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Bharatiya Janata Party

right-wing Hindu nationalist political party in India

The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP; transl. Indian People's Party) is a political party in India, and one of the two major Indian political parties alongside the Indian National Congress. Since 2014, it has been the ruling political party in India under Narendra Modi, the incumbent Indian prime minister. The BJP is aligned with right-wing politics, and its policies adhere to Hindutva, a Hindu nationalist ideology. It has close ideological and organisational links to the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS). As of March 2023, it is the country's biggest political party in terms of representation in the Parliament of India as well as state legislatures.

Quotes

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My philosophy is to use the stones hurled at me to make a bridge for myself; I believe in proving my critics wrong through my work. I keep saying, the more muck you throw at me, the brighter will the BJP lotus bloom. That is the nature of the lotus, it rises out of kīchaṛ (slush) to create exquisite beauty. - Narendra Modi
 
The strange thing about the BJP is that its voters consider it a Hindu party, its enemies denounce it as a Hindu party, but the party will call itself anything except a Hindu party.
  • Justice for all and appeasement of none.
    • BJP's credo. cited in Times of India August 15, 2018 [1]
  • To say that the BJP is communal is absolutely absurd and without any basis.
    • M. C. Chagla. Speech at BJP Plenary Session, quoted also in L.K. Advani: Presidential Address, Plenary Session (1995), and quoted from Elst, Koenraad (2001). Decolonizing the Hindu mind: Ideological development of Hindu revivalism. New Delhi: Rupa. p.554
  • After the Ayodhya demolition, the Congress government threatened to outlaw the BJP... but several socialist and casteist parties, the BJP's erstwhile allies in the struggle against the Emergency, refused to support the necessary legislative reform because they remembered all too well how small the distance is between such rhetoric of "protecting democracy against the communal forces" and the imposition of dictatorship... In several cases, moreover, elected candidates for the BJP or the Shiv Sena have been taken to court for "corrupt electoral practices", meaning the "use" of religion in their campaigns; some of them won their cases, some of them lost, but the danger inherent in openly identifying with the Hindu cause was certainly driven home. [...]
    Without exaggeration, the BJP's Ayodhya campaign was the single biggest public relations disaster in world history. [...] Even though the BJP's White Paper on Ayodhya and the Rama Temple Movement (1993) is a well-written and generally complete document, certainly the best chronology of the whole Ayodhya dispute, it leaves out a discussion of the one historical fact that justifies and lends importance to the Ayodhya movement, viz. that the demolition of the medieval Rama temple at the site was by no means an isolated event, but a necessary consequence of Islamic doctrine.
    • Elst, Koenraad. (1997) BJP vis-à-vis Hindu Resurgence
  • Today the BJP is the only major party with a fully developed and actually functioning intra-party democracy.
    • Elst, K. (2010). The saffron swastika: The notion of "Hindu fascism". (p671)
  • The strange thing about the BJP is that its voters consider it a Hindu party, its enemies denounce it as a Hindu party, but the party will call itself anything except a Hindu party.
    • Koenraad Elst, BJP vis-a-vis Hindu Resurgence. Quoted from Makarand Paranjape (2017) Imagining India: Aurobindo, Ambedkar, and After, South Asian Review, 28:1, 159-185, DOI: 10.1080/02759527.2007.11932508
  • However, contrary to what the observers all think or say, the present BJP government under Narendra Modi, while numerically strong, is ideologically extremely weak. It is not in any way Hinduizing or "saffronizing" the polity or the education system. It is continuing the Congressite-Leftist anti-Hindu policies mandated by the Constitution, or at best looking the other way but not changing the Constitution to put a definitive stop to such policies. Thus, subsidized schools can be Christian or Muslim, but not Hindu: in the latter case, either they get taken over by the state and secularized, or at best, they have to do without subsidies. Temples are nationalized and their income channeled to non-Hindu purposes, a treatment against which the law protects churches and mosques. And this is no less the case in BJP-ruled states, where the Government could have chosen not to avail of the opportunities given to it by the Constitution.
    • Elst, Koenraad. Hindu Dharma and the Culture Wars. (2019). New Delhi : Rupa. Chapter 16, RSS in western media
  • The record of BJP governance has utterly disproved the shrill allegations of “Hindu fascism”.
    • Elst K. Return of the Swastika : Hate and Hysteria versus Hindu Sanity (2007) (Ch 1)
  • The BJP seeks to link up internationally with the democratic, non-racist Right.
    • Gérard Heuzé, Où va l'Inde moderne. p. 12. Quoted in Elst, K. (2010). The saffron swastika: The notion of "Hindu fascism". p. 713.
  • The BJP is not a communal party; it cannot be, for the simple reason that Hindus have never been, and are not, a community in the accepted sense of the term. They represent an ancient civilization not known either to draw a boundary between the faithful and the faithless, the blessed and the damned, or to engage in heresy hunting and its counterpart, persecution of other faiths. Hindus are, in western terms, pagans.
  • In both India and Pakistan civilian politics have taken on a military tinge, with some political parties sponsoring paramilitary organisations whose members wear uniforms, march in formation with flags and carry sticks to menace their opponents. Or in the case of India’s Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) it looks more as though the paramilitary Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) sponsors it.
  • As far as the BJP is concerned, our belief has been the same for years. Justice to all, appeasement of none. We cannot support divisive politics. We strongly believe in President A. P. J. Abdul Kalam when he says we need 'unity of minds'. People who played the politics of appeasement have ruined the country, not us. Blame them.
  • In some states, hundreds of our workers have been killed because of their political views. Political untouchability is gaining ground by the day. In some places, just the name of BJP is enough to create an atmosphere of untouchability.... Why are our workers killed or attacked in Kashmir, Kerala or Bengal? It is shameful and anti-democratic... But today, in the political canvas of the nation, if there is one party that lives and breathes democracy, it is the BJP.
    • Narendra Modi quoted in BJP Lives And Breathes Democracy Despite Facing Political Untouchability And Violence’: PM Modi In Varanasi [2] NDTV
  • My philosophy is to use the stones hurled at me to make a bridge for myself; I believe in proving my critics wrong through my work. I keep saying, the more muck you throw at me, the brighter will the BJP lotus bloom. That is the nature of the lotus, it rises out of keechhad (slush) to create exquisite beauty.
    • Narendra Modi in interview 2013, quoted from Kishwar, Madhu (2014). Modi, Muslims and media: Voices from Narendra Modi's Gujarat. p.164
  • The difference between Congress and BJP cannot be more apparent... We stand with Kashmiri Pandits, they stand with those who want two Constitutions and two PMs in the country. We stand to protect and preserve national integrity, they stand to protect those who are guilty of sedition. We stand to ensure quality health to women and children, while it is proven that they loot the money meant for women and children. We stand for democracy, they stand for dynasty, we stand for India First, they stand for Family First.
  • In 2008, Hindutva leader B.L. Sharma 'Prem' held a secret meeting with key members of a terrorist group responsible for a nationwide bombing campaign targeting Muslims. [...] Like's Europe's mainstream right-wing parties, the BJP has condemned the terrorism of the right — but not the thought system which drives it. Its refusal to engage in serious introspection, or even to unequivocally condemn Hindutva violence, has been nothing short of disgraceful. Liberal parties, including the Congress, have been equally evasive in their critique of both Hindutva and Islamist terrorism. Besieged as India is by multiple fundamentalisms, in the throes of a social crisis that runs far deeper than in Europe, with institutions far weaker, it must reflect carefully on Mr. Brevik's story — or run real risks to its survival.
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