5 - Reluctant Professionalisation in the Bharatiya Janata Party

Summary

In the previous chapter, I have discussed the process of professionalisation in the INC as evinced in its evolution from a mass-bureaucratic party to an (increasingly) electoral-professional party. This has entailed a growing dependence on technological solutions and data fetishism to correct for the perceived weakness in the party's organisational strength, thereby leading to an increase in the influence of party employees vis-à-vis party bureaucrats. This chapter provides a contrasting trajectory of internal professionalisation through the case study of the BJP. Much like the INC, professionalisation in the BJP can be found in different enclaves within the party where party employees perform tasks in domains ranging from campaign management to data analytics.

Scholars have frequently paid attention to the fact that the BJP has one of the strongest and most institutionalised party machinery throughout the country (Basu 2005; Jaffrelot 1996; P. Jha 2017b). Thus, a focus on the BJP becomes analytically instructive to understand the ways in which cadre-based parties can retain their organisational strength, ideological coherence and independent identity in an era of professionalisation. At the same time, the BJP is also unlike most other political parties. It is unique insofar as its organisational structure is inextricably linked to the wider Hindu nationalist movement in India and thus cannot be understood without taking into account the ‘division of labour’ within the Sangh Parivar—the family of Hindu nationalist organisations at the helm of which is the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS). It should be noted that the relationship between the RSS and the BJP is a complicated one, and at many points in history there have been moments of disagreement and divergence between the leadership of the two organisations. Notwithstanding these occasional differences, since the mid-1980s the functioning of the BJP has carried the unofficial imprimatur of the RSS leadership. The close coordination between the two has been made possible through the imprint of the RSS that is writ large in the organisational machinery of the BJP. We can detect this imprint in four major ways.

First, since its establishment, the senior leadership of the BJP has been drawn from the ranks of dyed-in-the-wool RSS swayamsevaks and pracharaks.