From: mazeem@reed.edu (Mohammad Azeem)
Newsgroups: soc.culture.indian
Subject: BJP View-CARNEGIE ENDOWMENT
Date: 13 Jan 93 01:24:08 GMT
Article-I.D.: reed.1993Jan13.012408.15729
Organization: Reed College, Portland OR


The following article appeared in the Monday,January 11 edition of the
Los Angeles Times, Metro section. The author,James C.Clad , is a senior
associate of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.

The article is reprinted without any personal comments.

	--- Prabhu Ambatipudi
		prabhu@jplsar.jpl.nasa.gov


		Subcontinent Ultranationalists May Rule
		------------ ----------------- --- ----

			by James C. Clad

   The pulverizing of an unused but emotionally charged old mosque in India
last month counts as one of the most spectacular failures in independent
India's 45-year history. Yet few in the West realize that the attack on the
mosque, and the horrific bloodshed that followed, make it more likely that
the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) - seen by many as the prime culprit in
the mosque's destruction - will form India's next government.
   To be sure, a lot of electoral ground lies between the Babri mosque's
destruction on Dec.6 and India's next national elections, due by 1996.
Yet the razing of the non-descript, four-centuries old mosque at Ayodhya
marks a pivotal event for all of South Asia, home to a quarter of 
mankind.
   A revolution in political identity is changing India's political
terrain. Increasingly, millions of Indians are defining themselves,
however imperfectly, as 'Hindu', a once unlikely step. Petty shopkeepers,
middle income farmers,disgruntled military men,disenchanted Brahmins and
discipline-hungry civil servants constitute just a few of the groups now
voting for, and identifying with, the BJP.
   Often described as 'ultranationalist' or 'fundamentalist', the BJP
represents an alter ego of the Indian nationalism developed by Mohandas
K. Gandhi. His Indian National Congress sought European-style rights and
institutions from the British;by contrast,the godfather movement behind
the BJP, the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS), found anti-colonial
inspiration in India's classical past, long before Muslim invaders began
pouring out of central Asia a millennium ago.
   In contemporary India, the RSS vision is now slowly coming into its
own, mostly as beneficiary from the failures of traditional politicians.
Half a century after independence, the luster has faded from the 
government apparatus  bequeathed by the British. The Congress Party,
which has nearly always governed India since independence,has also lost
its shine.
   Ruled imperiously by Indira Gandhi and by her sons Sanjay and Rajiv,
the Congress Party by the late 1970s had already become a corrupt 
gaggle of 'chamchas', a Hindi word meaning yes-men. And India's malaise
becomes doubly clear if we link the Congress Party's decline to
deteriorating governance in most states, including brazen criminalization
of politics and pervasive corruption.
   All of this has hastened the BJP's speedy rise. The party won just
two seats in the 1984 polls. By last year's election, it had become the
second most numerous grouping in India's 525-seat Parliament. Due to this
momentum, and also because the party's message seems to polarize as  much
as to unite, the prospect of a BJP national government prompts strong
feelings.
   Domestic and foreign critics paint apocalyptic pictures of future BJP
rule. They recall the religious massacres claiming more than a million
lives during the partition of British India in 1947.
   In my view, this is far-fetched. When the BJP's predecessor party took
a place in a national coalition government during the 1970s, India's
villages had more religious peace than at any time since. The BJP also wins
wide support with its claim that India's laws treat majority Hindus as
second-class citizens, while bending over backward for Muslims (and 
Christians). One example: When the Indian Supreme Court ruled in the mid-
1980's that Muslim women were entitled to rights under the civil law of
inheritance, the Congress Party government promptly overturned the
ruling by statute, reverting the situation to Muslim customary law.
   On the other hand, the BJP's catchment area pulls in some distinctly
unpleasant characters. The Bajrang Dal, for example, a BJP-affiliated
group, well merits the term 'fanatic'. The more numerous Vishwa Hindu
Parishad,  a missionary body keen on reconverting errant Hindus, has
a leader who mutters darkly about 'Christian conspiracies' when asked
about foreign church groups helping hill tribes in India's northeast.
   Yet, for all this, I remain convinced that the core of the BJP 
leadership remains moderate and tolerant, in the same way India does
itself. But whether or not I am correct in this view, we in the West
must come to understand that the BJP represents a broad social
movement, one that can welcome the Babri mosque's removal as a 
necessary correction to India's political equilibrium. Like it or not,
the BJP is a coming power in India, and we must be prepared to deal
with it.

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