Word: bjp
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...Hindus. The mobs burned families in their houses, demolished mosques, raped wives and daughters. Community police insist they were powerless, but if history is a guide, many probably stood back approvingly. The government in New Delhi, led by Atal Behari Vajpayee and his staunchly pro-Hindu Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), didn't send in the army to cool things down for several hours. By the weekend, more than 300 people had been murdered following the Godhra ambush - most of them Muslims...
...world, now numbering 150 million. Friction with the Hindu majority is inescapable. But the long-term solution for national harmony believed in by hundreds of millions for decades - a purely secular state that respects all religions equally - is looking increasingly like some hoary fantasy. Vajpayee and his BJP claim to believe in secularism, but they came to power by banging the drum of Hindu pride - and fanning hatred of the Muslim minority - by stirring things up in Ayodhya, where a revered Hindu deity was supposedly born. The party has been in power in Delhi twice for a total of four...
...world, now numbering 150 million. Friction with the Hindu majority is inescapable. But the long-term solution for national harmony believed in by hundreds of millions for decades - a purely secular state that respects all religions equally - is looking increasingly like some hoary fantasy. Vajpayee and his BJP claim to believe in secularism, but they came to power by banging the drum of Hindu pride - and fanning hatred of the Muslim minority - by stirring things up in Ayodhya, where a revered Hindu deity was supposedly born. The party has been in power in Delhi twice for a total of four...
...equal rights for all, will evolve into a tyranny of the majority Hindus - a calamitous idea in a country where the main minority group makes up almost 15% of the population. And if that tyranny ever arises, its soldiers are already identifiable and organized in groups allied with the BJP. They bear a frightening similarity to the fundamentalist Muslims who have declared war on the West. The Hindus wield tridents and sticks and talk of protecting the Hindu nation while the latter carry assault rifles and promote an Islamic state. Both feel their holy sites have been besmirched by outsiders...
...passions aroused by the temple movement helped propel the BJP into the political mainstream. In the first election following the Ayodhya violence, its parliamentary representation jumped from 2 seats to 86. Still, Vajpayee has to govern the world's biggest democracy, a self-consciously secular nation with some 150 million Muslim citizens, and as a result has always been careful to distance himself from the more extremist elements of Hindu nationalism. Today he rules by dint of a broad coalition of regional parties whose governing accord expressly precludes him from promoting the Ayodhya issue. Unless he's seen as coming...