The biggest crisis within BJP today is internal — the centralisation of power around one leader and the gradual marginalisation of RSS influence in party decision-making.
Historically, BJP functioned as a party with distributed power — the RSS provided ideological grounding, senior leaders brought regional expertise, and the parliamentary wing maintained checks on executive authority. That balance has fundamentally shifted.
Key indicators of this shift: appointment of party presidents without RSS consultation, sidelining of senior leaders with independent political bases, and concentration of campaign strategy and candidate selection in a small inner circle.
This centralisation has short-term electoral advantages — unified messaging, rapid decision-making, disciplined cadre. But the long-term risks are significant: loss of institutional memory, reduced grassroots feedback loops, and vulnerability to single-point failure.
The RSS-BJP relationship, once the bedrock of Hindu nationalist politics, is navigating its most complex phase since the Emergency era.