RSS seeks to distance itself from BJP's crisis

A worker of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) installs his party's symbol on the balcony of the BJP office in Lucknow in this May 15, 2009 file photo. The Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS), the ideological parent of the BJP, said on Friday it will not interfere to resolve a leadership crisis within the party.

NEW DELHI (Reuters) - The Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS), the ideological parent of India's main opposition Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), said on Friday it will not interfere to resolve a leadership crisis within the BJP.

RSS chief Mohan Bhagwat told reporters that the Hindu-nationalist BJP had to sort its own problems and that his group would not offer any suggestion unless asked.

"The BJP leaders are quite capable of handling it. The BJP has to think about its own future," Bhagwat said, when asked if the RSS was going to intervene to resolve the crisis.

Bhagwat's comments are seen as an attempt by the RSS to distance itself from the crisis within the BJP, while also trying to scotch speculation that the radical ideological parent was beginning to get a firmer grip on its political arm.

The BJP has appeared largely directionless after a massive election defeat in May, its problems further compounded after some senior party leaders began attacking each other.

The party has been debating its future -- whether its Hindu-revivalist agenda, once its passport to power, was now irrelevant for younger voters.

The crisis boiled over after senior party leader Jaswant Singh was fired for writing a book sympathetic to Mohammed Ali Jinnah, the Muslim founder of rival Pakistan.

The RSS and BJP, which rose to prominence in the early 1990s on the back of a Hindu-revivalist movement and ruled from 1998 to 2004, hold Jinnah responsible for India's partition.

The sacking of Singh, a former foreign and finance minister in the BJP government, signalled the party could be leaning to an unbending radical agenda.

Amid all the acrimony, Singh opened a can of worms when he said Lal Krishna Advani, among the BJP's senior most leaders, was aware of a decision to release three Islamist militants in exchange for hostages of the Kandahar plane hijacking in 1999.

Advani, who was then the home minister, denied in a TV interview in 2008 that he was told about the decision to release the militants.

Singh's disclosure has been backed by other party leaders, putting Advani in a tight spot. He has not yet reacted to this.

In a way, analysts say, the crisis was a struggle to establish the BJP's future identity -- whether an ageing leadership seen as out of sync with young, modern India needed to be replaced. Advani is 81.

"The issue of leadership has to be decided by the party," Bhagwat said.

"As far as our opinion is concerned 55-60 should be the average age of the top leadership for the Sangh," he said in comments that could hint at how the RSS might want the BJP top leadership to look like.

"But the party has to be decide what is right for it. We can't say anything about it."