The RSS chief made it clear that they can ignore some ideological compromises for electoral compulsions, but he draws the line at BJP' leaders patting one another's back for their big success.

At the BJP's national council meet on Saturday, the top two of the Bharatiya Janata Party spoke in one voice, prime minister Narendra Modi heaping lavish praise on BJP president Amit Shah as the man of the match and the latter calling the party's incredible performance a victory for Bharat Mata.

But the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh, widely believed to have provided the force multiplier effect in the Lok Sabha elections with its lakhs of members and pracharaks campaigning hard for the BJP, apparently didn't think much of the prime minister and party president patting each other's backs.

RSS chief Mohan Bhagwat took a dissenting tone on Sunday, a day affter the national council meeting, when he said the BJP's victory could not be ascribed to the work of any leader or leaders.

Bhagwat didn't take any names, but was quite candid nevertheless. The Indian Express quotes him as saying, "Some people are giving credit to the party while others are giving credit to some individuals for the victory. But the organisation and the party were there earlier too, and so were the individuals. What happened then? It is the people who wanted change during the elections, who brought the party to power."

A report in The Times of India said Bhagwat attributed the BJP's win to people's yearning for change. "... Bhagwat said if the people are not happy, they would change this government too in the next general elections," the report said.

Bhagwat was apeaking at a function in Bhubaneshwar, but the message was, no doubt, for New Delhi.

At the RSS's own national executive that concluded the previous weekend, speakers had held forth on the Modi government's failure to stay true to its ideological roots in tackling issues such as FDI. As Firstpost reported, some speakers even suggested that the government was crumbling under US pressure to modify its policies.

Over several weeks now, the RSS has hotly opposed some of the Union government's moves. On GM crops, the Swadeshi Jagran Manch and the Bharatiya Kisan Mazdoor Sangh, both RSS affiliates, actually managed to stall field trials. A "foreign gene" is dangerous because once introduced, it is irreversible, they claimed. That wasn't the only area of dissent.

The RSS-Modi government contest would probably have been more vocal had it not been for impending Assembly elections. Given that the BJP needs to remain in poll mode, the RSS has offered a short-term compromise -- it has asked sister organisations such as the Vishwa Hindu Parishad (VHP), Akhil Bharatiya Vidyarthi Parishad (ABVP), Vanvasi Kalyan Parishad (VKP), Swadeshi Jagran Manch (SJM) and Bharatiya Kisan Mazdoor Sangh (BKMS) to go easy on the BJP, a party with too many electoral compulsions right now.

But that compromise apparently doesn't extend to the RSS handing credit for the BJP's electoral success to Modi or Shah. Bhagwat's comment is a quick rap on the knuckles for BJP leaders, a reminder that the RSS will wink at some compromises on policy, but forget to give due credit at your peril.