Bharatiya Janata party

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Bharatiya Janata party [Hindi,=Indian People's party] (BJP), Indian political party that espouses Hindu nationalism. The BJP draws its Hindu nationalist creed from the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS; National Self-Service Organization), a group founded in 1925 in opposition to Mohandas Gandhi and dedicated to the propagation of orthodox Hindu religious practices.

The BJP's direct political antecedent is the Bharatiya Jana Sangh, a party established in 1951 that stood in staunch opposition to what it perceived as the evils of Western cultural imperialism. Its principles were retained when the party was renamed the BJP in 1980. Opposed to the secular democracy advocated by the long-ruling Congress party (see Indian National Congress ), the BJP objected to the separate code of civil laws for India's Muslims, supported India's nuclear defense capability, and favored restrictions on foreign investment.

At first largely a northern party popular in Hindi-speaking areas among urban middle-class traders, by 1989 the BJP had won 85 seats in parliament. In the 1990s the party became part of the mainstream political life of India. It scored a major success in the 1996 general elections, winning the most parliamentary seats (161 of 545) but falling short of a majority. Shortly thereafter, the BJP formed a government, with its leader, Atal Bihari Vajpayee , as prime minister, but it fell prior to a confidence vote. The BJP again garnered the largest number of parliamentary seats in the 1998 and 1999 elections and successfully formed governments, again with Vajpayee as prime minister. In power, the BJP tended to avoid many of the Hindu nationalist issues originally central to it, and promoted economic reforms and development, including foreign investment.

Although the BJP moved to distance itself somewhat from the RSS and attract Muslim voters, party members were accused of complicity in the violence that killed perhaps as many as 2,000 in Gujarat in Feb.–Mar., 2002. The BJP lost the 2004 elections to the Congress party coalition, and suffered additional losses in the 2009 elections.

Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) In 1976, a coalition of Indian parties formed in 1976 as the Janata Morcha (People's Movement). This was in response to the authoritarian rule of Indira Gandhi in the ‘Emergency’ of 1975–7. It consisted of five different parties: Bharatiya Lok Dal, Congress (O), Congress for Democracy, Jana Sangh, and the socialists. Led by Morarji Desai, it gained a majority in the 1977 elections, thus ending the Congress party's monopoly of national power. It ended Gandhi's emergency legislation, and restored civil liberties and free speech. However, it was weakened by constant rifts between its component fractions, and lost in 1979 against the resurgent Mrs Gandhi. One of its component groups reorganized itself as the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) in 1980. In the 1990s this emerged as the principal rival to the Congress Party. Led by Vajpayee, it became the governing party in 1998. The BJP gained popular support against the secularism of Congress, on a platform of Hindu nationalism.

http://www.bjp.org

Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) Indian political party. In the ‘emergency’ of 1975–77, most of the non-communist left-of-centre and right-wing parties formed the coalition Janata Party in opposition to Indira Gandhi ruling Congress Party. The alliance collapsed in 1979, and the BJP emerged as one of the principal remnants. Broadly right-wing, the BJP is in favour of the creation of a Hindu state, Hindustan. The BJP won the 1996, 1998, and 1999 parliamentary elections.