The RSS And BJP Draw Up The Blueprint Of A New Nationalism For 2019

In the face of a uniting opposition and widespread social unrest, the RSS And BJP Are planning a strategy reboot. It pivots on a new nationalism.

- Uday Mahurkar And Kaushik Deka

When Prime Minister Narendra Modi hosted a dinner for the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh brass at his official residence on June 14, the discussion revolved around the growing unrest among Dalits, farmers and tribals across the country and how the Opposition was painting an antiDalit image of the BJP. Modi stressed on how the party and parivar had to work harder to get the message across to the poor, including Dalits and tribals, about the work done by the Centre for them through schemes like Jan Dhan, Mudra loans, Ujjwala cooking gas and the many insurance plans including the latest, Ayushmann Bharat. Before they left, he told the pracharaks: “Our biggest challenge is to defeat the efforts of the Opposition and anarchist elements who want to divide society by inciting caste passions.”

The RSS pracharaks were of much the same mind. In fact, they sensed trouble much before the prime minister expressed his concern that evening. On the first day of 2018, violent clashes had erupted at Bhima-Koregaon, a tiny village near Pune in Maharashtra, during a commemorative event organised by a Dalit organisation. It spread to several parts of the state. In April, the country witnessed protests and clashes in many states following a Supreme Court ruling diluting the provisions of the Scheduled Caste and Scheduled Tribe (Prevention of Atrocities) Act. There have been other major protests, in Tamil Nadu’s Tuticorin against a polluting industrial plant; in Jharkhand and Chhattisgarh where tribals have launched the Pathalgadi movement with villagers declaring the sovereignty of gram panchayats.