ABVP'S EVOLUTION IN SANGH PARIVAR: BULLY BOY OR PARENT'S PET?

The RSS's student wing has become a talent pool for BJP leadership. It has done so partly by honing its members' communication skills even while rubbing opponents the wrong way

- RADHIKA RAMASESHAN

OF the over 30 outfits living and, at times, thriving under the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh's banyan tree-like shelter, the Akhil Bharatiya Vidyarthi Parishad has emerged as the BJP's stand-in, pursuing an agenda and fulfilling ends that come closest to the political party's mandate. The BJP was the RSS's best-known offspring even in its earlier manifestation, the Bharatiya Jana Sangh, although the BJS was a peripheral player in Indian politics. Having grown exponentially from the late 1980s, the BJP never looked back even in a low phase from 2004 to 2014. In recent years, it came close to overwhelming the patriarch but never allowed itself to do so, realising that the parent commanded a stature within the extended family the BJP could never hope for.

On the other hand, the paterfamilias gave the ABVP the space to expand but, in its evolution, the BJP ensured that the organisation became critically dependent on it for survival and advancement.

Other "Sangh-inspired"-a term used on the RSS website-setups such as the Vishwa Hindu Parishad, Swadeshi Jagran Manch and Bharatiya Mazdoor Sangh waxed and waned in the course of their lives and are seldom seen or heard in the present BJP regime. Their sphere of activity is clear-cut and they seldom overstep the boundary except when authorised by the Sangh. The VHP's core work area was fighting to 'restore' temples allegedly demolished to build mosques; the SJM was tasked to 'correct' aberrations in the government's economic policies whenever these were seen pandering to foreign collaborators.

Not the ABVP. It began as the Sangh's student wing and by diligence, networking, resilience, and hard-headedness, succeeded even if success meant being yoked to Big Brother BJP. That was too small a price to pay for learning political life's lessons.