After poll debacle RSS whips BJP, praises BSP

The Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh, which unsuccessfully used its full strength to mobilise voters towards the Bharatiya Janata Party in the Uttar Pradesh elections, has blamed the saffron party's debacle in the state on its 'half-hearted' Hindutva campaign.

An article in RSS mouthpiece Organiser compared Bahujan Samaj Party chief Mayawati's strategy with the one adopted by late Prime Minister Indira Gandhi and said both used 'soft Hindutva line' to woo voters.

'The BJP lost steam midway. Its campaign got stuck between half-hearted Hindutva and development governance,' it said.

The article in the latest issue of the Sangh organ followed senior BJP leader Sushma Swaraj's remarks after Friday's vote count that Hindutva was not an election issue for her party in the state.

'The collective anger of the poor and the Hindu is in full play. For the BJP, it is a setback. It has touched its lowest ever,' the write-up said, as it praised Mayawati for her 'Hindu social engineering.'

It noted that the BJP had lost its traditional vote to the BSP, a phenomenon it blamed on what it called a mismatch in the saffron party's strategy.

Rumours that it might ultimately go with Mulayam Singh Yadav's Samajwadi Party also battered the BJP, it said.

'Issues like building a Ram temple were in the background. An aggressive Hindutva approach would have ensured greater success. But the party was extremely restrained.'

The remarks in the article came as results showed that the RSS, which had drafted its organization secretaries across the state in support of the BJP, have been of little use in wooing voters for the saffron party.

The Sangh article, which claimed that the party had the support of an active cadre base, found flaws in the BJP's Hindutva approach in the elections.

The RSS, however, refrained from blaming party chief Rajnath Singh, a Sangh-backed leader likely to come under fire from his adversaries within for his election management in Uttar Pradesh, for the reverses, except to mention that the factor that he belonged to the state just 'did not help.'

But it described the party's chief ministerial candidate Kalyan Singh as an 'icon' and as a man with an 'excellent' track record.

Its praise of Mayawati as a politician who understood dynamics of a united Hindu constituency came amidst presumptions that she might support the UPA's presidential candidate.

'Of course, she did not play the Hindu card. But like Indira Gandhi, on an altogether different format in the eighties, Mayawati subtly advanced a soft Hindutva line,' it said.

The BSP chief, it said, had told her Bahujan samaj that their interest rested in a unified Hindu social order rather than artificially created barriers promoted by disparate interests to keep society mutually suspicious.