Word: bjp
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...kidnapping), but the overwhelming cause of voter apathy has been the inability of one single party to gain enough support to enact positive programs. The main force that allied Congress and the United Front was not common ideology or common programs, but the singular desire to keep the BJP from power. An alliance founded on hatred of a common enemy is uneasy at best, and when the alliance is forged by corrupt, power-hungry politicians, it's doomed to farce and failure...
...BJP grounds its answer in "Hindutva," a Hindu cultural nationalism that reeks of exclusion and oppression of India's myriad religious minorities. Muslims constitute 11 percent of the Indian population, Christians 3 percent and Sikhs 2 percent. The BJP's ideology was indelibly inscribed onto the Indian landscape in 1992, when Hindu nationalists demolished a mosque that stood upon the mythological birthplace of a Hindu god. The act was a symbolic repudiation of the syncretistic history of Indian culture...
Moreover, the BJP presents a monolithic picture of Hinduism, when in reality Hinduism is intensely variegated across regions, castes and classes. The BJP's conception of Hinduism not only obscures the religion's tolerant beauty, but also has dire political consequences: by ignoring caste inequalities in deference to a larger Hindu-ness, "Hindutva" potentially legitimizes those inequalities, rather than attempting to mitigate them through social policies...
Perhaps the most delicious irony of the elections is that the battle against the BJP's conception of Indianness has been fought by a white-skinned Roman Catholic. Much to the surprise of pundits and the chagrin of BJP hard-liners, Sonia Gandhi's rallies have been enormously well-received. Record-breaking crowds of 250,000 gather in support of her and her family's secular legacy...
...invective of prominent nationalist leader, Bal Thackeray, against Sonia Gandhi reveals BJP unease at her appeal. "I will not allow any white-skin to rule this country," Thackeray was reported as saying in a Reuters release. "This Italian woman can never become our prime minister. Have we lost our masculinity? Did we throw out the British to invite this foreigner...