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BJP’s new team : Pramod Mahajan to the fore |
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BJP’s new team announced by party president Rajnath Singh makes Pramod Mahajan incharge of the key states of Maharashtra, Goa and Uttaranchal. Significantly, he has also been made election incharge of Assam, the only poll-bound state where the BJP has a hope of doing well in the coming Assembly elections. In contrast, Arun Jaitley, the other high-profile general secretary has been given the charge of relatively less important states of Jammu and Kashmir, Punjab and Chandigarh.
In all three states, “sah prabharis” (assistant incharge) have been appointed along with Jaitley. Mahajan, on the other hand, has a free hand in the states allotted to him.
In the first major organizational revamp after taking over, BJP president Rajnath Singh appointed former Labour Minister Satyanarayan Jatiya as state president of Madhya Pradesh. The choice of Jatiya, an SC leader known to be close to the RSS, was clearly dictated by Uma Bharati’s charge that the BJP was neglecting OBCs and Dalits. The appointment of Radhamohan Singh as state president of Bihar is also guided by caste considerations. With Sushil Kumar Modi, an OBC, becoming deputy CM, the BJP would like to appease its traditional upper-caste constituency with a “thakur” chief.
The revamp makes it clear that Rajnath Singh wants to put his own stamp on the party organisation. An indication of this is the absence of any assignment to former president Venkaiah Naidu.
Party circles regard the elevation of Mahajan as the most significant aspect of the reshuffle and confirmation that a Rajnath Singh-Pramod Mahajan axis has replaced the Advani-Venkaiah-Jaitley grouping.
RSS smokes the peace pipe with Advani
In an attempt at mending fences with former BJP president L.K. Advani, the RSS leadership has invited him to the inaugural function of the centenary celebrations of its second chief M.S. Golwalkar in Nagpur on February 24.
Advani, who was forced to quit following a row with the Sangh parivar on the Jinnah issue, is expected to attend the function with A.B. Vajpayee and BJP chief Rajnath Singh, sources said. This will be his first visit to Nagpur since the Jinnah controversy broke out during his visit to Pakistan last year.
Call for “Indianisation”
RSS chief S. Sudarshan says that he hopes that there is complete Bhartiyakaran (Indianisation) by 2011, the year he sees as the beginning of India’s dominance of the world. Addressing a gathering of Sadhus (saints) in the Dangs, in Gujarat, on February 12, he said, “Because we cannot throw the Muslims and Christians in the sea, we have to Indianise them. And for this, we have to communicate to them the importance of this objective. For the vanvasis (forest dwellers) we have to tell them that they are part of the extended Hindu family.”
Interestingly, the new strategy seems to have been borrowed verbatim from the missionaries’ rule book : work quietly, communicate with the poor and the tribals in their tongue; live with them; and help them with health care and food, among other things. In that context, the Shabri Kumbh in the Dangs might well mark a turning point in the way the RSS and its affiliates work.
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