India’s Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), desperately seeking its way back to power in the Asian giant, is reverting to its anti-minority political platform known as “Hindutva” or Hindu nationalism, according to a Nov. 30 report by Compass Direct news service.
If the platform is implemented, Christians and Muslims could face a backlash of Hindu extremism.
Compass Direct, a news service which focuses on Christians worldwide who are persecuted for their faith, reported that the BJP re-elected L.K. Advani to party leadership during a three-day national executive meeting in late November in Haridwar. Advani was once subpoenaed by a court for his involvement in the demolition of a mosque.
In a hard-hitting speech, Advani declared his party’s commitment to constructing a “Hindu India” and called the party “a chosen instrument of the divine.” Advani’s colleague and former Indian premier, Atal Bihari Vajpayee, endorsed the aggressive Hindutva platform.
Concern about the beating it took in this year’s state assembly elections in Maharashtra and elsewhere was evident throughout the BJP meeting. However, “even if we fail here or there, we will always bounce back,” Vajpayee said.
Bolstering polls
Observers say the BJP plans to encourage more anti-Christian and anti-Muslim sentiment across the nation of 1 billion people in order to bolster its electoral standing in polls and maintain a footing in India’s federal administration.
“Let every adversary of ours be warned,” Advani said. “If anybody tries to take the cover of secularism to indulge in anti-Hindu politics and statecraft, the BJP will stand in their path like a rock, prepared to make any sacrifice.”
At a recent national executive meeting in northern India, the BJP chief assured leaders of the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS), the ideological movement that spawned the BJP, that the party will return to its core Hindutva values to shape policy decisions.
By committing to the political agenda of a “Hindu India,” the BJP likely will launch aggressive campaigns against Christian and Muslim communities, which the BJP sees as supportive of their political rivals.
Christian and other minority leaders fear a new backlash along the lines of the ideological mass mobilization that preceded the destruction of Babri Masjid mosque in Ayodhya in 1992. (BP)
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