RSS-BJP Reset: Religious Nationalism Intensifies After 2024 Elections

The RSS chief, Mohan Bhagwat, has been reported as saying that the consecration (pran pratishtha) of the Ram Mandir at Ayodhya on January 22, 2024, should be remembered as the “true independence” of India, a nation that has faced external attacks for centuries. The Ram Mandir movement, he said, was launched to awaken the “swa” (self) of Bharat so that the country could stand on its own feet and show the path to the world.

A month ago, Bhagwat created a stir by announcing that there was no need to search for a Shivling (a symbol of Lord Siva) in every mosque. While first seen as an admonition to those who were doing so, caveats soon followed that such measured words were necessary to ensure that India was a real Vishwaguru (world leader).

If we take the sum of these words, the mixed message they send is that self-worth, both personal and national, can only be found when India builds the Ram Mandir and occasionally digs up mosques. His words also make it entirely possible that some time in the near future, there could be a demand to declare January 22, the date of the pran pratishtha at Ayodhya, a national holiday. After all, the RSS chief has declared that this is the beginning of India’s “true independence”.

The year 2024 can also be seen as the year when the power balance between the BJP and the RSS was restored. The nosedive in the number of seats the party won in the 2024 general election technically brought it back into the era of coalition governance as opposed to a single-party hegemony and reinforced its dependence on the grassroots cadres of the RSS mothership.

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It was noticed that RSS cadres were not part of the mobilisation in many seats in States such as Uttar Pradesh and Maharashtra, and the BJP suffered losses there. Lesson learnt, when it came to the State elections that followed, the cadres picked themselves up and hit the ground running with clear blueprints of action.

It was the ground messaging and booth management by the RSS that resulted in Haryana being snatched away from what was expected to be a sure win for the Congress. The candidates and cadres worked seamlessly in Maharashtra as well. Both States also had incumbent BJP governments, which proved useful in controlling the structural aspects of the elections. The RSS cadre is also controlling local-level narrative in Delhi which goes to voting on February 5.

Within the Sangh Parivar there is now a view that in the long term, over-dependence on one individual, Prime Minister Narendra Modi, is not good for the BJP’s organisational health. The reduction in seats in Parliament has thus actually been good for the BJP-RSS synergy to be reworked.

In the months since, the limitations of the opposition have also been revealed. True, it is not a level playing field, but recent trends and events suggest that the challenge to the BJP in the future will come from rooted State parties that are geared to fight fiercely to retain hold of their regions. The Congress, the second national alternative, has frequently appeared entitled and incompetent in front of the BJP. Unless the Congress builds a strong grassroots level cadre in some States, it will continue to tilt at windmills and let down the millions of Indians who hope for a revival of a national alternative to the BJP.

The return to the coalition era has not slowed down the civilisational project of the BJP/RSS. Indeed, in some ways it has become more intense, with the Hindu vs Muslim narrative remaining its main strategy when challenged or seeking to grow. The fundamental project of targeting minority rights, lives, customs, people, and histories has therefore not been pushed back in any meaningful way since the 2024 election. Textbooks continue to be altered, media houses and businesses fall in line, television channels search out Hindu vs Muslim themes with continued enthusiasm, and no one is punished for hate crimes since what would have been intimidation/provocation/hate speech in the past is par for the course today.

Societal acceptance and internalisation of a Hindutva consciousness have also impacted the positions of other political parties, which are keen to avoid the tag of “Muslim appeasement” even as they seek minority votes.

Once upon a time the greatest pushback to communal narratives came from the unconscious secularism of popular culture as determined by Bollywood—in the songs, dialogues, language, and scripts, which depicted minority characters sympathetically. It has been changing slowly over the past decade, and after the sweep in Maharashtra at the end of 2024, there is enough signalling from Bollywood that those with something to lose will not only be cautious but also crawl before the regime when asked to bend.

We have had gratuitous visuals of a leading family of Hindi cinema calling on the Prime Minister while other megastars have used social media or public events to urgently signal their support to the government. The violent action movies that are now all the rage frequently dovetail into the larger ideological framework of enemies of the nation being all around us.

The BJP appears to be winning the culture wars, but it is a myopic battleground. Countries that progress, whether in South Asia, Europe, China, or Japan, report less and certainly not more religiosity. The growth of the right wing in Europe and the US emerges largely from other impulses and less from fervent churchgoing (US President Donald Trump will not be expected to pose in positions of worship or inaugurate churches).

Surveys in the US show that religious observance has fallen (when people are asked how frequently they attend church, for instance). Europe has in any case been less religious than the US, and the trend continues. The Pew-Templeton Global Religious Futures project, which tracks religion and society, found in a 2022 report that India, Indonesia, Nigeria, and the Philippines were nations where religiosity was increasing. Conversely, in societies that have developed and prospered, there is a secularising trend wherein people value human rights and individual freedoms. The BJP-RSS combine, however, seeks to take us in the opposite direction, as a highly religious Hindu-first nation.

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The other defining feature of the BJP in the Modi era is that it operates through threats, intimidation, and outright repression when it is not confident of winning in a level playing field. There are parts of the country where the party keeps facing defeat and has not been able to take root in a manner which the Congress did in the age of its dominance. But using the enormous funds, cadre, social media, and ambition at its disposal, the BJP still keeps trying to be everything, everywhere, all at once. Invariably in these places it uses shrill communal messages to make a mark.

But one wonders if the single dominant strategy that the BJP-RSS favours, that of generating even more communal and religious fervour, promoted within the state and by the state, will turn India into a Vishwaguru or if it will actually become a hindrance in the path of its development. 

Saba Naqvi is a Delhi-based journalist and author of four books who writes on politics and identity issues.