There is more to BJP’s CM choices than RSS’ hand

Political messaging to the Brahmin community in the Hindi heartland was necessary, especially after an OBC was selected in Madhya Pradesh and a tribal in Chhattisgarh. A Brahmin Chief Minister of Rajasthan would have some symbolic influence in neighbouring Uttar Pradesh

The selection of its new chief ministerial faces by the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) has been explained by some as signifying a generational change. Others have seen the decisive hand of the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) in the choice of political greenhorns. However, the explanation may be much simpler.

Every member of the BJP either has RSS links or pledges loyalty to it. It is necessary etiquette even if allegiance is sworn after joining the party. Neither Yogi Adityanath, Chief Minister of Uttar Pradesh, nor his Assam counterpart, Himanta Biswa Sarma, came from the RSS, but today are the Sangh’s favourites.

In Rajasthan, the selection of Bhajanlal Sharma, a first-time MLA, is being credited to deep personal links with the RSS. However, in 2000, Sharma left the BJP when he was denied a ticket for the assembly polls and contested from the Rajasthan Samajik Nyay Manch, launched by Devi Singh Bhati and Lokendra Singh Kalvi. He contested and lost from Nadbai, in his home district of Bharatpur, coming third, with less than 6,000 votes. A few days later, he re-joined the BJP with his tail between his legs.

Sharma, however, is a confidante of Union Home Minister Amit Shah, with whom he developed close contact when Shah was BJP president. As Shah’s man in Rajasthan, he helped keep tabs on the party in the state. Being a Brahmin may have been an additional reason. The BJP had not up to now given a single Brahmin Chief Minister in Northern India, despite the fact of Brahmins throwing in their lot with the party after the Ramjanmabhoomi yatra. Their large-scale desertion played a significant role in the erosion of the Congress in North India.

Political messaging to the Brahmin community in the Hindi heartland was necessary, especially after Mohan Yadav, an OBC, had been selected in Madhya Pradesh and a tribal, Vishnu Deo Sai, in Chhattisgarh. A Brahmin Chief Minister of Rajasthan, from Bharatpur, would have some symbolic influence in neighbouring Uttar Pradesh. Also, the community’s tallest leaders in the BJP in Rajasthan, have been phased out of active politics as they became old.

In retrospect, it seems that the BJP's central leadership had big plans for him. A resident of Jaipur for the last two decades, Sharma’s politics was oriented to Bharatpur where his family originally came from. Yet he was not fielded from there, but from the ‘safe’ Brahmin-dominated seat of Sanganer with the BJP ousting its sitting MLA Ashok Lahoty to accommodate him.

In Madhya Pradesh too the choice of Mohan Yadav as Chief Minister may have had little to do with the RSS. It seems to have been aimed at taking the wind out of the sails of the Congress’ caste census platform. Though the BJP had opposed the implementation of the Mandal Commission recommendations it has subsequently given more OBC chief ministers than the Congress — benefitting, thus, both from Kamandal (read, Hindutva, Ram temple movement, etc.) and Mandal politics.

In keeping with this happy convergence, Madhya Pradesh’s OBC Chief Minister is busy pushing the party’s Hindutva agenda. Immediately after taking oath as Chief Minister, he went to the Mahakaleshwar Temple at Ujjain (Ujjain South is also his constituency) decked in saffron clothes, to pray, even before holding a Cabinet meeting. The first order he has passed is to ban the “unregulated use of loudspeakers in religious places and other public places" — a long-standing demand of Hindu groups against Azaan or Muslim call to prayer from mosques over loudspeakers. Flying squads will be constituted in every district of MP to monitor the sound level of loudspeakers used in religious places.

The Chief Minister has also ‘decided to ban illegal buying and selling of meat, fish etc. in the open without licence’ and announced that an ‘intensive campaign will be launched’. All this is music to the ears of Hindutva votaries. The choice of the new Chief Minister in MP, therefore, will showcase, they hope, the failure of the caste census plank of the Opposition to woo OBC voters. It will also demonstrate that the OBCs are well assimilated into the Hindutva social and cultural discourse. The argument that Mohan Yadav represents a ‘generational change’ is far-fetched as at 58 he is not a generation behind outgoing Chief Minister Shivraj Singh Chouhan’s 64 years.

In Chhattisgarh, once the BJP had decided to show its commitment to its tribal constituency, Sai was a shoo-in. His political experience put him head and shoulders above any other contender — a three-term MP, two-term MLA, experience as a Union minister in the first Narendra Modi government and president of the state BJP in Chhattisgarh. Former BJP Chief Minister Raman Singh who backed his candidature has been taken on board in the new power structure as Speaker of the assembly.

The future of the main contenders for the top job in the three states will depend on their co-operation with the party’s central leadership. Raman Singh in Chhattisgarh has thus been accommodated and Shivraj Singh Chouhan in MP is also likely to be so. Chouhan seems to have made his peace — he was undoubtedly popular and no one inside or outside the party bore him animosity. He still has at least another decade of public life left in him, and it is quite likely that because he has behaved in a disciplined manner, the central leadership will reward him in some way or the other.

Vasundhara Raje, on the other hand, although popular, has played her cards badly. She has been defiant of the central leadership for long. After the BJP victory this time around, she tried to force a recognition of her claim to the top job by holding a durbar with 40-odd legislators who supported her. Blackmail does not work with highly centralised parties like the BJP, nor does the current central leadership look at defiance kindly.

Although the choice of the three chief ministers by the BJP seems a bit surprising, the residual explanation is not the ubiquitous hand of the RSS.

Bharat Bhushan is a Delhi-based journalist.

(Disclaimer: The views expressed above are the author's own. They do not necessarily reflect the views of DH).