New Delhi: The Bharatiya Janata Party’s decision to appoint the 45-year-old Nitin Nabin as the party’s working president may have surprised many observers, but is actually the latest in a series of steps by the Narendra Modi-led leadership to further undermine the position of party president. From the likes of Atal Bihari Vajpayee and L.K. Advani earlier, and then Rajnath Singh, Nitin Gadkari, and Amit Shah more recently, the post of party president was nearly always held by topmost leaders of the saffron party, who were meant to be a guiding light for its cadre. However, ever since the BJP has entirely departed from the spirit of its own constitution by projecting Narendra Modi as an indisputable leader, above all party doctrine, both party units and state-level leaderships have become nearly immaterial. The party’s last powerful president was Amit Shah, until 2019. Since then, the Modi-Shah duo’s obsessive efforts to retain the controls of the party machinery have relegated the party president to a much inferior rank in the party hierarchy. The parliamentary board of the BJP, once a vibrant, democratic institution, has become a puppet at the hands of the all-powerful Modi-Shah combination. And so have all the state units of the party. Try looking for a single mass leader at the helm of state affairs, you will find none. Leaders who are popular in their own right, like Shivraj Singh Chouhan, Vasundhara Raje Scindia, Saurabh Patel, or even B.S. Yediyurappa have either been forced to retire, pushed into the background, or kicked upstairs into one or another unobtrusive ministry. By dwarfing senior leaders, both Modi and Shah have always ended up elevating themselves further in the party.The outgoing president J.P. Nadda will barely be known as having been anything but a figurative presence. Although the BJP’s fortunes skyrocketed during his tenure, Nadda was hardly a leader who steered the party from the front. His presence at the top of the party was inconsequential at a time when everything from election management to organisational affairs were controlled by the Modi-Shah duo. In fact, Nadda was often seen allowing Shah – technically only a union minister in the government – in public meetings and party rallies. Nadda’s tenure had ended nearly 18 months ago, but the party had been struggling to find his replacement – first, because internal factions in various states delayed unit-level elections inordinately, and second, even when the saffron party just about managed to get new leaderships in state units elected to fulfil the requirements of the electoral college that chooses the party president, differences between the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh and the Modi-led BJP over the next batch of national office bearers further delayed the decision. These organisational problems have surfaced from time to time over the last decade, largely because the iron-handed supremacy of the Modi-Shah duo has rendered a multitude of BJP leaders across India voiceless. Yet, the Modi-Shah duo remains unassailable at the moment. Even the BJP’s ideological mothership, the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh, which has had a decisive influence on the party, appears to be powerless. Leaders of the RSS have been making cryptic remarks that challenges cult-like power of the Modi-Shah duo but have remained unsuccessful in making any difference to the party’s current scheme of things.Only one winnerThe Modi-Shah combination has made the BJP taste an unprecedented level of success, but has also upturned the BJP’s traditionally democratic functioning. This is a dilemma that has become sore for a big section of the old guard in the Sangh parivar. Amidst speculation of differences between the RSS and the BJP over the choice of party president, it appears that the Modi-Shah duo has emerged a winner again. It has thrown Nitin Nabin, an MLA whose influence in even Bihar is restricted only to his constituency Bankipur, in the ring as its big political gamble. With Nitin Nabin’s appointment as the party president, both Modi and Shah have superseded all other opinions and preferences within the Sangh parivar, while also projecting the decision as a strategic move to pass on the leadership mantle to the next generation.But here’s the catch. Nitin Nabin’s elevation to the top is also an electoral gamble in Bihar, the only heartland state where the party has struggled to emerge on its own.Nitin Nabin’s social and political identity is a combination of factors that can propel the BJP as a principal alternative to the Rashtriya Janata Dal once Nitish Kumar’s political career ends. The saffron party has been attempting to escape from the strong socialist clutches of Nitish Kumar for a while now. But all its attempts – both direct and indirect – have resulted only in losses. Caste considerationsNitin Nabin belongs to the Kayastha community, an ‘upper’ caste group which is politically non-dominant as it is only 0.6% of the state’s population. By choosing a Kayastha to lead the party, the BJP has dodged the claims of representation from powerful feudal groups in Bihar like the Bhumihars, Rajputs, and even the Yadavs.The recent assembly elections saw a strong sympathy wave for Nitish Kumar among the Extremely Backward Classes, which incidentally at an estimated 36% also forms the biggest chunk of votes in the state. However, with Nitish Kumar in his last leg of the career, and the EBCs looking for a representative leader after him, the BJP has hedged its bets on a non-dominant, upper caste leader like Nitin Nabin, who may be more acceptable than any other to the EBCs and upper caste groups, its core voter base, alike. Says senior columnist Nalin Verma, “Before 1989, Patna Lok Sabha constituency switched between the Congress and the Communist Party of India. The BJP first broke the CPI-Congress stronghold by fielding Shailendra Nath Shrivastava, a Kayastha, the community that is numerically-dominant in the seat. Since Kayasthas are not a feudal community, the non-upper caste groups, too, weren’t inimical to the community.”Nitin Nabin, against such a social backdrop, may turn out to be an acceptable figurehead, both in Bihar and large parts of heartland states. In any case, for the BJP, which commands loyal support only among ‘upper’ caste groups, elevating their EBC leaders like Renu Devi or Tarakishore Prasad or even OBC leaders like Samrat Chaudhary has not proven very rewarding in the past. EBC and OBC groups have remained strongly embedded in one of the two Mandal parties – the Rashtriya Janata Dal or the Janata Dal (United).Two birds, one stoneThus, the saffron party has once again gone back to its loyal ‘upper’ caste voters. But it has also ensured that a low-profile leader like Nitin Nabin does not rub the dominant Mandal-driven social justice politics the wrong way. Nitin Nabin also carries the JP movement’s legacy, as his father Nabin Kishor Sinha and his mentor Shailendra Nath Shrivastava, as members of the Bharatiya Jana Sangh, were an integral part of the anti-corruption movement in the 1970s, and walked together with the likes of Lalu Prasad Yadav and Nitish Kumar. Now that the BJP has been professing a new Hindutva model of social and political representation, Narendra Modi and Amit Shah appear to have chosen Nitin Nabin for the party president as part of their long-term plan to rescue the BJP from the clutches of Mandal politics. For a politically-sharp state like Bihar, nothing short of elevating a Bihar-based leader to the helm of the organisation would have been convincing. Nitin Nabin’s appointment as the working president has ended months of speculation around the party president’s position. In the end, however, the new president carries no political weight of its own, making even Nadda look much more powerful than he ever was, while the Modi-Shah duo continue to do the heavy lifting.