New Delhi: Prior to Narendra Modi’s rise in the Bharatiya Janata Party, not many outside the state of Himachal Pradesh knew who J.P. Nadda was. His tenure as Union health minister during Modi’s first term as prime minister can hardly be called eventful.
The only prominent announcement to come out of his ministry was the Ayushman Bharat Yojana, a federal health insurance policy for the poor that his ministry oversaw. However, as the prime minister himself hogged all the limelight for the much-touted scheme, Nadda was forced out of the public glare.
In June 2019, when the demure, soft-spoken and media-shy Nadda took over the reins of the BJP as “working president” soon after the newly-anointed Union home minister Amit Shah relinquished active control as actual president – as part of the saffron party’s ‘one person, one post’ doctrine – Sangh insiders felt that the so-called regime change was barely of any significance.
Nadda isn’t considered a match for Shah at all. With Shah’s aggressive, action-packed stint of nearly six years as the precedent, most political observers feel Nadda’s current reputation as the most trusted lieutenant of the Modi-Shah duo, more than any other qualitative aspect, earned him the coveted position that at a different time and age would have befitted a host of BJP heavyweights.
A transformed BJP
On Monday, Jagat Prakash Nadda finally got rid of that odd prefix “working” and was elected unopposed as the official full-time president of the BJP. He joined the line-up of Sangh parivar’s top leaders like Atal Bihari Vajpayee, L.K. Advani, Murli Manohar Joshi, Kushabhau Thakre and others.
Yet Nadda is likely to remain in the shadows of the Modi-Shah duo in the days to come. As working president, he addressed BJP workers across the country quite frequently, inaugurated multiple events, worked behind the scenes to expand and organise the party, and braved electoral reverses in Jharkhand, Maharashtra and Haryana. But he still managed to evade scrutiny, with the domineering presence of Shah around.
In fact, the BJP’s transformation as a well-oiled, highly centralised machinery under the leadership of Modi and Shah has somewhat robbed the the position of party president of its earlier clout and grandeur.
Under the duo’s control, the saffron party has consistently chosen to reward low-profile, conformist leaders, and sideline men and women with their own individual clout or presence. For instance, Vijay Rupani was selected to lead the Gujarat government instead of the more popular and feisty Saurabh Patel. Indeed, the elevation of lesser-known state leaders like Raghubar Das, Devendra Fadnavis or Manohar Lal Khattar to the chief ministers’ positions in Jharkhand, Maharashtra and Haryana in 2014 began the pattern.
At the same time, state-level stalwarts of the party like Shivraj Singh Chouhan, Vasundhara Raje Scindia or Raman Singh no longer feature in the BJP’s list of prominent leaders, even as veteran stalwarts like Rajnath Singh or Nitin Gadkari – both former party presidents – remain contained within their respective ministries.
So much has been Modi-Shah’s dominance both in party and government, that the thin line between the two has never been this blurred.
Within this political scheme, Nadda fits the BJP’s idea of representation, however tokenistic one may argue it is, very well. The party turned the socially-inclusive appointments of Ram Nath Kovind, a Dalit, as president of India and OBC leader Venkaiah Naidu as the vice-president of the country, along with Modi’s own backward class identity, into a decisive electoral advantage.
Nadda, a Brahmin leader, as the president of BJP is the new element in the same representational matrix – an assurance to its core voter base that the party hasn’t entirely moved away from its traditional upper-caste characteristics.
Nadda’s journey through the party
In his first speech as president, Nadda spoke about how the BJP is the only party in which a commoner like him from Himachal Pradesh could rise through the ranks to the top. However, those familiar with BJP’s functioning would know that there is a qualitative difference between his appointment and that of his predecessors.
Given the current state of affairs in the party, the reserved Nadda was tactical enough to turn his disadvantage into a blessing. He has in fact risen through the ranks in the BJP because of his extraordinary consistency in remaining out of the public view.
Nadda, now 59, was born in Bihar where he studied until college. At Patna University, he associated himself with the Akhil Bharatiya Vidyarthi Parishad, the students’ wing of Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh. He gained prominence in the anti-corruption JP movement and was elected as secretary of the students’ union in the 1977 polls.
After having decided to shift his base to his home state, he went on to lead the students’ union of the Himachal Pradesh University as a law student, after having defeated the Communist Party of India (Marxist)-backed Students Federation of India (SFI) for the first time in 1984.