On May 23, when the BJP was cruising to a commanding victory in the Lok Sabha elections, B.L. Santhosh, who was then national joint general secretary (organisation) of the party, shared a word of caution. “Our journey is not complete without victory in Kerala & Tamil Nadu,” he tweeted, rightly capturing the BJP’s southern dilemma. Santhosh, an RSS pracharak deputed to the BJP since 2006, has now been appointed national general secretary (organisation), the second most powerful post in the BJP. He replaces Ram Lal, the longest-serving organisational general secretary, who has returned to the RSS.
Santhosh began his career as a design engineer in a telecommunications firm before joining the RSS in 1993 as a full-timer. Hailing from Hiriadka in Karnataka’s Udupi district, he worked extensively in Mysuru and Shivamogga before being appointed as the BJP’s state organisational secretary in 2006. In 2014, he was inducted into Ram Lal’s team as one of the five joint general secretaries. Santhosh’s colleagues describe him as “sharp, studious and social media savvy”, with strong views on issues ranging from internal security to environment. Fluent in English, Hindi, Kannada, Tamil and Tulu, he has played a key role behind the BJP’s forays into south India. “Santhoshji is a key organisational man who has worked in Kerala, Andhra Pradesh, Telangana and Goa. The move will pay rich dividends for the party in the southern region,” said senior BJP leader S. Suresh Kumar.
It was Santhosh who held the BJP together in Karnataka after splinter parties like the Karnataka Janata Paksha of B.S. Yeddyurappa and the BSR Congress of B. Sriramulu threatened to destroy the BJP ahead of the 2013 assembly elections. The “missed-call” membership drive in Karnataka registered nearly one crore new members in 2014-15, a feat that helped the party dramatically expand its base.
The cold war between Karnataka BJP president Yeddyurappa and Santhosh is no longer a secret. It started in 2011, when Yeddyurappa was forced to step down as chief minister after his name figured in the Lokayukta report on illegal mining. In 2017, when senior BJP leader K.S. Eshwarappa launched the Sangolli Rayanna Brigade to consolidate the backward classes, Yeddyurappa suspected that the move was orchestrated by Santhosh to undercut his influence. The rumours about Santhosh being considered for the chief minister’s post during last year’s assembly elections had added to the problem.
Santhosh’s new appointment comes at a crucial juncture as the BJP is not only eyeing its expansion in the south, but also trying to balance electoral compulsions with ideological commitment. “The senior leadership in the BJP came from the JP movement and Emergency. Today, there is an urgent need to groom young leaders,” said a senior RSS functionary. “Santhosh’s organisational skills have immensely helped the BJP expand its membership. His focus on strengthening the different morchas and engaging diverse civil society groups and professional cells is worth emulating.”
With Santhosh’s appointment, the RSS is taking forward a tradition established by the second sarsanghchalak, M.S. Golwalkar. “Syama Prasad Mukherjee (founder of the Bharatiya Jana Sangh) and his team once approached Guruji (Golwalkar) to form a political party. Guruji declined, but offered to assist in building the party. Five people—Atal Bihari Vajpayee, L.K. Advani, Deendayal Upadhyaya, Sunder Singh Bhandari and Balraj Madhok were deputed to work for the Jana Sangh,” said an RSS ideologue.
Earlier, only the organisational general secretary was drawn from the RSS and the rest of the leaders were chosen by the BJP. When Ram Lal became organisational secretary, the BJP inducted many joint general secretaries and Santhosh was one of them. The BJP’s constitution now mandates nine national general secretaries, and for the first time, the RSS has deputed a representative (Ram Madhav) as one of the general secretaries as well.
According to sources, the BJP now plans to appoint organisational secretaries at district levels to ensure further coordination. “Local issues need to be conveyed to policymakers and policies should be communicated at the local level. The post of the organisational general secretary becomes crucial and he represents the BJP during coordination meetings and gathers opinions from other affiliate organisations on national and policy issues,” said a source.
The RSS and the BJP may differ on many issues. So, the organisational general secretary needs to build consensus among sangh affiliates over various policy issues. Less than 10 per cent of the members in the affiliates have a strong ideological background and they will worry about their interests rather than ideology. To fight the frictions, the BJP has increased training programmes for cadres ranging from block-level leaders to MPs.
The priorities are going to be different for the BJP this time. As Prime Minister Narendra Modi has put it, the second term will focus on fulfilling the aspirations of the people and, of course, the sangh parivar on issues such as the Ram Mandir, Uniform Civil Code, Article 370, internal security and the education sector. It makes the role of the organisational general secretary even more crucial.
The BJP also needs to adapt to the mass influx of leaders and cadres from other parties. Insiders said the phenomenon was not new. Just before the 1967 elections, a large number of Congress leaders had joined the BJP. “When Deendayalji was asked what was the guarantee that the Jana Sangh would not become another Congress, he said if the Jana Sangh became another Congress, the sangh would create another Jana Sangh,” said a sangh parivar old timer.
Suresh Kumar said the BJP used to be “a class party” till K.N. Govindacharya took charge as organisational general secretary. It became a mass-based party after that. “Through social engineering, many people joined the party. The so-called outsiders joining the BJP is being seen as an opportunity for the party to expand its base,” he said. “West Bengal and Kerala are classic examples of how people with different ideologies have come into the BJP. It is now up to us to effectively integrate them like in Assam and the northeastern states.”