BJP was & still is an urban party, its reach in rural areas was negligible.
Case of Rajasthan :
Bhairon Singh Shekhawat was the first mass leader of BJP in Rajasthan. His leadership saw BJP forming its first govt in Rajasthan in 1977.
Till then dominant Castes in Rajasthan were..

staunch supporters of Congress. Jats, Brahmins, Meenas, SC/STs, Muslims, almost every caste . Baniyas were supporters of BJP but were electorally inconsequential, basically financiers.
It was Rajputs who got BJP into the rural areas, took on the dominant Castes. But once BJP...

became dominant, it started its game of sidelining Rajputs & Bhairon Singh. @RSSorg was the architect of this diabolical game, they had Lalit Kishore Chaturvedi from Hadauti as a rival. Chaturvedi had no say except in Hadauti but RSS opposed Bhairon Singhji to stop him, it was...

his own resourcefulness that he thrice became the CM. He broke the Janata Dal once, once got the independents to become the CM. The game of Subalterns started in Rajasthan too, soon Brahmins were sidelined & Baniyas were inconsequential.
RSS over the years has mastered the art...

creating Caste divisions in a particular State. It uses the dominant Castes to catapult itself & then leave them. In Haryana, it did with Jats, in Maharashtra, it did with Marathas, in Jharkhand it did with tribals.
The Bhadralok narrative is similar in Bengal.