Hindu nationalism or pragmatic party politics? A study of India's Hindu party

International Journal of Politics, Culture and Society

Volumn 12, Issue 4, 1999, Pages 573-588

  Datta, Rekha ^a  

^a MONMOUTH UNIVERSITY   (United States)

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

EID: 33645969701     PISSN: 08914486     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1023/A:1025938125870     Document Type: Review

References (37)

1. Founded in 1925, the RSS aimed at regenerating India as a Hindu state and adopted a militant nationalist agenda toward that end. After the assassination of Mahatma Gandhi by Hindu fanatics, the RSS was banned. Some of the members of this organization later helped form the Bharatiya Jana Sangh in 1951.
2. See for example, Paul Brass, Ethnicity and Nationalism: Theory and Comparison (London: Sage, 1991).
3. For a fuller analysis of the inner contradictions of the Hindu party and its advocacy, see S. Bose & Ayesha Jalal, Nationalism, Democracy, and Development: State and Politics in India (New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1997).
4. See for example, Ramesh Thakur, The Government and Politics of India, (New York: St. Martin's, 1995) Chapter 9.
5. Seymour Martin Lipset and Stein Rokkan ed. Party Systems and Voter Alignments: Cross-National Perspectives (New York: Free Press, 1967), pp. 1-64
6. Thakur, Party Systems and Voter Alignments: Cross-National Perspectives, Op. Cit. 1995; Chapter 9.
7. Malik and Singh, 1994, Chapter Two.
8. Myron Weiner, "India" in Myron Weiner and Ergun Ozbudun ed. Competitive Elections in Developing Countries (Durham, NC: Duke Univ. Press), 1987, pp. 37-76.
9. These observations are taken from citations that appear in Atul Kohli ed. India's Democracy, article by James Manor, "Parties and the Party System," pp. 68-70.
10. The three leaders were Atal Behari Vajpayee, who became prime minister of India in 1998; L. K. Advani, another leading advocate of Hindu nationalism; and Brij Lal Verma, who received the industry portfolio.
11. Malik and Singh, 1994, P. 36.
12. See Thakur, 1995, pp. 238-239.
13. For a fuller discussion of the impact of the Salt March, see Louis Fischer, Gandhi: His Life and Message for the World, (New York: Penguin, 1982), pp. 96-102.
14. Malik and Singh, 1994, Chapter 3.
15. Thakur, 1995, pp. 16-18,
16. Vernon Hewitt, The New International Politics of South Asia (Manchester, U.K.: Manchester University Press, 1997), pp. 184-85.
17. In order to ensure social justice and redress the discrimination that lower castes faced, the Constitution of India provided for provisions that would allow quotas in parliament, state governments, public sector employment and educational institutions. In 1979, a commission headed by B. P. Mandal reviewed the situation with quotas and concluded that backward castes who comprised 52% of the population held only 12.5% of government jobs and most of this were below the officer levels. The V. P. Singh government tried to implement the recommendations of the Mandal Commission which suggested an increase in the quotas for backward castes. The protests and backlash from middle and upper castes were so strong that eventually the Singh government had to resign.
18. Cited from declaration by the BJP in Malik and Singh, 1994, Chapter 3.
19. See Walter Anderson and S. D. Damle, The Brotherhood in Saffron: The RSS and Hindu Revivalism (Boulder, Colorado: Westview, 1987).
20. Thakur, 1995, pp. 240-241.
21. Robert L. Hardgrave, JR. "Fractured Verdict 1998: India's New BJP Government," March 31, 1998. Available on-line at: http://link.lanic. utexas.edu/asnic/countries/india/fracturedverdict.html
22. The analysis of the genesis of the BJP and its rise to power in this analysis is derived from Yogendra K. Malik and V. B. Singh, Hindu Nationalists in India (Boulder: Westview, 1994), Chapter One.
23. Ramesh Thakur, The Government and Politics of India (New York: St. Martin's Press, 1995), p. 237 ff.
24. See Thakur, 1995, p. 245. Saffron is the holy color of the Hindus.
25. Atal Behari Vajpayee, India at the Crossroads (New Delhi: Bharatiya Janata Party Publications, 1980), p. 4.
26. Malik and Singh, 1994, p. 129.
27. Bharatiya Janata Party- Manifesto 1998, http:www.indiagov.org/elec98/ manift/bjp/htm
28. Adams, Bharatiya Janata Party- Manifesto 1998, op.cit. pp. 151-52.
29. Reuters, August 31, 1994. See http://www..prakash.org/issues/defence/ defreu19940831-00.html
30. Reuters, August 31, 1994. Available on-line at http://www..prakash.org/ issues/defence/defreu19940831-00.html
31. Ibid.
32. John F. Burns, "Hindu Party is Candid on Nuclear Arms but Not Much Else," New York Times, March 19, 1998.
33. Jaswant Singh, "Against Nuclear Apartheid," Foreign Affairs, Vol. 77, No. 5, SepOct. 1998, p. 44.
34. Singh, Foreign Affairs, op.cit., p.47.
35. Marshall M. Bouton, India's Problem is not Politics, Foreign Affairs, Vol. 77, #3, pp. 80-93, May-June 1998.
36. See for example, E. Kolodner, "The Political Economy of the Rise and Fall (?) of Hindu Nationalism," Journal of Contemporary Asia, Vol. 25, #2, 1995.
37. See for example, a passionate and scathing criticism of the nuclear tests in Arundhati Roy, "The End of Imagination" in The Nation, September 28, 1998, pp. 11-19. Similar critiques and protest marches and petitions led by artists, scholars, and the public have swayed public opinion against the initial enthusiasm over nuclear tests.