RSS meet to put Sangh Parivar in poll campaign mode

Senior leaders of Sangh Parivar organisations will discuss ways to build a pro-Narendra Modi wave across the country in the run-up to next year’s Lok Sabha elections during a three-day national executive council meeting of the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS), beginning here on Friday.

BJP President Rajnath Singh and Vishva Hindu Parishad’s International President Praveen Togadia will be among dozens of senior Sangh leaders attending the meeting. The RSS top brass, including Sarsanghchalak Mohan Bhagwat, is already in town. Though Kerala has the largest number of RSS units among the States, this is the first time the national executive council of the organisation is meeting here.

The Parivar has a large number of organisations in a spectrum of fields — religious, cultural, social, literary, labour, law, tribal welfare and charity. The BJP, the VHP, the Bajrang Dal, the Vanvasi Kalyan Ashram and the Dharma Jagaran Manch are some of these groups. Being the mother organisation, the RSS intends to whip up these bodies to push the Project Modi.

Trying to play down the importance of the meeting, a senior State-level Sangh leader told

Business Line it was just an annual event. “Since this is a pre-election year, the Lok Sabha election will naturally be discussed,” he said casually. However, a senior Kerala BJP leader said the polls would definitely be “a major item on the agenda”, adding that the meeting would get the huge network of the Parivar geared up for the election. Since Modi was the RSS choice for the BJP’s prime ministerial candidate, all Parivar outfits would be asked to put in the maximum effort, he noted.

While the RSS had long wanted to project Modi as the BJP’s PM candidate for the 2014 election, a section of the BJP’s senior leaders, especially the 85-year-old patriarch, L.K. Advani, had stiffly resisted the move. Advani had, for six months, consistently opposed projecting Modi as a PM material, and had at one point quit all major bodies of the party. But the RSS finally managed to secure his support. Had Advani continued to oppose Modi, the Parivar would have been in a tight spot, though it would anyhow have backed Modi to the hilt.

Now, it is up to the grassroot-level Parivar machinery to ensure a majority for the BJP in the elections. The RSS national executive council meeting will key in this machinery and devise strategies to win the support of the masses, especially of the Hindu community.

The RSS chief, Bhagwat, started well by paying a courtesy visit to jurist V.R. Krishna Iyer. The 98-year-old communist fellow traveller and secular icon had recently kicked up a row by praising Modi.

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