn Mr. Naidu's attention to the impersonal ways in which the RSS conducted itself as an organisation. Also, he told Mr. Naidu that any kind of "personality cult" should be avoided because such a trend only diluted the ideology, principles and programmes of the organisation.

On the face of it, the RSS chief's comments are an indictment of Mr. Naidu's co-mascots strategy (Vajpayee as Vikas Purush, and Advani as Loh Purush). That formula now officially stands disowned and discarded. But the RSS chief's advice is also an indirect criticism of the prime ministerial camp which has sought to elevate Mr. Vajpayee to a kind of cult figure, above any kind of criticism or reproach.

In fact, the RSS has been adopting a stance of studied neutrality in the matter of the presumed Vajpayee-Advani differences. In this Naidu-provoked leadership controversy, the RSS has taken a clinically correct position — both Mr. Advani and Mr. Vajpayee are swaymsevaks, both are equally close to the Sangh and, in any case, it is for the BJP to decide who should be its election mascot. The RSS has provided some comfort to the Prime Minister but at the same time caused no acute discomfort to Mr. Advani either.

Now, if the sources are to be believed, the RSS chief also has a good word for the BJP president. According to these sources, the RSS chief believes Mr. Naidu is doing a "fine job". It is too early to say whether this RSS backing would suffice in helping Mr. Naidu retain his job after the October Assembly elections. A senior RSS functionary, is said to have met Mr. Naidu today, with the message that the leadership controversy had not helped the party's image.

On his part, Mr. Naidu today avoided adding fuel to the leadership crisis, though insisting that the "leadership controversy" was over. In his informal interaction with the media, the BJP chief refused to take on Murli Manohar Joshi, Union Minister for Human Resource Development. Dr. Joshi had yesterday given a new twist to the leadership controversy by suggesting that when Mr. Naidu described Mr. Vajpayee as "vikas purush" and Mr. Advani as "loh purush", he was speaking entirely on his own, without any collective endorsement of the party.

Today, Mr. Naidu told the media: "As far as this issue is concerned, the Prime Minister, Deputy Prime Minister and as party president I have clarified there is no issue, no controversy. I will maintain the party's tradition of not commenting on public statements of party leaders."

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