Hinduist landslide may endanger secular India

GUJARAT, India — An overwhelming state-election victory by a Hindu fundamentalist party may endanger India’s future as a secular republic, according to Indian experts. In Dec. 15 elections in the troubled state of Gujarat, members of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) increased their parliamentary margin to more than two-thirds, soundly defeating the secularist Congress Party.

BJP leaders have been locked in a battle with the state’s Muslim minority, reaching its flash point in several riots earlier this year that led to 2,000 casualties, most of them Muslims. Muslims complained that local BJP leaders did nothing to stop the violence. According to The Guardian newspaper in London, Indian human-rights groups said controversial Gujarat BJP leader Narendra Modi touted his role in inciting the riots during the campaign.

More moderate BJP officials control India’s national government, but India experts quoted by the newspaper worried that the Gujarat victories may mean national BJP leaders will take a harder line leading up to India’s 2004 general elections. “The man who presided over a pogrom of Muslims has used it as a successful electoral strategy,” said Ramachandra Guha, an Indian writer and political scientist. “This will make Muslims less secure and drive them into the arms of their own fundamentalists. Secular India is in trouble.”