Vinay Sahasrabuddhe is behind BJP’s love for social causes.
BJP president Nitin Gadkari is yet to announce his team of office bearers, but one appointment was announced almost simultaneously with his ascension to the post: his political advisor Vinay Sahasrabuddhe.
The party has a tradition of influential men occupying the office opposite the BJP president’s room at the party headquarters. Sahasrabuddhe is one in the line of Sudheendra Kulkarni who was attached to LK Advani and Sudhanshu Trivedi who assisted Rajnath Singh. But he is more of an insider than Sudheendra Kulkarni ever could be, and has more mileage as an RSS think tank than Sudhanshu Trivedi.
An Akhil Bharatiya Vidyarthi Parishad (ABVP) member of the 1970s, and one of the founders of Rambhau Mhalgi Prabodhini— dedicated to training political workers—he is one RSS man, who amalgamates the modern with RSS ideology.
A soft-spoken intellectual, Sahasrabuddhe is known for a spartan lifestyle and love of literature.
The choice of Sahasrabuddhe for this role is not merely coincidence, as the sangh parivar seems to be unanimous in feeling that he was required in this scenario of frequent clashes between the RSS and BJP.
Sahasrabuddhe is an expert in such crises. That the Mumbai University has awarded him a PhD for his thesis, ‘Political Parties as Victims of Populism and Electoral Compulsions: A Quest for Systemic Solutions’, explains it. As soon as he took over the as the political advisor, he has been planning drastic changes in the party functioning like making senior BJP leaders adopt social causes, an austere executive meet, and training party workers.
According to Sahasrabuddhe, his work in the Prabodhini helped him shape his PhD. “During our training programmes for various parties’ elected representatives I discovered factors which compelled political parties to behave in a particular way. This realisation made me work on the systemic solutions for achieving greater institutionalisation of political parties,” he says.
Backing Gadkari in development and public service as a means of connecting with people, Sahasrabuddhe says, “It is wrong to assume that it won’t work as a political idea.”
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