Fundamentalism

The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), or Indian People's Party, was founded in 1980 after Hindu nationalists, working through the Janata Party, faired poorly in general elections against the secular Congress Party, which had ruled India since independence in 1947. The BJP drew its members from the infamous Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh, founded in 1925, a radical Hindu nationalist organization, one of whose former members had assassinated Mohandas K. Gandhi (1869–1948). The BJP worked to rally support for a vision of modern India that was grounded in the idea of Hindutva or Hindu-ness, an idea first propounded by Vinayak Damodar Savarkar (1883–1966). Hindutva portrayed India's diverse ethnic and religious factions as historical offshoots of Hinduism; and since all Indians were at base Hindus, Hindus alone were best able to express the political identity and desires of the nation. Here again, the fundamentalism at work takes the form of hyperreligious nationalism that offers citizens a cultural identity at odds with the more secular model of civic pluralism. The volatile potential of this cultural and political chauvinism manifested itself in the dispute over the Babri Masjid, which saw BJP-instigated mobs attack, in 1991, and later destroy, in 1992, a mosque at Ayodhya that Hindu nationalists claimed had been built over a temple dedicated to the god Rama. Despite the immediate political setback suffered by the BJP, the party went on to great political success, leading some to question the commonly held view that the BJP was incapable of ruling a truly democratic nation (Juergensmeyer, 1995; Hansen).