The appointment of Nitin Gadkari as president of BJP shows that if we were all looking for a change in the party the appointment of Gadkari does not seem to be that change. For those of us who were indeed looking for a change in BJP ideology with another RSS man at the helm of it’s affairs I really wonder how different can he be from the rest. What BJP required was to associate themselves with the middle class of India who is more secular and for whom RSS does not mean a thing. Frankly with another RSS man as president I don’t really see that happening. Also, for those who say RSS interference in internal affairs of BJP should be minimum it is again very difficult for me to visualize Gadkari doing anything which RSS does not approve of. Another related and a very important issue is the discrimination of members of the party based on their association with RSS or rather lack of it, as we saw during the Jaswant Singh episode when he was sacked but Arun Shourie who openly challenged the BJP leadership on numerous occasions, was not. Quite possibly because Jaswant Singh had nothing to do with RSS whereas Shourie has everything to do with it. And to expect an RSS man who is new to the chair to correct this wrong would be rather naive on our part.
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