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How a ‘Modi-fied’ BJP has made RSS a minor actor in its own play
After 17 years as sarsanghchalak, Mohan Bhagwat sees the RSS’s moral grip on the BJP at its weakest. With Modi tightening his hold on the party, the RSS may see its ideological goals fulfilled but with no say in the process.
With the Hindu festival of Vijaya Dashami weeks away, all eyes and ears tracking the RSS and its innumerable affiliates are focussed on Reshimbagh Ground, where RSS sarsanghchalak Mohan Bhagwat will deliver the traditional Vijaya Dashami address, as he has since 2009 when he assumed office.
This year’s speech has greater importance for two reasons. First, this Dusshera will mark the completion of the RSS centenary celebrations. Second, and more important, the address is keenly anticipated for the will-he-won’t-he question on his continuance in office. This has given rise to grave uncertainty within the RSS, and has not left the BJP and the Union government unaffected either.
At the heart of this dubiety is the BJP’s “75-year” rule. For more than a decade, this has existed as a prime example of an unwritten organisational norm, used as a tool for generational succession, and political convenience. Bhagwat’s handling of the “rule” reflects how the RSS leadership has navigated, since 2014, the delicate line between upholding organisational principles and accommodating political power.
In a widely cited speech in July 2025, Bhagwat dwelt on the issue, stating, “When you turn 75, then understand that you must stop, and leave the place for others”. This was interpreted as an indication that he had made up his mind to step down either later that year or after the centenary celebrations are over. Bhagwat’s statement carried greater weight as it was delivered in Nagpur during the release of a book on the RSS veteran leader the late Moropant Pingle.
Significantly, the timing of the speech was such that it appeared that Bhagwat was discreetly prodding Prime Minister Narendra Modi to also make way for a successor. The assessment sounds plausible, given the post-2024 friction between Bhagwat and Modi over several matters. After the party’s failure to secure a simple majority on its own, it was evident that in several of Bhagwat’s lectures, critical remarks were directed at Modi, although no names were taken.
It appeared that Bhagwat was subtly distancing the RSS from the BJP leadership’s “excesses”, seeking to ensure that the centenary would mark a return to the RSS’ authority rather than subordination to a political party. Opposition parties have also widely interpreted the statement as a veiled “retirement hint” for Modi.
Intense political speculations and pressure led to Bhagwat clarifying at an RSS event, barely 20 days later, that his words were taken out of context. The sarsanghchalak claimed that he had merely cited Pingle for his ready wit, with the exact quote being, “If you are honoured with a shawl after turning 75, it means you should stop now, you are old; step aside and let others come in.”
As per official records, the RSS chief and the PM are separated by just six days at birth: the former was born on September 11, 1950, and the latter on September 17. On this date this year, the party will flag off a month-long “Seva Sankalp Abhiyan” to mark 25 years in public life for Modi, who became Gujarat Chief Minister on October 7, 2001.
RSS publicists cited Bhagwat’s U-turn as proof that the organisation does not have a retirement-age policy and office-bearers can serve for as long as the organisation requires them to. The issue, however, never died down within the Sangh Parivar. What was the need for Bhagwat to bring up that particular Pingle quote given the sensitivity of the issue and the continuing speculation over whether Modi would apply the same rule that he had used to sideline party veterans like Lal Krishna Advani and Murli Manohar Joshi to himself.
This contentious issue apart, Bhagwat’s impending Vijaya Dashami address is likely to be significant because it is not only expected to serve as an annual report but as a major civilisational statement summarising a century of the Sangh’s trajectory and setting its vision for the future. The speech will come amid ongoing debates over social harmony (samajik samrasata), caste-census demands, constitutional norms, economic pressures, regional instability (such as the long-festering situation in Manipur, which Bhagwat highlighted in 2024 and 2025), and the Gen-Z protests, with which the RSS chief engaged at a recent event in Mumbai.
Importantly, after having been in the position for 17 years, Bhagwat is now its third-longest serving head after M.S. Golwalkar and Balasaheb Deoras. In this backdrop, the impending speech provides an occasion to assess the “Bhagwat years” and how the RSS has been re-fashioned in his tenure even while its ties with the BJP have undergone significant change. As the centenary concludes, all eyes will be focussed on whether Bhagwat uses this platform and the occasion to re-assert the RSS’s moral authority over political imperatives or offer a conciliatory roadmap for the next decade.
History tells us that transition points for the sarsanghchalak position do not arise abruptly without organisational preparation. So far, there have been no indications of the organisation and its leaders preparing for such a changeover. Yet, if this year’s Vijaya Dashami address serves as a capstone to Bhagwat’s 17-year tenure, it will be analysed as his ultimate “ideological testament”, defining how he steered the RSS from a period of electoral setbacks in 2009 to its highest point of state influence and institutional expansion as it completes 100 years.
Efforts at periodisation of Bhagwat’s 17-year tenure have to take note of the demoralisation in the saffron camp after the BJP’s poor performance in the Lok Sabha election for the second successive time in 2009. (The BJP also lost the election in 2004.) The results in May, barely two months after Bhagwat assumed office, saw the BJP tally in Lok Sabha plummeting to 120, the lowest since 1991. Clearly, the RSS-BJP combine was in decline when he took charge. Two months into his tenure, Bhagwat explicitly stated at a press conference in New Delhi that the BJP must end internal rivalries and transition leadership to a younger generation.
Bhagwat initiated changes almost from day one: he forced an internal generational shift in the BJP, sidelining the old guard (Advani and Joshi), weakening the monopolistic influence of the Delhi 4 (Arun Jaitley, Sushma Swaraj, M. Venkaiah Naidu and Ananth Kumar), and securing the appointment of a rank outsider (Nitin Gadkari) as the party’s national president. This ensured, for the first time since 2000, direct RSS oversight of the party. Simultaneously, Bhagwat embarked on another ambitious drive to reorganise RSS shakhas and attract urban youth.
The final phase of this quiet period of transition and consolidation lasted until 2013 and ended with twin strategic setbacks: Gadkari having to resign and opening the door for Modi to enter as the BJP’s prime ministerial candidate. In his years as Gujarat Chief Minister, Modi rode roughshod over the local RSS and functioned independently of the Sangh. Endorsement of Modi’s candidature followed from his emergence as a mass leader, way ahead of potential rivals. With no option for the RSS but to back the Modi-led BJP campaign, the RSS cadre played a crucial role in micro-managing electoral booths in constituencies. They in turn appointed panna pramukhs, swayamsevaks, and BJP cadre who were given the task of last-mile electoral connectivity with voters.
The extent of the BJP’s victory was a surprise even to its leaders, including those in the RSS. Between 2014 and 2019, the basic relationship between the RSS and the BJP was rewritten. In this period of symbiotic hegemony, it soon became evident that Bhagwat, who was previously called the Big Brother in Nagpur, was no longer representative of the elder in the fraternity, and the RSS was relegated to being the BJP’s twin. Equally important was the decimation of the BJP’s collegial system of consensual politics.
Within 15 months of Modi’s ascendance, BJP veterans stated in a public letter that the party had been “emasculated” and was being “forced to kowtow to a handful”. In fact, the BJP had begun mirroring the Congress under Indira Gandhi during her most hegemonistic phase in the mid-1970s. Despite losing moral leverage over the “Modi-fied” BJP, Bhagwat continued backing the regime due to its ideological commitment.
The RSS played along because it was able to maximise organisational expansion under a friendly federal government. During this period, the RSS traded its historic pre-eminent position for the power of 2 Ps: “programmes” (execution of core RSS goals by the state) and “placements” (appointing Sangh loyalists across universities, policy bodies, and state machinery). This transactional relationship bound the RSS to the BJP state apparatus, making it dependent on government power. In a payback to the Modi-centric BJP, the RSS re-deployed its extensive ground network for the BJP’s 2019 re-election. At the same time, Bhagwat initiated a broad public outreach, most notably with the three-day Vigyan Bhawan lecture series to rebrand the RSS as an inclusive, mainstream civic movement.
In 2019, the beginning of the third phase of Bhagwat’s tenure coincided with the BJP establishing absolute hegemony with an electoral victory surpassing the 2014 mark. It enabled Modi to induct Amit Shah as the Home Minister and immediately initiate moves to secure ideologically-driven objectives. By the end of 2019, the Centre had abrogated Articles 370 and 35A, stripped Jammu and Kashmir of its special status, reduced it to a Union Territory, and secured passage of the contentious Citizenship (Amendment) Act. But more importantly, it prodded the Supreme Court to deliver a verdict in the Ayodhya case and award the disputed land and its properties to the Hindu parties.
The new government also criminalised Triple Talaq. It simultaneously tightened national security frameworks by making crucial amendments to the Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act. These allowed the Central government to designate individual suspects as “terrorists” rather than organisations alone, giving the administration greater punitive powers, which highlighted the “process as punishment” phase. Among others, it is the reason why the JNU student, scholar, and activist Umar Khalid has been in pre-trial detention for six years without bail or trial.
Ironically, in the 2019-2024 period of acquiring programmatic hegemony while surrendering autonomy and authority, the Bhagwat-led RSS began to resemble the ideological tail that ended up wagging the dog. Bhagwat, in this phase, became a mute spectator to Modi building a leader-centric regime and sculpting a personality cult to eclipse the Sangh’s century-old ethos of the sangathan (organisation) being more important than the vyakti (individual).
This was also the period when Bhagwat engaged in activities that can be headlined as “duality at best, duplicity at worst”. He initiated public outreach with Muslim intellectual and religious leaders, advocating for social harmony, but looked askance when Sangh Parivar cadre continued to enforce majoritarian dominance with greater vehemence.
Bhagwat moderated his rhetoric as a deliberate tactic to provide liberal cover while the unceasing Hindutva agenda proceeded unchecked. Bhagwat joined all religious rituals in Ayodhya for the Ram temple: bhoomi pujan or groundbreaking (August 5, 2020), pran pratishtha or consecration (January 22, 2024), and dhwajarohan or flag-hoisting (November 25, 2025). These functions cemented Modi’s image as the person who “delivered” the long-awaited Ram temple. Bhagwat, with his participation, reduced the entire Sangh Parivar to a secondary role and merely sanctified Modi’s position, thereby erasing the dividing line between state and religion.
Eventually, there came a breaking point in Bhagwat’s acceptance of Modi’s dominance over the Sangh Parivar. It began with indications that Modi desired infinite self-glorification, with his claim to being a non-biological person; then with his personal anchoring of the BJP’s entire campaign for 2024 with the “Modi Ki Guarantee” slogan and a presidential-style campaign; then with the ambitious benchmark of “Abki Baar 400 Paar” (this time, above 400); and finally, with J.P. Nadda’s claim in 2024, when he was BJP’s president, that the party “did not need” the RSS any longer. These resulted in the RSS dialling down its campaign fervour; the tepid efforts of its cadres were widely reported.
Despite lavish corporate funding and the entire state machinery at his disposal, Modi failed to lead his party to a clear victory, unlike in 2014 and 2019. Even his personal victory margin in Varanasi declined significantly. The BJP fell short of 240 seats and was forced to rely on its National Democratic Alliance coalition partners to form the government. Bhagwat continued to display his annoyance with Modi in a series of public lectures, at one of which he remarked that a true sevak (public servant) does not exhibit ahankar (arrogance) and maintains maryada (decorum) during work. He also criticised the vitriolic nature of the election campaign and called for consensus rather than polarisation. He additionally took a dig at Modi’s “non-biological being” remark by stating: “We should not proclaim that we have become god. Let people decide if there is godliness in you.” His sentiments were echoed by other senior Sangh figures like Indresh Kumar and Rattan Sharda, and the RSS mouthpiece Organiser, whose editorial criticised the hubris among the BJP’s top leadership.
However, Bhagwat’s veiled criticism did not alter government policy, political rhetoric, or the push towards personal promotion. The BJP’s month-long mass outreach campaign, “Seva Sankalp Abhiyan”, to celebrate Modi’s 25 years in office, was along the same lines. Bhagwat’s criticism was more an attempt to display his personal outlook than actual organisational control. But, after the electoral setback, the BJP leadership was forced to seek RSS backing again for the Assembly election that followed. Senior leaders, including Nadda, joined the deliberations when the RSS summoned an Akhil Bharatiya Samanvay Baithak in August-September 2024 at Palakkad in Kerala.
The RSS cadre returned to help during elections in Haryana and Maharashtra and this eased the relationship with the BJP, with Modi making an appearance in Nagpur for a day-long function in March 2025. The public event with the two sitting cheek-by-jowl on stage projected interdependence, but Modi would soon use the Pahalgam terrorist strike and the retaliatory Operation Sindoor to gain the upper hand again.
Modi mentioned the RSS in its centenary year and termed it the “world’s largest NGO” in his Independence day speech from the symbolic Red Fort podium, but yielded little in terms of organisational consultation. Even on the much-delayed appointment of the BJP president to succeed Nadda, the RSS failed to ensure consultations. While Nitin Nabin is a second-generation BJP leader, Bhagwat would have doubtless preferred a more autonomous person to reduce Modi’s stranglehold.
More than two years after an election and a coalition arrangement that many, including Bhagwat, hoped would clip Modi’s wings, the expectations have been belied. Meanwhile, a different political challenge from Gen Z emerged in June-July, 2026, and while its flames have been banked since, it still simmers. The events have posed questions for the RSS too. The Gen-Z protesters are articulating a new set of issues, predominantly related to basic governance concerns, and are shifting focus away from Hindutva-centric and hyper-nationalistic agenda that has been promoted by the RSS-BJP since 2019.
Bhagwat responded with the outreach event in Mumbai in August and a three-nation tour to re-brand the RSS as a moderate organisation. This has also meant that the sarsanghchalak has not tried to further undermine Modi because he remains the Sangh’s best bet to retain ideological control. Barring the setback of being forced to accept the demand for the then Education Minister Dharmendra Pradhan’s resignation, the BJP’s other plans remain in place and are progressing on schedule.
With the Election Commission of India now a pliable institution and the Special Intensive Revision of electoral rolls continuing steadily amid growing fears among large sections of the political system, civil society, and media, Modi’s dependence on the RSS to win elections has now presumably declined. Several political plans have been readied: the initiation of delimitation of electoral constituencies which may well result in nationwide gerrymandering; the redrawing of electoral constituency boundaries to favour the BJP as was done in Assam; increasing the number of Lok Sabha and State Assembly members on the back of the implementation of the 33 per cent women’s reservation Bill; the Modi-Sangh idea, advocated since 2016, to hold Parliament and State elections simultaneously, termed the “one-nation-one-poll” plan. And, the final trump card unveiled at a press conference in Mumbai by Amit Shah: the plan to introduce a Uniform Civil Code across all 21 NDA-ruled States. All of these may well drive the final nail into the RSS’s electoral irrelevance, and make Nadda’s 2024 assertion finally true.
Bhagwat may have the pleasure of seeing all the ideological objectives of the RSS being met, and new ones being added, by the dogged Modi and his associates. But this joy will not be accompanied by Modi involving the RSS in any kind of consultative process. Modi has enjoyed functional autonomy from his first day in office and, after briefly relinquishing it after the 2024 results, he is unlikely to let it slip out of his hands again.
As Bhagwat works on the final touches of his watershed Dusshera address, there is little doubt that the moral clasp of the RSS on the BJP is at its weakest. There is also no ambiguity about the status quo changing in the remaining years of the Modi era. Much will, of course, unspool over the next couple of years, but for the moment, all eyes and ears are on what the sarsanghchalak will declaim from Nagpur in a few weeks.
Nilanjan Mukhopadhyay is an author and journalist based in Delhi-NCR. His latest book is The Demolition, The Verdict and The Temple: The Definitive Book on the Ram Mandir Project. He is also the author of Narendra Modi: The Man, The Times.