WEBDESK: In a telling shift within India’s ruling party, the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) has rushed through the appointment of new state presidents across the country, an effort seen by many as a sign that the party is finally bowing to internal pressure to replace its outgoing national chief, J.P. Nadda.
Nadda, whose extended six-year term ended in January 2024, had continued as BJP president as the party repeatedly failed to meet its own constitutional requirements for electing a new chief.
The BJP constitution demands that organisational polls be completed in at least 50 per cent of its 36 state units to constitute a valid electoral college. But until recently, infighting across major states had left the party embarrassingly short of this threshold.
Now, in just two weeks, the party has swiftly appointed nine new state presidents, most of them little-known figures but long-time affiliates of the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS), BJP’s ideological parent.
These names include Ravindra Chavan in Maharashtra, Rajiv Bindal in Himachal Pradesh, and N. Ramchander Rao in Telangana, among others.
The appointments, most of them unopposed, reveal the unmistakable hand of the RSS.
The BJP has now fulfilled the minimum requirement to elect a new national president, with 21 states having completed their leadership selection.
However, this is no mere bureaucratic exercise. The RSS’s deep involvement in handpicking these state chiefs signals a return to its old form, less behind-the-scenes, more direct control.
In states like Telangana and Madhya Pradesh, the BJP overcame long-standing factional fights by sidelining powerful caste-based lobbies.
But it did so not by consensus, rather by placing in power RSS-backed candidates who are less likely to resist Nagpur’s orders. The move may have temporarily silenced party rebels, but it has further entrenched a single ideological current that brooks no dissent.
This growing centralisation of power in the hands of hardline Hindutva cadres has brought the RSS back to centre stage.
After reportedly sitting out the BJP’s 2024 election campaign, a quiet protest against being marginalised by the Modi-Shah duo, the RSS is now calling the shots again.
The selection of the next BJP president is likely to reflect this shift. Three frontrunners, Bhupendra Yadav, M.L. Khattar and Shivraj Singh Chouhan, are all long-time RSS men with roots in Hindutva activism.
With the RSS’s top brass set to meet in Delhi from July 4 to 6, the formal announcement of the new BJP chief seems imminent. The ideological alignment between the party and the Sangh is now complete.
But this consolidation also signals something more troubling: that India’s largest political party has fully surrendered its internal democracy to an openly supremacist vision, one that sees diversity as a threat and domination as its goal.
What’s coming up might not just be a repeat of what we’ve seen before. With the RSS now clearly guiding the BJP’s direction, and factional leaders being swapped out for loyal supporters, we’re gearing up for a more forceful drive towards cultural and political uniformity.
And, in the face of growing domestic challenges and foreign policy humiliations, a new wave of war posturing, particularly against Pakistan, may well follow.
RSS tightens grip: BJP’s radical shift now unmasked
- Over the last two weeks, the BJP elected nine state presidents. Most of these new appointments aren’t among the prominent leaders of the BJP, but are known for their affiliation with the RSS. Most of the new appointments were elected unopposed, indicating RSS’s stamp on the nominees.
- The crucial factor that has emerged over the last few months is the way the RSS has crawled back into action. It has again become an important constituent in making decisions for the BJP.
- Currently, three BJP leaders, Bhupendra Yadav, M.L. Khattar and Shivraj Singh Chouhan, are top contenders to become the new BJP chief. All three belong to the RSS stable, having begun their political careers from grassroots Hindutva activism.
The growing and now undisguised role of the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) in steering the BJP’s internal affairs marks a dangerous escalation of India’s descent into militant majoritarianism.
The formal installation of RSS loyalists as state BJP chiefs, and the fact that every frontrunner for the next BJP president hails from the same hardline Hindutva stable, is not merely an organisational shuffle, it is a declaration that the anti-minority, anti-Muslim, and openly supremacist agenda of the Modi-Shah duo will not just continue but be violently amplified.
This creeping RSS takeover is a clarion call that the last vestiges of pretence are being discarded.
The BJP is no longer content with covert ideological influence; it has become a full-fledged political instrument of the RSS.
With the rank and file now stacked with seasoned Hindutva cadres, the BJP will almost certainly escalate its politics of hate to ever more extreme lengths, whether that means renewed efforts to marginalise, disenfranchise, or physically terrorise India’s minorities.
Moreover, this alignment of party and paramilitary ideological machinery sets the stage for fresh foreign misadventures.
Still smarting from the humiliation of military setbacks and international embarrassment, the RSS-BJP combine is likely to stoke war hysteria against Pakistan to “settle scores,” distract from domestic failures, and consolidate its stranglehold over the electorate through hyper-nationalist fervour.
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