Word: bjp
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...suspect that last week's blasts were the work of militant Indian Muslims angered by the government's strident Hindu nationalism?particularly by the 2002 pogrom in the western state of Gujarat in which Hindus killed 2,000 Muslims while local and national leaders from the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) looked on. The bombers "were our boys," asserts a senior officer with India's intelligence service, the Research and Analysis Wing (RAW). He characterizes them as a "little caucus, scarred by Gujarat." An American source agrees that this is a domestic matter, not part of the broader war on terror...
...TIME?stressed that although his men might accept technical or financial help from fellow militants from Pakistan or elsewhere, the terror campaign in Bombay in recent months was a domestic response by Indian Muslims to years of discrimination at the hands of the Hindu majority and the BJP under Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee. "We started peacefully, and we were attacked," said Umar. "So now we attack others. If we sit idle, then the whole world will never know how the Muslims are being harassed here." He added ominously, "I see a dark future, a violent future...
...Other observers have little doubt that the BJP and its extremist Hindu allies in Gujarat bear some responsibility for provoking last Monday's attacks. "For the carnage we are now witnessing, politicians who have built their careers on hate must, in the final analysis, be held to account," wrote the moderate Hindu newspaper. So far, however, the BJP has shown little appetite for introspection or candor on the subject of its own culpability. That's a mistake, says Mushirul Hasan, a professor of history at Delhi's Jamia Millia Islamia University. "The government should say, 'This could be the result...
...year ago the Prime Minister seemed almost crushed by the burdens of office. His health was suffering, the BJP had suffered a string of state election defeats, war with Pakistan was looming and, sensing weakness, Hindu mobs had slaughtered some 2,000 Muslims in the western state of Gujarat. "He just felt down and out," says Times of India political editor Manoj Joshi. A Hindu critic says, "Everybody was doubting how long he would be able to last and saying a change in the leadership was just around the corner." That view was reinforced when Vajpayee promoted Advani...
...less retired from public view. But after the fundamentalists reached their high-tide mark last December with the re-election of the ultra-hard-line Narendra Modi as Gujarat's Chief Minister, a chasm opened in the center of Indian politics that only Vajpayee could fill. Last month, when BJP president Venkaiah Naidu suggested that Deputy Prime Minister Advani should lead the party into a general election jointly with Vajpayee, the PM merely had to threaten to resign and Naidu backed down, apologized and offered to relinquish his own post. No one in India wants to be known...