Right tilt

On January 23, 1999, an Australian missionary, Graham Staines, and his two young sons were burned to death by Hindu extremists as they slept in their car in a rural Indian village.

This incident, which shocked Indians throughout the world, was but one in a series of recent attacks on India's tiny Christian population. Allegations of forced conversions of Hindus by Christian missionaries have led many right-wing Hindu extremist groups to attack churches, missions, affiliated schools, and prayer halls. Just before the Staines' murder, a new government had taken power in India: the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), an organization long affiliated with Hindu extremism.Among the partners in the BJP's parliamentary coalition was the Rastriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) party, a traditional bastion of Hindu extremism and the party out of which the BJP originally grew. Whether or not this government's rise to power and the increase in religious extremism are linked is debatable. Since mid- 1999, perhaps spurred by outrage at the Staines murder, the anti-Christian violence has declined. The BJP and its extremist allies, however, remain in power. An unusual struggle has developed within the coalition as the BJP, led by Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee, attempts to resist the extremist pressures of the RSS and their other allies. At stake is not just secularism in India, but also issues such as foreign trade and relations with Pakistan. The interaction of the BJP and the RSS will likely have a major impact in India's future political development.

The RSS was founded in 1925 and has been outlawed three times since then. It was initially banned in 1948 after orchestrating Mahatma Gandhi's assassination. The RSS members and admirers who perpetrated the crime claimed that Gandhi was too pro-Muslim and that he encouraged the murder of Hindus. In 1994, one of the conspirators, the brother of the actual assassin, told an interviewer, "You can say that we grew in the RSS rather than in our home. It was like a family to us." The RSS today still preaches an ideology of Hindu nationalism; its web site declares, "The Hindu culture is the life-- breath of Hindustan [India]. It is therefore clear that if Hindustan is to be protected, we should first nourish the Hindu culture." The party received increased notoriety in recent months when it called upon India's Christians and Muslims to renounce their foreign influence and to form their own versions of "Indianized" Islam and Christianity. Now, for the first time, the extremist party is in power as a member of the ruling coalition.

The relationship between the RSS and the BJP is an old one. The BJP began under the political auspices of the RSS. Additionally, both parties are members of an umbrella organization known as Sangh Parivar. Some Indian observers, including the leading news magazine India Today, go so far as to call the BJP a "front organization" for the RSS. Many BJP leaders, including Prime Minister Vajpayee, are former RSS members, and some openly support the RSS. Home Minister L.K. Advani provoked a storm of controversy in October when he attended the RSS's 75th Anniversary celebration near Agra and declared, "The RSS exercises moral influence on the government and both Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee and I share a historical bonding with it. "

The BJP also has a history of religious extremism; an editorial in the Japan Times in 1999 declared that the BJP's increased political popularity in the 1990s was "achieved on the back of an anti-Muslim campaign, tapping into the backlash against appeasement of Muslims by Congress governments. " In this decade the BJP is most famous for its role in the 1992 Ayodhya incident, in which mobs of Hindus destroyed a 400-year-old Muslim mosque that was believed to have been constructed on the birthplace of an important Hindu deity. The demolition ignited violent riots all over India. Forty-nine BJP leaders were arrested for their part in the attack; then-BJP head (and now Home Minister) Advani refused to withdraw his approval for the destruction, calling the mosque an intentionally offensive monument. And a little more than two years ago, in late 1998, a BJP state government in Uttar Pradesh declared that all school children should sing two anthems, both of which were offensive to Muslims. Only after protests from the press and opposition parties did the government agree to withdraw the plan.

Recently, however, the BJP leadership has been making efforts to distance itself from its past and the religious nationalism of the RSS. BJP leaders tried hard to downplay Advani's comments regarding the RSS; BJP head Bangaru Laxman told one reporter, "The RSS is not our conscience-keeper. Neither is it our master." The BJP's top brass does, however, acknowledge their close relationship with the party; Laxman refuses to denounce the RSS, saying, "We understand each other." At the same time, the BJP has been unable or unwilling to denounce all of its rightist leanings. Following the rise in anti-- Christian violence, for instance,Vajpayee angered many secular and minority leaders by suggesting that a commission be established to study claims that missionaries forced some Hindus to convert to Christianity. Yet following Staines' death, Vajpayee underwent a one-day fast for communal peace and religious harmony.

The BJP seems unsure of its beliefs and leadership style. While educated Indians, including much of the Indian media, are quick to criticize any government moves seen as extremist or counter to India's secularism, the BJP must also worry about maintaining the support of the Hindu nationalists who voted it into power.The BJP cannot afford to completely disenfranchise its extremist allies or its supporters, but at the same time cannot act so extremely as to provoke national and international outrage. It finds itself caught in political limbo. The result is an unusual situation in which it often seems that the coalition is both the ruling government, in the form of the BJP, and also the opposition, in the form of the RSS and its branches. Some political pundits suggest something more sinister taking place; India Today wonders, "Is there a civil war within the Sangh Parivar, or is it a wonderfully contrived exercise? There are no categorical answers, but one thing is clear: the Sangh Parivar today occupies both the government and opposition space."

The dynamic between these two groups holds great significance for all Indians. The BJP has attempted to open India to foreign investment, much to the outspoken displeasure of the RSS, but it also gave the orders for India's nuclear tests in 1998 and has presided over increased military escalation along India's disputed Kashmir border. Although the BJP members leading the national government, including Vajpayee, have been more secular and centrist than many state governments led by their BJP comrades, they are under constant pressure from the RSS to revert to extremist positions. The BJP, it seems, realizes that it cannot remain in power while fully sanctioning its right-wing leanings, for it will be criticized by the Indian media, educated Indians, and the West. At the same time, the BJP leaders are stuck in the paradoxical position of not being able to fully abandon their old extremist roots, as they will then lose the support of their coalition partners. It is a search for identity, and what the BJP finds could potentially change India and its unique version of secular democracy.