The rise of the Sangh Parivar
The demise in support for Congress gave the BJP its chance to bid for power. Formed in 1980 out of the Jana Sangh Party, part of the Janata Party coalition that had ousted Indira after the Emergency, the BJP is the political wing of the Sangh Parivar, a collection of right wing Hindu organisations that includes the RSS, the VHP (Vishva Hindu Parishad) and the youth wings of the Bajrang Dal and Durga Vahini. In elections in 1989 it was part of a shortlived coalition government that was replaced by left-leaning coalitions under prime ministers Deve Gowda and I.K. Gujral. However, the momentum gained through the 1992 destruction of the Babri Masjid continued to grow, and in 1998 the BJP found itself at the head of a coalition government.
As well as persuing a virulently neo-liberal economic agenda (after ditching its pre-election claim to promote swadeshi, Indian-made goods) the BJP oversaw a communalisation of education and encouraged intolerance towards minority communities.
India, once hailed for its doctrine of nonviolence, continued to flex its muscles in the region. As well as maintaining the largest standing army in the world, Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee in 1998 authorised five surprise nuclear underground tests at Pokhran in the Rajasthan desert, 24 years after Indira Gandhi first pushed the button. In 1999 he formed a more durable coalition government called the National Democratic Alliance (nda) with the support of regional parties including the TDP (Telugu Desam Party) and Akali Dal.
An election upset
That same year India and Pakistan engaged in a 50-day war in the Kargil Valley in Kashmir that threatened to escalate into a much broader conflict. Pakistani infiltrators were eventually pushed back, though not before more than 1,000 soldiers had been killed. Patriotic fervour, whipped up by politicians, created an ugly mood in the country. Tensions continued to increase between the neighboring countries, reaching their height in 2002 when the two nuclear powers teetered on the brink of all-out war.
However, geopolitics held little interest for the great mass of Indians who still lacked electricity and had to make do with poor sanitation and filthy water. When they were given a chance to make their voices heard in the general election of 2004, the judgment of the 380 million people who voted came as a complete shock to the political class. They decisively rejected the Bjp-led alliance in favour of a Congress-led alliance.
The shock was compounded by the fact that the Congress party’s leader was Sonia Gandhi. The thought of having a 59-year-old Italian-born woman as prime minister. Perhaps, some mused, Sonia Gandhi was consoled by the hope that the family succession might eventually pass to her son Rahul, who in the same election won a seat in his father’s old constituency of Amethi in Uttar Pradesh by more than 100,000 votes.
After the event
As it turned out, the stock market need not have been jittery about the new government. The new Prime minister, along with the new finance minister was anathema to many, and the stock market, fearing that the new government might be less business-friendly, took a tumble. Sonia Gandhi, having listened to her “inner voice”, declined the premiership and appointed instead Manmohan Singh, previously a Congress finance minister, who thus became India’s first Sikh prime minister Palaniappan Chidambaram, have maintained the neo-liberal economics of their predecessors while, admittedly, putting money into social relief programmes.
However, there have been some important changes: school books are being re-examined and re-written to remove any communal bias; a Common Minimum Programme was agreed with the Left Front - comprising the Communist Party of India (Marxist), the Communist Party of India, the Forward Bloc and the Revolutionary Socialist Party - who continue to support the government from the outside; and, perhaps most importantly, India’s relations with Pakistan are the best they have been for many years.
Ongoing peace talks started between Pakistan’s General Pervez Musharraf and Prime Minister Vajpayee in 2003. Since the accession of Congress and its allies to power these have continued apace and a great deal of progress has been made over the divisive, and central, issue of Kashmir. In early 2005 this received a boost with the adoption of “confidence building measures”, including the opening of a bus route between Srinagar and Muzaffarabad in Pakistan-Occupied-Kashmir. With both countries describing the peace process as “irreversible” there is hope that a final settlement might at last be in sight.
