The BJP Cadre: Between Ideological Purity and Political Pragmatism

For many of us, it would be the familiar image of a leader with folded hands, dressed in a white kurta or khadi sari, moving through crowded election rallies and promising a better future. If you think a little deeper, you may also remember the politician you voted for in the last election, whose victory changed very little in your own life.

For a long time, that’s what popped up in my mind with the mention of the word politician.

In recent years, however, another image has emerged. It is that of a corporate executive, constantly evaluating opportunities, calculating risks and negotiating the best possible deal for career advancement. The difference is that politicians are often far better negotiators than corporate employees. While most professionals spend their lives accepting terms set by employers, politicians frequently succeed in securing power, protection and influence whenever they switch sides.

Politics has always attracted ambitious individuals. Since India’s first general election in 1951-1952, the country has witnessed leaders who concluded that the path to power lay outside the party where they began their careers. Many of today’s regional giants were once products of the Congress ecosystem. Leaders such as Biju Patnaik, Mamata Banerjee, Sharad Pawar and Jagan Mohan Reddy eventually launched political ventures of their own. Their departures were driven by ambition, but they were also accompanied by narratives that resonated with voters and reflected genuine political disagreements of their time. Patnaik, for instance, left the Congress in the wake of the party split in 1969 following differences with Indira Gandhi over the presidential election. Pawar broke away in 1999, objecting to Sonia Gandhi’s foreign origins as she emerged as the Congress’ prime ministerial candidate. Banerjee, meanwhile, parted ways with the party after growing increasingly frustrated with its perceived soft approach towards the Communist Party of India (Marxist), which was then in power in West Bengal.

But recent defections in the regional parties are coming more as desperate moves to hold on to power without having the need to find an ideological alignment.

Politicians who built their careers on fierce opposition to the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) and Narendra Modi are now reversing course, often without addressing the obvious question of how the electorate views such shifts. For many of them, resistance to the BJP was not merely a political strategy but a defining feature of their public identity.

Critics of the BJP often argue that the alleged misuse of investigative agencies has forced opposition leaders into submission once they lose power. Yet this argument overlooks an important strand of Indian political history. Politicians have frequently turned arrest and incarceration into political capital, often emerging stronger in the eyes of voters. Indira Gandhi’s political revival after her crushing defeat in the 1977 general election is a case in point. Her arrest by the Janata Party government, and the manner in which it was carried out, generated public sympathy and helped her regain lost political ground.

A more plausible explanation for the current wave of political defections is the erosion of ideological conviction among parties losing ground to the BJP. The INDIA bloc, an umbrella grouping of parties that compete fiercely against one another in the states while joining hands against the BJP at the Centre, has largely reduced its political messaging to opposition to the BJP’s Hindutva politics. Yet these same parties often accuse one another of being the BJP’s “B-team” during state elections. Such contradictions create cognitive dissonance among voters and weaken the credibility of the alliance’s broader political narrative. For parties whose support is concentrated among specific social and identity groups, this lack of ideological coherence can prove particularly damaging.

By contrast, the BJP and its ideological fountainhead, the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh, have consistently projected themselves as organisations committed to the idea of Hindutva-led nationalism. Even in periods of political adversity, they have largely avoided diluting the core tenets of their ideological framework.

Whether on the Ram Mandir movement, the abrogation of Article 370 or the push for a Uniform Civil Code, the BJP has remained aligned with its longstanding ideological positions. This consistency, its supporters argue, has helped the party cultivate a sense of political clarity and purpose that many of its rivals have struggled to match.

This, in part, explains why the BJP has witnessed relatively few defections since its inception. With the notable exception of Shankersinh Vaghela, most leaders who have broken away from the party have eventually returned to its fold, finding it difficult to sustain a political alternative that can match its ideological coherence and appeal to voters.

Elections can be won by charismatic leaders, but political movements endure because of workers who remain loyal even when power slips away.

With the decline of Left politics, the BJP remains the only major national party with a deeply rooted ideological cadre supporting the ambitions of its leadership. The Congress once enjoyed a similar advantage. As the principal vehicle of India’s freedom movement, it commanded the loyalty of workers who believed they were serving an idea larger than themselves. Over time, that ideological monopoly weakened as alternative political traditions emerged and challenged the Congress’ claim to be the sole custodian of nationalism and democracy.

Our cover story in this issue examines how the BJP’s electoral dominance has opened a path towards an elusive two-thirds majority in Parliament. Such a mandate would give the party unprecedented room to pursue economic reforms, political restructuring and longstanding ideological objectives, including issues that have remained unresolved for decades.

Yet every political victory carries its own set of challenges. The BJP may be consolidating power on the strength of its ideological commitments, but the assimilation of leaders from diverse political backgrounds could generate cultural frictions and internal dissent within a cadre that has long sustained the party, including in its early years when it held just two seats in Parliament.

How the party manages this balancing act will offer important lessons in narrative and ambition management. If ideological incoherence can produce cognitive dissonance among opposition voters, the induction of ideologically distant leaders may, in turn, raise questions within the BJP’s own committed cadre base, which has remained central to the party’s rise to power. For the moment, saffron remains the colour of power.