Modi’s tussle with the RSS echoes old power struggles within India’s Hindu Right

EVERY TIME the BJP or the Jana Sangh before it tasted power or tried to pull away from RSS control, the RSS responded by tightening its grip. During the Jana Sangh’s early years, Mookerjee appointed two national general secretaries in the party in order to balance the influences of RSS and non-RSS forces within the political party. In 1952, the two posts were held by Deendayal Upadhyaya, an influential RSS leader, and Mauli Chandra Sharma, a Delhi-based lawyer not affiliated to the RSS.On 5 September, Mohan Bhagwat, the head of the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS), said at an event in Pune, “If one has to rise to such a height, one should make efforts. We should not consider ourselves as god. Let people decide if there is god in you.”

The Hindu nationalist RSS is the ideological parent of India’s ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), and was the first political home of the Indian prime minister, the BJP’s Narendra Modi. Bhagwat’s remark was perceived as a dig at Modi; during his campaign for the Indian general election earlier this year, Modi told a television channel that he had become convinced that his energy cannot come from a biological body and that he was an instrument of god.