NAGPUR, India: A grassroots Hindu nationalist group with ties to India’s incoming government said Friday it was ready to offer advice, but would not impose its hardline agenda after its most famous alumnus, Narendra Modi, won a landslide election victory.
Sarkaryavah Suresh Joshi, general secretary of the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS), said his organization would be happy to make suggestions to the new Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) government if requested, but would not seek to run it by “remote control.”
“Any government which is run by remote control is not good for democracy,” Joshi said at the RSS’s headquarters in the city of Nagpur in the western state of Maharashtra.
Asked by AFP what role the RSS would play in the new government, Joshi replied: “No role. If they ask us we will suggest (ideas) to them.”
Modi, 63, was an active campaigner in the RSS into his 30s, and members have voiced hope that he will try and advance a “Hindutva,” or Hindu nationalist agenda in government.
The RSS has twice been banned, but several other senior members of Modi’s BJP who are expected to take up important posts in his new government are also former members of the organisation.
By securing an overall majority — the first by any party in three decades — the BJP will not have to work with coalition partners who might otherwise shackle Hindutva policies.
RSS followers played a significant grassroots role in campaigning for Modi during the election contest, even though he made issues such as the economy and development the main focus of his campaign.
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