By Rajdeep Sardesai
No two words have been as overused (rather misused) in the political lexicon quite like ‘High Command’. Conceptually, the idea of a ‘High Command’ is repugnant to a parliamentary multi-party democracy, reflecting the ascent of the ‘elected autocrat’. Traditionally, this word is associated with the Congress and the Nehru-Gandhi family, with Indira Gandhi being widely seen as the original party ‘High Command’. But in a twist in the tale, the contemporary High Command has shifted location from 10 Janpath to 7 Lok Kalyan Marg and 6 A Krishna Menon Marg, the residences of Gujarat and now India’s political Jodi number one, Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Home Minister Amit Shah. Consider this. Only this week, the BJP chose a national ‘working’ president in 45-year-old Ni tin Nabin. No one outside Bihar had paid much attention to the four-time MLA and state minister who is now being described as BJP’s ‘rising star’. No political commentary while speculating endlessly on ‘Kaun Banega BJP adhyaksha’ had even remotely mentioned Nabin’s name.
Suddenly, Nabin’s name is announced as ‘working’ president (Is there anything like a ‘non-working’ president?). Faithful BJP karyakartas and leaders gathered to garland him outside the party headquarters in New Delhi to greet Nabin even as some workers confessed that they would have been hard put to recognise him.
And yet, the ‘election’ of Nabin did not lead to a single dissenting voice. ‘We are a disciplined party,’ claimed a party leader. Disciplined? Maybe. Democrat ic? Not quite. The ‘selection’ of Nabin as BJP working president wasn’t done through any rigorous internal party consultation but was decided almost entirely by the Modi-Shah duo, the BJP’s unchallenged ‘High Command’. The RSS leadership too acquiesced in the nomination of a leader with a staunch Sangh Parivar family background. Contrast the BJP High Command’s unilateralism with the Congress leadership dithering over whether Siddaramiah should continue as CM in Bangalore or should be replaced by a DK Shivakumar. Recall how in 2022, the Congress ‘high command’ couldn’t get Ashok Gehlot to agree to take over the party president’s post. When Gehlot refused to quit as Rajas than CM, the party leadership had little choice but to back off. Today, when a high-profile party MP like Shashi Tharoor departs from the Congress line on key issues, the party’s high command avoids any public confrontation. Disciplined? No. Democratic? Well, sort of.
Certainly, there is far greater space today to question the Gandhis in the Congress than there is to express any discontent in the BJP. It isn’t as if the Congress has transformed itself overnight into a ‘democratic’ organisation or the BJP has unexpectedly embraced Congress-style decision-making from a previous era. Truth is, the ‘High Command’ is the result of a personal ity-centric political party culture that venerates absolute power above inner party democracy. A mix of fear and sycophancy drives this feudal culture where a political leader is seen as a larger-than-life ‘Supremo’ who has the last word within the party.
Out of power for more than a decade, the Congress ‘High Command’ has weakened to the point where it no longer evokes the fear factor. In sharp contrast, the BJP has grown exponentially in a milieu where its Jodi number one are feared and admired in equal measure. As long as elections are won in the name of Modi with Shah as a media-styled Chanakya, who is really concerned about whether there is any genuine concern in intra-party dialogue? When was the last time the BJP parliamentary board – once considered the apex body of the party’s decision-making – actually held a meaningful discussion on a national issue? From choosing CMs to formulating party strategy, all roads now lead to the gates of the Jodi number one. A classic example was the decision to make Bhajan Lal Sharma the Rajasthan CM in 2023 ahead of two-time CM Vasundhara Raje. Had there been a fair ‘election’ based on the views of the MLAs, there is every chance that Raje would have won. Instead, the choice of a first-time MLA as CM was made in Delhi and merely communicated as a diktat to the party legislature. Not only was Raje taken aback, but so was reportedly Sharma himself.
The story, possibly apocryphal, is that Sharma was in charge of making the food and tent arrangements for the legislature party meeting in Jaipur, only to astonishingly find his name being proposed for the top job. A similar pattern was seen in Gujarat too when another first-time MLA Bhupendra Patel was plucked out from the back benches to the front row. In a sense, the Modi-Shah ‘high command’ has only taken a leaf out of Indira Gandhi’s political playbook. It was, after all, Mrs Gandhi who perfected the art of anointing CMs in Delhi and expected regional satraps to fall in line. And yet, the BJP ‘high command’ model has one sharp difference from the Congress one: with a ruthless edge, the Modi-Shah duo have used it to effect a generational change within the BJP. Almost all the BJP CMs are in their fifties, enabling the party to justifiably claim that it has a more youthful look.
Party elders have been cast aside into Raj Bhavan sinecures or de facto Marg Darshak Mandals. By contrast, the Congress is still trapped between septuagenarian leaders who refuse to retire and ‘young’ leaders anxiously waiting for their big break. At the heart of this latest BJP ‘High Command’ power-play lies another intriguing question: “After Modi, Who?’ For Amit Shah in particular, still only 61, although he seems to have been around much longer, ensuring that important positions within the party, both at state and national level, are held by those proximate to him is a crucial element in cementing his own political future ahead of any potential succession battle. Which is why, whether it is the appointment of a new UP BJP president or now the party’s national working president, the Shah imprimatur is unmistakable. Which is also why predicting what the BJP’s ‘High Command’ does next is fraught with risk: no one, not even the RSS, is quite certain of future. Except Gujarat’s domineering Jodi number one.
The writer is a senior journalist and author.
