India’s defeated Hindu nationalist party faces survival test
Riven by squabbling, India’s Hindu-nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) will be forced to name a new leader in a crisis that could reshape the main opposition party, strengthening the left and hindering government efforts at financial reforms.
An election defeat in May touched off a leadership struggle and a debate over whether its Hindu-revivalist agenda, once its passport to power, was now irrelevant for younger voters. Moves are underway to replace 81-year-old leader L.K. Advani with someone from a younger generation, but the BJP is struggling to find a candidate who balances its pro-Hindu ideology (“Hindutva”) with its history of pro-market reforms.
Narendra Modi, the firebrand chief minister of western Gujarat state whose pro-market image saw leading Indian industrialists float his name as a potential future prime minister, appears to be sidelined. That signals the party is worried about losing the middle ground by boosting Modi, accused of turning a blind eye to religious riots in Gujarat in 2002 in which hundreds of people, mainly Muslims, were killed by mobs.
“For the BJP it is not only about leadership but also about what kind of politics the party would want to pursue — one that hinges on the Hindu identity or a liberal, responsible opposition,” said political analyst Amulya Ganguli.
Read the whole analysis here. For more on religion and politics in India, see Holding back the “religion card” in India’s election campaign.
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from India Insight:
Lalu Prasad’s roller: courting the Muslim vote in Bihar
Muslims are seen as a crucial vote bank in several possible swing states in India's general election and many politicians are making the right noises to court the community.
In the state of Bihar, which I recently visited, its chief minister Nitish Kumar told me his campaign focused on caste-blind development but also communal harmony:
"Now everybody is happy. There is complete communal harmony," he said as we sat at night on the veranda at his residence.
If what he says is true, then communal harmony could be a vote winner for Kumar, whose party still has far fewer seats in the national parliament than that of his main rival in the state, the federal Railway Minister Lalu Prasad Yadav.
Prasad was chief minister for years, backed mainly by the Yadav caste and the Muslim vote. Could that Muslim vote now be slipping away from him?
Hussain Ansari, a Muslim rickshaw driver whom I met, ironically, outside Prasad's campaign office, told me he will vote for Kumar: "The situation is changing. Lots of development is taking place."
It remains to be seen to what extent Biharis believe Kumar has changed Bihar under his tenure as they go the polls.
Muslims in Gujarat are living richer life than any other state from kashmir to kerala. BJP is not discriminatory as is evident by appointing a muslim as the chief police man running the law and order in the state.
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Resident FaithWorld Expert
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It is difficult for BJP/RSS to dilute, much less junk, its Muslim bashing Hindutva ideological plank, as the constituency that it has built up with its religio-chauvinistic platform, is a very large portion of its base and it cannot afford to relent on its aggressive anti-Muslim rhetoric. It has now become the prisoner of its own making. The Brahminical BJP faces opposition from both caste-ist as well as religious groups.