Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), which stormed to victory in last week’s election to the Delhi state assembly, will return to governing India’s capital city after a gap of 27 years.
Since 2014, the BJP has swept successive national elections, and it won all seven parliamentary constituencies from Delhi in general elections in 2014, 2019, and 2024. Yet the party performed poorly in assembly elections in the capital. Control over the Delhi government was elusive.
That has now changed.
The BJP won 48 of the 70 seats in the Delhi assembly and will form the next government.
So, what ended the BJP’s 27-year exile from the Delhi assembly? While the incumbent Aam Aadmi Party’s governance failures, corruption scandals, and refusal to join hands with the Congress to fight the BJP contributed to the latter’s strong performance, the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) campaign at the grassroots level played a significant role in pushing the BJP across the finish line and propelling it to power in Delhi.
The RSS is the ideological mentor of the BJP. Its vast network of cadres across the country has played an important role in BJP victories in elections. However, RSS-BJP relations soured in recent years. Modi’s arrogance and BJP leaders’ statements that they did not need the RSS anymore irked the latter, prompting it to distance itself from the BJP in the 2024 general elections. The RSS’ aloofness from the BJP’s campaign was among the reasons for the party’s underwhelming performance; it failed to win a majority on its own, unlike in the 2014 and 2019 elections. The rift was further underscored in the weeks after the elections when RSS chief Mohan Bhagwat made cryptic remarks castigating the Modi government and the BJP.
However, the BJP and RSS have benefited immensely from each other. RSS leaders may loathe Modi, but as prime minister he has delivered on several items on the RSS’ Hindutva agenda, taking India closer to the goal of becoming a Hindu state. RSS leaders are in key positions today. As political commentator Apoorvanand told me in an interview in August 2024, the “RSS is the biggest beneficiary of the Modi regime. Under ten years of Modi rule, it has been flushed with funds and gained unprecedented access to resources.” Likewise, the BJP needs the RSS, which has provided it with “its vast army of volunteers” who canvas on behalf of the BJP.
With elections to the Haryana assembly looming and a BJP in-house survey indicating that the party was up against a strong anti-incumbency mood in the state and facing certain defeat in the election, RSS and BJP leaders decided to bury their differences to secure the BJP a third term in the state. The RSS activated its grassroots network. Cadres went door-to-door to canvas support. They provided feedback from the ground to craft the BJP’s campaign. The RSS also had “a significant say” in the choice of candidates.
As in Haryana, in Maharashtra too the RSS pulled out all stops to campaign for the BJP in the assembly elections in November. “In addition to door-to-door campaigning and small street meetings, the RSS formed issue- and target group-focused teams. Some teams held discussions with Dalit, tribal and women’s groups, for example, and others that countered opposition narratives,” an RSS leader in Bengaluru told The Diplomat.
The RSS and BJP “coordinated their activities, and the BJP acted on RSS input from the ground. It worked,” he said, pointing to the BJP winning a record third term in Haryana and the BJP-led alliance winning a three-fourths majority in Maharashtra. “The RSS role proved a game-changer. It carried the BJP to victory in both states,” he said.
The Haryana-Maharashtra model was adopted for the Delhi assembly election. In Delhi, RSS cadres got down to work even before the election date was announced. And even as politicians and political parties were engaging in a no-holds-barred campaign that involved much mud-slinging and a high-decibel war of words, RSS volunteers moved quietly from house to house, engaging families in discussions, and held small street gatherings to discuss issues like environmental pollution, family values, corruption, and social harmony. Over 400,000 people reportedly attended the RSS’ 50,000-odd drawing room meetings across Delhi in the run-up to voting day, Indian Express reported.
In Delhi, Modi may have fronted the BJP’s campaign and the entire top brass of the party were deployed at rallies, but it was the “RSS face-to-face engagement of voters that resulted in the BJP’s impressive tally,” the RSS leader said.
While there is much about the RSS and its ideology that deserves strong condemnation, there are lessons that India’s opposition parties can draw from it. Had the opposition INDIA bloc parties sunk their differences and cooperated to fight the BJP-RSS, the outcome of the Delhi election may have been different. Instead, INDIA bloc constituents, the Congress and the Aam Aadmi Party, slammed each other during the campaign and the two ended up dividing the anti-BJP vote in the capital.
All eyes are now on the INDIA bloc. Will its constituents bury the hatchet to cooperate as did the BJP-RSS in the aftermath of the 2024 general election? Or will they continue to fight each other to the finish? The INDIA bloc’s survival is in peril.
