The question has intrigued all who have dealt with the BJP over a quarter century. What is the exact nature of its relationship with the RSS? Critics, especially the Left, tend to spot the ‘sinister hand’ of the RSS behind every major move by the BJP. The BJP, they have no doubt, is a puppet with the strings being pulled from elsewhere. The BJP prefers to give the relationship a more positive spin, terming it ‘synergy’, the fraternal links ascribed to sharing a common Hindutva philosophy even as both proclaim their independence of each other.

Nevertheless there is tendency to see the ubiquitous hand of the big brother in every organisational upheaval in the party. This week, when the BJP announced a new team of officebearers most reports fell largely into two categories. Those which suggested that BJP President Rajnath Singh had naturally taken the RSS’s clearance before going ahead and cutting to size his two principal rivals in the party, Narendra Modi and Arun Jaitley. The other version was that the RSS was upset, since Rajnath had acted on his own. Since the RSS is a cloistered, secretive society, where minutes of meetings are rarely kept and decisions are verbal, it leaves its motives open to endless speculation — particularly as it rarely issues public denials or confirmations.

RSS workers are justifiably aggrieved that the organisation is made the perennial scapegoat for everything that goes wrong with the BJP. If the RSS writ is as all-pervasive in the party as people assume, then the BJP when in government would not have strayed so completely from the RSS core agenda, whether on the economy or foreign policy. BJP leaders considered close to the RSS have not necessarily flourished. Murli Manohar Joshi’s hardline Hindutva is far more in tune with RSS thinking and yet it is the more pragmatic and liberal Atal Bihari Vajpayee and the organisationally more savvy L.K. Advani who always grabbed the top slots in both party and government.

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