Word: bjp
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...Many ascribe this relative amity to the fading appeal of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), the Hindu nationalist party that won general elections in 1997 and 1998. It rose to prominence largely by encouraging Hindu extremism, most strikingly when its supporters destroyed a mosque at Ayodhya in 1992, claiming it had been built over a Hindu temple. But since last year's electoral defeat by the Congress Party, the Indian right has disintegrated into factionalism, split between those who continue to revile Pakistan and those, like BJP president Lal Krishna Advani, who think hatred as a political strategy...
...strongest evidence that this was a rebellion against incumbents rather than an endorsement of the Congress Party's own policies came in the state of Karnataka, whose capital Bangalore is considered the epicenter of India's high-tech boom. There, the BJP won handsomely - the incumbent, of course, was a Congress man. Congress also lost its control of Kerala province, not to the BJP but to the Communists. Indeed, the parties of the socialist Left made their best showing in more than a decade...
...same track of opening India to the world economy. She may, of course, have been anxious to reassure India's stock market, which dropped to a four-year low on the news of her victory, but Congress is committed to a broadly similar economic program as the BJP had been. Commitment to economic liberalization may put a strain on relations with the socialist parties, suggesting that Gandhi's party may find its room for maneuver somewhat limited by the competing claims of coalition allies and international markets. And if discontent over rural poverty had brought down the BJP, it could...
...BJP, the defeat may mark the end of an era. The Hindu-nationalist party had emerged as a major player on the Indian political stage in the early '90s by stoking the sectarian passions that led to successive waves of Hindu-Muslim violence. Vajpayee, however, always represented the gentler, more mainstream and statesmanlike face of a movement rooted in ethnic demagoguery in contrast to the relentlessly secular politics of Congress. As prime minister, he proved to be a sober, popular and widely respected statesman who navigated India through some of its most difficult crises. Indeed, he managed to avoid...
...Vajpayee is 80 years old, and is unlikely to be the BJP leader in the next election if the new government sees out its full term. Many of his natural heirs lost their seats in the electoral drubbing, and some party leaders are already indicating a need to return to sectarian demagoguery as the path back to power. To be sure, being part of the governing coalition had a restraining effect on the more extremist elements in the Hindu nationalist movement over the past six years, who may now feel a greater freedom to pursue communal confrontations over issues such...