Amit Shah isn't retiring any sooner but he can't have RSS pick Nadda's successor

The Print

a day ago

So, why was he sharing his retirement plan with women farmers in Ahmedabad? If you hear his entire speech, he is looking to be in power for another decade, at least. He told them that the Ministry of Cooperation was putting in place the infrastructure that would ensure, in '8 to 10 years,' that the wheat grown through natural farming would be exported and the profit would come into their bank accounts directly.
Shah is not known to share personal things in public, except on rare occasions—like when he posted his picture playing chess with his granddaughters. During an interaction a few years ago, I asked him what kind of music he liked. I was told by someone who knew him well that he liked music. ' Aap jaan kar kya karoge (why should you know it)?' Shah dismissed the question. He was the Bharatiya Janata Party president then.
Union Home Minister Amit Shah's retirement plan evoked much curiosity last week. Addressing women farmers in Ahmedabad, he had said, 'I have decided that whenever I retire, I will spend the rest of my life for Veda, Upanishad and natural farming….'
There seemed to be nothing irregular about what he said. The only thing you could deduce from his Ahmedabad speech is that he doesn't intend to be a 'politician-till-I-live', like many in his party want Prime Minister Narendra Modi to be. Amit Shah has a retirement plan— a 75-year age ceiling or something else. That was the only plausible takeaway from his Ahmedabad speech.
It is still resonating in political circles. They are wondering why the second most powerful man in India is thinking and talking about a retirement plan at all. That, too, publicly.
Of all the people, Amit Shah knows better how every word he says will be interpreted in a million ways. Three years ago, Union Minister Nitin Gadkari had lamented the '100 per cent sattakaran (power-centric)' of politics and said, 'I think a lot about when I should quit politics. There are more things worth doing in life than politics.' He was 65 then.
Many people sat up to take note of what Gadkari said. He was virtually a loner in the party and the government. Anybody considered close to him paid a price. A joint secretary posted in Gadkari's Ministry of Road Transport and Highways– along with his wife from the Indian Police Service—was repatriated to their home cadre overnight for his perceived closeness to the minister.
Nitin Gadkari, therefore, had reasons to be philosophical. Amit Shah is not known to be philosophical—not in public, at least. I am no James Joyce. The stream of consciousness is not my thing. Only Shah would know why he chose to talk about his retirement plan.
If it has raised so much curiosity in the BJP and the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS), there is a reason for it— its timing. Was there a subtle message to the RSS?
Sangh intervention
It comes amid a stalemate over the choice of the next BJP president, ostensibly because of lack of consensus between Modi-Shah and the RSS. JP Nadda, whose extended term as the president ended in June last year, was always a rubber stamp. Shah was the de facto president and micromanaged the party. The RSS wouldn't have a Nadda-like president again who thinks that the BJP is now 'capable' enough to run its own affairs—meaning that the Sangh should mind its own business.
Neither Modi nor Shah chose to rebut Nadda, prompting the RSS to pull back in the 2024 Lok Sabha election, which resulted in the BJP's tally coming down to 240 from 303. The Sangh has rallied behind its repentant ideological protégé in Assembly elections since then, but it has learned its lessons. The RSS wants the next BJP president to be someone who has absolute clarity about loyalty.
But Shah, too, must have his loyalist as Nadda's successor. He has to maintain absolute control over the party.
Also read: India needs a full-time Home Minister. No more puppet BJP president, please
A lot at stake
ThePrint Editor-in-Chief Shekhar Gupta reminded in his National Interest column on Saturday how then RSS chief KS Sudarshan had publicly asked Atal Bihari Vajpayee and LK Advani, the two faces of the BJP then, to make way for younger leaders in 2005.
Sudarshan didn't live to see that happen. All he succeeded in was to trigger a debate in the party, which culminated in the then Gujarat Chief Minister Narendra Modi pushing Advani out of the ring eight years later, in 2013.
Think of the current scenario. There is no ambiguity about what RSS chief Mohan Bhagwat meant by his retirement-at-75 message. Unlike Vajpayee, though, Modi is in power, albeit with a diminishing aura. A BJP president of the RSS' choice would weaken Amit Shah's hold over the party, which he can't afford.
In a video interview, BJP MP Nishikant Dubey, a Shah loyalist, sought to set the record straight about the people 'liking' Uttar Pradesh CM Yogi Adityanath so much (as Modi's successor). To start with, Yogi is a CM today, and there is no vacancy in Delhi—not for 20-25 years, said the MP from Jharkhand. Besides, the people voted in 2017 (UP assembly election) for Modi, not Yogi, and 'they still vote for Modi' (not Yogi). Dubey went on to explain that when it comes to people liking Yogi, they like Assam CM Himanta Biswa Sarma and Maharashtra CM Devendra Fadnavis, too. 'And you can't even imagine' how much people like Amit Shah, who abrogated Article 370 and ended naxalism. 'Whatever the BJP is today, the credit for it goes to the then president (Shah),' said Dubey. He was only voicing the sentiments of Shah's acolytes in the BJP.
What Dubey was suggesting, though not in as many words, was that if and when the PM's post is vacant, Amit Shah is the natural choice to fill it. For that to happen, Shah has to have a firm grip over the BJP— CMs, legislators, party office-bearers, and leaders. The Minister for Cooperation has the most at stake in who becomes Nadda's successor as the BJP president. And no, Shah has no plan to go for natural farming any time soon.
DK Singh is Political Editor at ThePrint. He tweets @dksingh73. Views are personal.
(Edited by Ratan Priya)