Hindutva forces may soon have a severe disease — called the winner's complex !!
RSS chief Mohan Bhagwat was instrumental in honouring L K Advani with Bharat Ratna, India's highest civilian award.
The announcement was made a few weeks after PM Narendra Modi's speech at Ayodhya during Ram temple inauguration on Jan 22, 2024 where no mention was made on Advani's role in the temple movement.
Mohan Bhagwat -- 76: How the RSS Chief Helped Reshape Hindutva Politics
Mohan Bhagwat himself and also the BJP and the RSS understand that a broader Hindu social coalition in today's era is essential for the long-term consolidation of their political and ideological project.
If the Ram temple and Article 370 represent major achievements for the wider Hindutva project, Bhagwat’s RSS still faces an unfinished agenda. The Sangh wants to expand its social base.
It wants to convince the rest of the world. That means greater engagement with Dalits, backward classes and communities that have historically remained outside or at the margins of the Sangh’s core social constituency.
This is not simply an electoral calculation. The challenge is also reputational.
The RSS continues to face criticism from opponents who describe the organisation and wider Sangh Parivar as communal.
Bhagwat’s challenge is therefore two-fold:
- deepen the ideological support base
-- and also attempting to change perceptions about what the RSS represents.
The Sangh’s “Hindu Bharat” Project
For the Sangh Parivar, the broader project is not confined to winning elections.
It is about social and cultural transformation.
Bhagwat’s contribution has been to preside over an RSS that has expanded its political relevance without formally becoming a political party. The BJP contests elections. The RSS builds cadres, social networks and ideological influence.
The two operate differently but have repeatedly worked in tandem.
When elections arrive — whether in Haryana, Maharashtra or elsewhere — the wider Sangh ecosystem can become a powerful political force without the RSS itself becoming an electoral organisation. That has been one of Bhagwat’s most important organisational achievements.
PM Modi’s personal Tribute opens 'another Window'
In 2025, Narendra Modi publicly recalled his long association with Bhagwat’s family and praised the RSS chief on his 75th birthday. The Prime Minister wrote that his association with the Bhagwat family had been deep and recalled his interaction with Bhagwat’s father, Madhukarrao Bhagwat. Modi also highlighted Bhagwat’s lifelong commitment to the Sangh and society.
The relationship between the Prime Minister and the RSS chief is not merely a transactional political arrangement. It is rooted in a much longer Sangh tradition.
As Mohan Bhagwat turns 76, the RSS chief’s journey from grassroots organiser to the centre of the Sangh Parivar’s political project offers a window into the Ram temple, Article 370 and the BJP-RSS relationship.
The more interesting question is not merely how long he has remained at the helm of the Sangh, but how much he has travelled up the ladder of Hindutva politics — and what he has delivered for the wider Sangh Parivar.
Bhagwat became RSS chief in 2009, succeeding K.S. Sudershan. The RSS itself records that Sudershan named Bhagwat as his successor in January 2009. Since then, the political landscape around the Sangh has changed dramatically.
Several long-standing objectives associated with the broader Hindutva agenda have moved from aspiration to political reality: the construction of the Ram temple in Ayodhya, the abrogation of Article 370 and the adoption of Uniform Civil Code legislation in some states.
There is, however, another side to that story. Without Narendra Modi at the helm of the Union government — and without the political determination displayed by the Prime Minister — it would have been difficult for the wider Hindutva movement and Bhagwat-led RSS to see some of these long-standing objectives translated into policy.
The relationship between Modi and Bhagwat has consequently become one of the defining political equations of contemporary India.
From Sangh Organiser to the Centre of the Hindutva Project
Bhagwat’s rise was not sudden. His years as a senior RSS functionary, including his work as Akhil Bharatiya Sharirik Pramukh during the 1990s, gave him a deep organisational connect with swayamsevaks. His work in Bihar’s villages during this period also exposed him to grassroots social and political realities.
By 2000, he had moved into a position from which he was increasingly handling complex organisational responsibilities.
Then came 2009. Bhagwat took charge of the RSS at a difficult moment for the BJP and the wider Sangh Parivar. The BJP had suffered a major setback in the 2009 Lok Sabha election, and the party’s organisational and political relationship with the RSS required reconstruction.
By 2014, however, the picture had changed dramatically.
Bhagwat and other Sangh leaders, along with BJP leaders and organisations associated with the wider Parivar, helped create an unusually coordinated campaign environment for the general election. The result was the BJP’s historic majority under Modi.
That victory changed Bhagwat’s position within Indian politics.
He was no longer simply the head of an ideological organisation operating alongside the BJP. He had become one of the most consequential figures in the ecosystem that supported the political rise of Narendra Modi.
Ram Temple: Bhagwat Beside Modi
Few images better capture the changing relationship between the RSS and the BJP than Bhagwat standing alongside Modi at the Ram temple milestones.
On August 5, 2020, Bhagwat was present when the foundation stone for the Ram temple was laid in Ayodhya.
He was again present in January 2024 when the Ram temple was inaugurated. The political spotlight naturally remained on Modi, but the RSS chief’s presence carried its own symbolism.
For generations of Sangh workers, the Ram temple had been one of the defining objectives of the movement.
Its eventual realisation therefore represented not simply a BJP political achievement, but the culmination of a much longer ideological and organisational campaign. Bhagwat was part of that journey.
Is Bhagwat Modi’s Man — Or Is Modi Also Bhagwat’s Man?
There was once a perception in political circles that Bhagwat was effectively “Modi’s man” within the Sangh ecosystem. That interpretation now looks increasingly inadequate.
The relationship is better understood as one of mutual dependence and political complementarity.
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