ASSIGNMENT ON POLITICAL SCIENCE

TOPIC: BJP (BHARATIYA JANATA PARTY)

Contents

1) Introduction
2) Origin and Establishment
3) Electoral success and the national democratic alliance
government
4) Return to power Dated: 08th Oct 2019
5) Ideology and political positions
- Social policies and Hindutva
Submitted by
- Economic policies
K.LALRINPUII
- Defence and counter-terrorism
CLASS XII, SECTION XX
-Foreign policy
ROLL NO. XX
6) Conclusion
BJP (BHARATIYA JANATA PARTY)

1) Introduction
Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), in English Indian People’s Party, pro-
Hindu political party of post independence India. The party has enjoyed broad
support among members of the higher castes and in northern India. It has attempted
to attract support from lower castes, particularly through the appointment of several
lower-caste members to prominent party positions. As of 2019, it is the country's
largest political party in terms of representation in the national parliament and state
assemblies and is the world's largest party in terms of primary membership. BJP is
a right-wing party, and its policy has historically reflected Hindu nationalist positions.
It has close ideological and organisational links to the Rashtriya Swayamsevak
Sangh (RSS).

The BJP's origin lies in the Bharatiya Jana Sangh, formed in 1951 by Syama
Prasad Mukherjee. After the State of Emergency in 1977, the Jana Sangh merged
with several other parties to form the Janata Party; it defeated the incumbent
Congress party in the 1977 general election. After three years in power, the Janata
party dissolved in 1980 with the members of the erstwhile Jana Sangh reconvening
to form the BJP. Although initially unsuccessful, winning only two seats in the 1984
general election, it grew in strength on the back of the Ram
Janmabhoomi movement. Following victories in several state elections and better
performances in national elections, the BJP became the largest party in the
parliament in 1996; however, it lacked a majority in the lower house of Parliament,
and its government lasted only 13 days.

After the 1998 general election, the BJP-led coalition known as the National
Democratic Alliance (NDA) under Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee formed a
government that lasted for a year. Following fresh elections, the NDA government,
again headed by Vajpayee, lasted for a full term in office; this was the first non-
Congress government to do so. In the 2004 general election, the NDA suffered an
unexpected defeat, and for the next ten years the BJP was the principal opposition
party. Long time Gujarat Chief Minister Narendra Modi led it to a landslide victory in
the 2014 general election. Since that election, Modi has led the NDA government as
Prime Minister and as of February 2019, the alliance governs 18 states.
 2) Origin And Establishment

The BJP traces its roots to the Bharatiya Jana Sangh (BJS; Indian People’s
Association), which was established in 1951 as the political wing of the pro-Hindu
group Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS; “National Volunteers Corps”) by
Shyama Prasad Mukherjee. The BJS advocated the rebuilding of India in
accordance with Hindu culture and called for the formation of a strong unified state.
The BJP's origins lie in the Bharatiya Jana Sangh, popularly known as the Jana
Sangh, founded by Syama Prasad Mukherjee in 1951 in response to the politics of
the dominant Congress party. It was founded in collaboration with the Hindu
nationalist volunteer organisation, the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS), and
was widely regarded as the political arm of the RSS.[24] The Jana Sangh's aims
included the protection of India's "Hindu" cultural identity, in addition to countering
what it perceived to be the appeasement of Muslim people and the country
of Pakistan by the Congress party and then-Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru.

In 1967 the BJS gained a substantial foothold in the Hindi-speaking regions of

northern India. Ten years later the party, led by Atal Bihari Vajpayee, joined three
other political parties to form the Janata Party and took over the reins of government.
Plagued by factionalism and internal disputes, however, the government collapsed in
July 1979. The BJP was formally established in 1980, following a split by dissidents
within the Janata coalition, whose leaders wanted to prohibit elected BJS officials
from participating in the RSS. (Critics of the RSS have consistently accused it of
political and religious extremism, particularly because one of its members had
assassinated Mahatma Gandhi.) The BJS subsequently reorganized itself as the
BJP under the leadership of Vajpayee, Lal Krishan Advani, and Murali Manohar
Joshi.

The BJP advocated hindutva (“Hindu-ness”), an ideology that sought to define Indian
culture in terms of Hindu values, and it was highly critical of the secular policies and
practices of the Indian National Congress (Congress Party). The BJP began to have
electoral success in 1989, when it capitalized on anti-Muslim feeling by calling for the
erection of a Hindu temple in an area in Ayodhya considered sacred by Hindus but at
that time occupied by the Babri Masjid (Mosque of Bābur). By 1991 the BJP had
considerably increased its political appeal, capturing 117 seats in the Lok
Sabha (lower chamber of the Indian parliament) and taking power in four states.

The demolition of the Babri Masjid in December 1992 by organizations seen

to be associated with the BJP caused a major backlash against the party. The
mosque’s destruction also led to violence throughout the country that left more than
1,000 dead. The party was regarded with skepticism and suspicion by many
committed to secularism in contemporary India. To alleviate fear among the public,
restore confidence in the party, and expand its base, the BJP’s leaders undertook a
series of rath yatras (“journeys on the carriage”), or political marches, in which the
Hindu god Rama was symbolically invoked as the symbol of cultural renaissance.

3) Electoral Success And The National Democratic

Alliance Government

In elections in 1996 the BJP emerged as the largest single party in the Lok
Sabha and was invited by India’s president to form a government. However,
its tenure in office was short-lived, as it could not muster the majority required to rule
in the 545-member lower house. In 1998 the BJP and its allies were able to form a
majority government with Vajpayee as prime minister. In May of that year, nuclear
weapons tests ordered by Vajpayee drew widespread international condemnation.
After 13 months in office, coalition partner All India Dravidian Progressive
Federation (All India Anna Dravida Munnetra Kazagham) withdrew its support, and
Vajpayee was prompted to seek a vote of confidence in the Lok Sabha, which he lost
by the margin of a single vote.

The BJP contested the 1999 parliamentary elections as the organizer of the National
Democratic Alliance (NDA), a coalition of more than 20 national and regional parties.
The alliance secured a governing majority, with the BJP winning 182 of the
coalition’s 294 seats. Vajpayee, as leader of the largest party in the alliance, was
again elected prime minister. Although Vajpayee sought to resolve the country’s
long-standing conflict with Pakistan over the Kashmir region and made India a world
leader in information technology, the coalition lost its majority in the 2004
parliamentary elections to the Congress Party’s United Progressive Alliance (UPA)
coalition, and Vajpayee resigned from office. The party’s share of seats in the Lok
Sabha was reduced from 137 to 116 in the 2009 parliamentary elections, as the UPA
coalition again prevailed.

4) Return To Power

As the 2014 Lok Sabha elections grew near, however, the BJP’s fortunes
began to rise, largely because of growing discontent with Congress Party
rule. Narendra Modi, the longtime chief minister (head of government)
of Gujarat state, was chosen to lead the BJP electoral campaign, thus making him
the party’s candidate for prime minister. The polling—held in several stages in April
and May—produced an overwhelming victory for the BJP. The party won 282 seats
outright, a clear majority in the chamber, and its NDA partners added 54 more.
Shortly after election results were announced, Modi was named head of the party
members in parliament, and he began forming a government that included not only
senior BJP officials but also several leaders from parties allied with the coalition.
Modi was sworn in as prime minister on May 26, 2014.

BJP rule included a mixture of policies relating to the economy and to

promoting hindutva. On November 8, 2016, 500- and 1,000-rupee banknotes were
demonetized with just a few hours’ notice with the intent of stopping “black money”—
cash used for illicit activities. More than 99 percent of the banknotes were returned
and replaced, indicating even “black money” had been successfully exchanged and
returned to circulation. But the policy did broaden the income tax base through
increased bank activity and stimulated the use of cashless transactions. In 2017 the
Goods and Services Tax (GST) was introduced, reforming the collection
of consumption taxes nationwide. Meanwhile, the BJP appealed to notions
of hindutva through measures such as banning the sale of cows for slaughter, a
move later overturned by the Supreme Court. The party likewise legislated name
changes for certain jurisdictions.

In late 2018 the BJP suffered large election losses. Five states held elections in
November and December, and the BJP lost in all five, including its strongholds
of Madhya Pradesh, Rajasthan, and Chhattisgarh. The loss was attributed to the
rise in the cost of living and in unemployment, and Modi’s grandiose promises
on economic growth remained unfulfilled. A security crisis over Jammu and
Kashmir in February 2019, which raised tensions with Pakistan to their highest level
in decades, won back some support for the party. As elections for the Lok Sabha
drew near, the BJP dominated media attention. The party was returned to power in a
landslide victory in the spring of 2019 and expanded its representation in the
legislative body.

5) Ideology and political positions

-Social policies and Hindutva

The official philosophy of the BJP is "Integral humanism," a philosophy first

formulated by Deendayal Upadhyaya in 1965, who described it as advocating an
"indigenous economic model that puts the human being at center stage." It is
committed to Hindutva, an ideology articulated by Indian
independence activist Vinayak Damodar Savarkar. According to the party, Hindutva
is cultural nationalism favouring Indian culture over westernisation, thus it extends to
all Indians regardless of religion. However, scholars and political analysts have
called their Hindutva ideology an attempt to redefine India and recast it as a Hindu
country to the exclusion of other religions, making it a Hindu nationalist party in a
general sense. The BJP has slightly moderated its stance after the NDA was formed
in 1998, due to the presence of parties with a broader set of ideologies.

The BJP's Hindutva ideology has been reflected in many of its government
policies. It supports the construction of the Ram temple at the site of the Babri
Mosque. This issue was its major poll plank in the 1991 general elections. However,
the demolition of the mosque during a BJP rally in 1992 resulted in a backlash
against it, leading to a decline of the temple's prominence in its agenda. The
education policy of the NDA government reorganised the National Council of
Educational Research and Training (NCERT) and tasked it with extensively revising
the textbooks used in Indian schools. Various scholars have stated that this revision,
especially in the case of history textbooks, was a covert attempt to "saffronise"
Indian history. The NDA government introduced Vedic astrology as a subject in
college curricula, despite opposition from several leading scientists. Taking a
position against what it calls the "pseudo-secularism" of the Congress party, the BJP
instead supports "positive secularism". Vajpayee laid out the BJP's interpretation
of Mahatma Gandhi's doctrine of Sarva Dharma Samabhava and contrasted it with
what he called European secularism. He had said that Indian secularism attempted
to see all religions with equal respect, while European secularism was independent
of religion, thus making the former more "positive". The BJP supports a uniform civil
code, which would apply a common set of personal laws to every citizen regardless
of their personal religion, replacing the existing laws which vary by religious
community. According to historian Yogendra Malik, this ignores the differential
procedures required to protect the cultural identity of the Muslim minority. The BJP
favours the abrogation of Article 370 of the Indian constitution, which grants a
greater degree of autonomy to the Jammu and Kashmir in recognition of the unusual
circumstances surrounding its accession to the Indian union.

The BJP opposes illegal migration into India from Bangladesh. The party
states that this migration, mostly in the states of Assam and West Bengal, threatens
the security, economy and stability of the country. Academics have pointed out that
the BJP refers to Hindu migrants from Bangladesh as refugees, and reserves the
term "illegal" for Muslim migrants. Academic Michael Gillan writes that this is an
attempt to use an emotive issue to mobilise Hindu sentiment in a region where the
party has not been historically successful.

In 2013, the Supreme Court of India reinstated the controversial Section 377
of the Indian Penal Code, which, among other things, criminalises homosexuality.
There was a popular outcry, although clerics, including Muslim religious leaders,
stated that they supported the verdict. BJP president Rajnath Singh said that the
party supported section 377, because it believed that homosexuality was unnatural,
though its stand has softened after its victory in the 2014 general elections. Senior
party members including Arun Jaitley and Harsh Vardhan openly support the rights
of gender and sexual minorities in India. Vanathi Srinivasan, a BJP leader from Tamil
Nadu, launched the first book on LGBTQIA and Genderqueer in Tamil penned
by Gopi Shankar Madurai. However, other leading party figures, such
as Subramanian Swamy, were strongly critical of the decision by the Supreme Court
to strike down Section 377 in Navtej Singh Johar v. Union of India.

-Economic policies
The BJP's economic policy has changed considerably since its founding.
There is a significant range of economic ideologies within the party. In the 1980s, like
the Jana Sangh, it reflected the thinking of the RSS and its affiliates. It
supported swadeshi (the promotion of indigenous industries and products) and
a protectionist export policy. However, it supported internal economic liberalisation,
and opposed the state-driven industrialisation favoured by the Congress.
During the 1996 elections, the BJP shifted its stance away from protectionism
and towards globalisation; its election manifesto recommended increasing foreign
investment in priority sectors, while restricting it in others. When the party was in
power in 1998, it shifted its policy even further in favour of globalisation. The tenure
of the NDA saw an unprecedented influx of foreign companies in India. This was
criticised by the left parties and the BJP's affiliates (the RSS and the Swadeshi
Jagran Manch). The communist parties said that the BJP was attempting to appease
the World Bank and the United States government through its neoliberal policies.
Similarly, the RSS stated that the BJP was not being true to its swadeshi ideology.
The two NDA governments in the period 1998–2004 introduced significant
deregulation and privatisation of government owned enterprises. It also introduced
tariff-reducing measures. These reforms built off of the initial economic liberalisation
introduced by the Congress government in the early 1990s. India's GDP growth
increased substantially during the tenure of the NDA. The 2004 campaign slogan
"India Shining" was based on the party's belief that the free market would bring
prosperity to all sectors of society.
This shift in the economic policies of the BJP was also visible in state
governments, especially in Gujarat, where the BJP held power for 16 years. Modi's
government, in power from 2002 to 2014, followed a strongly neo-liberal agenda,
presented as a drive towards development. Its policies have included extensive
privatisation of infrastructure and services, as well as a significant rollback of labour
and environmental regulations. While this was praised by the business community,
commentators criticised it as catering to the BJP's upper class constituency instead
of the poor.
Upon his election as Prime Minister in 2014, Modi has largely continued the
reformist approach of the last two NDA governments, but unlike Vajpayee, "prefers
to bill himself as a messiah of the poor, and not as an economic liberaliser". Modi
has been described as taking a more economically populist approach on healthcare
and agricultural policy.
-Defence and counter-terrorism
Compared to the Congress, the BJP takes a more aggressive and
nationalistic position on defence policy and terrorism. The Vajpayee-led NDA
government carried out nuclear weapons tests, and enacted the 2002 Prevention of
Terrorism Act, which later came under heavy criticism. It also deployed troops to
evict infiltrators from Kargil, and supported the United States' War on Terror.
Although previous Congress governments developed the capability for a
nuclear weapons test, the Vajpayee government broke with India's historical strategy
of avoiding it and authorised Pokhran-II, a series of five nuclear tests in 1998. The
tests came soon after Pakistan tested a medium-range ballistic missile. They were
seen as an attempt to display India's military prowess to the world, and a reflection of
anti-Pakistan sentiment within the BJP.
The Vajpayee government ordered the Indian armed forces to expel the
Pakistani soldiers occupying Kashmir territory, later known as the Kargil War.
Although the government was later criticised for the intelligence failures that did not
detect Pakistani presence, it was successful in ousting them from the previously
Indian-controlled territory. The Vajpayee administration also offered political support
to the US War on Terror, in the hope of better addressing India's issues with
terrorism and insurgency in Kashmir. This led to closer defence ties with the US,
including negotiations for the sale of weapons.
After the terrorist attack on the Indian Parliament in December 2001, the NDA
government passed the Prevention of Terrorism Act. The aim of the act was to
improve the government's ability to deal with terrorism. It initially failed to pass in
the Rajya Sabha; therefore, the NDA took the extraordinary step of convening a joint
session of the Parliament, where the numerical superior Lok Sabha allowed the bill
to pass. The act was subsequently used to prosecute hundreds of people accused
of terrorism. However, it was criticised by opposition parties and scholars for being
an infringement upon civil liberties, and the National Human Rights Commission of
India stated that it had been used to target Muslims. It was later repealed by the
Congress-led UPA government in 2004.

-Foreign policy
The historical stance of the BJP towards foreign policy, like the Jana Sangh,
was based on an aggressive Hindu nationalism combined with economic
protectionism. The Jana Sangh was founded with the explicit aim of reversing
the partition of India; as a result, its official position was that the existence of
Pakistan was illegitimate. This antagonism toward Pakistan remains a significant
influence on the BJP's ideology. During the Cold War, the party and its affiliates
strongly opposed India's long standing policy of non-alignment, and instead
advocated closeness to the United States.
The Vajpayee government's foreign policy in many ways represented a radical
shift from BJP orthodoxy, while maintaining some aspects of it. Its policy also
represented a significant change from the Nehruvian idealism of previous
governments, opting instead for realism. His party criticised him for adopting a much
more moderate stance with Pakistan. In 1998, he made a landmark visit to Pakistan,
and inaugurated the Delhi–Lahore Bus service. Vajpayee signed the Lahore
Declaration, which was an attempt to improve Indo-Pakistani relations that
deteriorated after the 1998 nuclear tests. However, the presence of Pakistani
soldiers and militants in the disputed Kashmir territory was discovered a few months
later, causing the 1999 Kargil War. The war ended a couple of months later, with the
expulsion of the infiltrators two months later, without any shift in the Line of
Control that marked the de facto border between the two countries. Despite the war,
Vajpayee continued to display a willingness to engage Pakistan in dialogue. This
was not well received among the BJP cadre, who criticised the government for being
"weak". This faction of the BJP asserted itself at the post-Kargil Agra summit,
preventing any significant deal from being reached.

6) Conclusion
The party aims at establishing a democratic state which guarantees to all citizens
“irrespective of caste, creed or sex, political, social and economic justice, equality
of opportunity and liberty of faith and expression.” In other words, the election
symbol of the BJP symbolises a pan-Indian outlook, representing and respecting
all sections of a united “Bharat” or India. Secondly, the lotus is a symbol of
Goddess Saraswati, the Goddess of learning and education. The BJP promotes
cultural education.

The party is pledged to build up India as a strong and prosperous nation, which is
modern, progressive and enlightened in outlook and which proudly draws
inspiration from India's ancient culture and values and thus is able to emerge as a
great world power, playing an effective role in the community of nations for the
establishment of world peace and a just international order.

Source: https://en.wikipedia.org, The Editors of Encyclopaedia Britannica,

http://www.elections.in