The BJP and the Compulsions of Politics in India

The recent emergence of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) as India’s strongest political party has changed the face of Indian politics. The growth of Hindu nationalism, which the BJP largely represents, has been widely debated as a potential threat to the future of democracy in India, to Indian secularism, and to the constitutional protection of India’s minorities. The BJP has projected itself fairly successfully as a coherent and disciplined part that promises to put an end to corruption and create a new value-based’ system of politics. This timely book demonstrates that the BJP is far from being the national monolith it says it is. The party has increasingly been penetrated by the specific configurations of caste politics and factionalism that have unfolded in India’s various states. This book examines systematically, for the first time, the history of the BJP and its current strategies and dilemmas. Well-known scholars with an intimate knowledge of India’s states analyse the specific trajectory of the BJP at the regional level, the structure of its electorates, and the specific challenges it faces in major parts of India. This book also offers a condensed overview of the current position of the BJP at the national level, even as it discusses this party’s ambivalent response to the challenge of lower-caste mobilization and the globalization of India’s economy. Topical and wide-ranging as well as rigorously historical and empirical, this book will be essential reading for anyone interested in the current transformation of Indian politics.