Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP)

  Bharatiya Janata Party
  भारतीय जनता पार्टी
   NDA-National Democratic Alliance

The Bharatiya Janata Party  "Indian People's Party"; BJP) is one of the two major parties in the Indian political system, the other being the Indian National Congress. Established in 1980, it is India's second largest political party in terms of representation in parliament and in the various state assemblies.

The BJP's roots lie in the Bharatiya Jana Sangh, formed in 1951 by Syama Prasad Mookerjee. For the 1977 general elections, the Jana Sangh merged with several parties to form the Janata Party to defeat the incumbent Congress party. Following Janata's dissolution in 1980, the rank and file of the erstwhile Jana Sangh reconvened as the Bharatiya Janata Party. Although initially unsuccessful, winning only two seats in the 1984 general election, the BJP soon grew in strength on the wave of the Ram Janmabhoomi movement, and came to power in several states. Following a series of increasingly better performances at the national elections, the party was invited to form the government in 1996, albeit only for 13 days.

From 1998 to 2004, the BJP-led National Democratic Alliance (NDA), a coalition of several parties, formed the national government. Headed by Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee, it was the first non-Congress government to last a full term in office. Since its surprising defeat in the 2004 general elections, the BJP has been the principal opposition party in parliament. The party is currently directly in power in five states, including Gujarat, whose Chief Minister Narendra Modi is the NDA's prime-ministerial candidate for the upcoming 2014 general elections.

The BJP designates its official ideology and central philosophy to be "integral humanism", based upon a 1965 book by Deendayal Upadhyaya. Labelled as right-wing and "Hindu nationalist", the party advocates social conservatism, self-reliance as outlined by the Swadeshi movement, and a foreign policy centred on nationalist principles. Key issues for the BJP include the abrogation of the special constitutional status to Jammu and Kashmir (Article 370), building a Ram temple in Ayodhya and the implementation of a uniform civil code for all Indians. However, the NDA government pursued none of these controversial issues and implemented a largely-neoliberal economic policy in favour of globalisation.

Social policies and Hindutva

Main article: Hindutva

The BJP defines its ideology as based on "integral humanism" and its constitution states that the party is committed to "nationalism and national integration, democracy, Gandhian Socialism, Positive Secularism, that is 'Sarva Dharma Samabhav', and value-based politics".

The BJP expresses a commitment to Hindutva, an ideology articulated by Hindu politician Vinayak Damodar Savarkar. The party asserts that Hindutva is merely cultural nationalism, which favours Indian heritage and culture over westernisation. Thus, according to the BJP, Hindutva naturally extends to all Indians regardless of religion. Scholars and political analysts have, however, pointed out that Hindutva ideology as practised by the BJP and its affiliates has largely been an attempt to redefine India in terms of its Hindu heritage, and to recast it as a Hindu country, to the exclusion of other religions, making it a Hindu nationalist party in a general sense.However, since the formation of the National Democratic Alliance (NDA) in 1998, the BJP has slightly moderated its stance on Hindutva, due to the presence of parties with a broader set of ideologies within the coalition.

The party's Hindutva ideology has been expressed in several different instances and in many of the policies it has enacted in government. The BJP supports the construction of the Ram temple in Ayodhya at the site of the Babri Mosque. The party was at the forefront of the agitation to build a temple there during the early 1990s, and this issue was its major poll plank in the 1991 general elections. However, thedemolition of the mosque during a BJP rally in 1992 resulted in a backlash against the party that led to a decline in the prominence of the temple in the party's agenda. Hindutva was also brought to the fore in the education policy of the BJP headed NDA government, which reorganized the NCERT and tasked it with extensively revising the textbooks used in Indian schools. Various scholars have stated that this revision, especially in the case of history texts, was a covert attempt to saffronize Indian history. The NDA government also introduced "" as a subject in college curricula, despite the opposition of several leading scientists.

The BJP has long taken a position against what it calls the "pseudo-secularism" of the Congress party, instead embracing "positive secularism." Specifically, it supports the abolition of laws that preserve the cultural heritage of minority groups (such as Muslims), and the enactment of a uniform civil code across all religions. It also favours the abrogation of Article 370 from the Indian constitution, which grants a greater degree of autonomy to the state of Jammu and Kashmir in recognition of the unusual circumstances surrounding its accession to the Indian union.Atal Bihari Vajpayee laid out the BJP's interpretation of Mahatma Gandhi's doctrine of Sarva Dharma Sambhava and contrasted it with what he called European secularism. He had said that Indian secularism attempted to see all religions with equal respect, while European secularism was independent of religion, thus making the former more "positive".

Regarding migrants from Bangladesh

The BJP has a stated policy of opposing "illegal" migration into Indian territory from Bangladesh. The party states that this opposition is because such migration, mostly in the states of Assam and West Bengal, threatens the security, economy, and stability of the country. Several academics have pointed out that the BJP refers to Hindu migrants from Bangladesh as refugees, and reserves the term "illegal" for Muslim migrants. Michael Gillan writes that this is an attempt to use an emotive issue to mobilize Hindu sentiment in a region where the party has not been historically successful.

Homophobic stand on Section 377 of the Indian Penal Code

In 2013 the Supreme court of India reinstated the controversial Section 377 of the Indian Penal Code, which, among other things, criminalizes homosexuality. Despite the national outcry, the BJP issued a statement supporting the verdict, stating that homosexuality was "unnatural" and therefore could not be condoned. Several Muslim political leaders supported the BJP for its statement.