While the BJP celebrated its 44th foundation day on Thursday, the party’s rank and file has reasons to cheer. The saffron party has grown by leaps and bounds over the past over four decades, as is reflected in the growth in the BJP’s representation in Parliament. Fact is also that at the ground level, the party has less organizational heft other than in its highly energetic election campaign blitz. In several states, it survives more by the strength of the well-organised RSS network. This ‘lying low’ might also be due to the fact that it has been in power for the past nine years at a stretch.
The BJP was a new political entity that emerged in 1980 out of the former Bharatiya Jan Sangh, the principal opposition party for most part since 1951; and both having been patronized by the RSS. In between came the Emergency and brief merger of the Jan Sangh with the Janata Party. The BJP, at its start, was led by two stalwarts, Atal Behari Vajpayee who later became prime minister and LK Advani. The RSS pulled the strings from behind. The transformation that has come about for the BJP since 2014 is that it has evolved into a the party recognisable because of an individual — Narendra Modi, the Prime Minister. Modi neither denies nor confirms this. The RSS too has reconciled to an extent to this scenario though the ideology that the BJP and the prime minister hold aloft is of the RSS itself. The RSS has itself changed over the years, tamed its own anti-Hindu stances and opted to adopt a more pro-nationalist posture. Hence the statement that it treats all those born in India, irrespective of their religious faiths, as Hindus. The ideal of Vasudhaiva Kutumbakam (the world is one family) is a guiding philosophy of Hindu religion, as is recorded in Sanskrit texts of the past. Problems arose when Hindutva was turned into a political tool to win power.
Undeniably, Hindutva formed the core of the BJP’s political philosophy, as was also reflected in the fact that the party raised its low political stature by eminently making use of the Babri Masjid-Ram Janambhoomi issue since the late 1980s to eventually outwit the Congress and seize power. The stable and mature manner in which Prime Minister Narendra Modi ran the government for two terms and kept the party under his firm control has helped the BJP cement its hold on the nation. The party’s strength is still the Hindi belt – which, with its wide parliamentary compass, decides who should rule the nation — unlike the Congress that has its roots everywhere.