BJP and the Evolution of Hindu Nationalism

Politics and religion are intertwined. It is more so in developing countries as politics there is largely identity-centric. Recent developments in India marked by the rise of the Hindu nationalistic Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) underscores the point. The first edition of the present work was published in 1999 (reprinted 2000) when the Vajpayee-led NDA government had just taken over. At the core of our enquiry then were: to gauge the limits of religious politics in India, to make a distinction between BJP and the ‘value-based’ political parties, to understand what ‘genuine secularism’ really meant, to what extent Hindutva could be interpreted as political Hinduism, and, were the Muslims in India really pampered as the BJP claimed. These questions are no less relevant now. Still the urgency for this second edition arose when the Modi wave swept the polls in 2014 and electrified an over-confident Hindutva brigade. Now that the Modi government is almost midway through its five-year tenure the volume is timely. Without rewriting the original text a new chapter has been added to make sense of the major developments during 1999-2014. Does the Modi phenomenon mark a tectonic shift in Indian politics? Would Modi continue with his victory procession beyond the next general election of 2019?"