Many of these groups support the Bharata Janata Party (BJP – the party
for the victory of India), which was founded in 1980 as a successor to the Jan
Sangh, as the Hindu alternative to an increasingly ineffective Congress Party,
and as a way of installing Hindu values on the national government.
Hindu–Muslim tension had been exacerbated in the 1980s by several factors:
the conversion of low and outcasted people to Islam in the village of
Meenakshipuram, Tamil Nadu, in the early 1980s; response to the strident
reaction of Muslims to the killing by tribals of over 1,000 Muslim migrants
from Bangladesh into Assam; and the ruling of the Supreme Court in a case
known as the Shah Bano case. Simply put, in this case a Muslim woman
sought redress from a divorce ruling favoring her husband. The court’s
decision was perceived by some Muslims as a threat of “secular” law to the
IslamicSharı ̄‘aand conversely, because the Congress Party sought to pass
a law permitting Muslims to abide by the Sharı ̄‘a, the decision was perceived
by many Hindus as the Congress Party’s politicization of ethnicity, that is, as
a favoring of Muslims who were permitted to follow Islamic law, while Hindus
were obliged to follow secular law.
Studies indicate that, like most of these right-wing Hindu movements, the
BJP’s activities are most commonly supported by brahmans, non-brahman
upper castes, especially those who are traders and small businessmen, white-
collar workers, and those over forty-five years of age – that is, amongst those
who seek to retain a certain way of life. Students and laborers are least likely
to support the BJP, though there are those upwardly mobile lower-caste men
who see in such groups as the RSS a way to improve their circumstances.
These groups combined to engage in a whole range of activities and
processions in the 1980s and 1990s. Marches or yatraswere held in 1983 and
after, seeking “national integration.” In these processions a political-religious
agenda was obvious. Large trucks carried brass vessels filled with Gan.ga
water and a picture of “Mother India.” Water would be distributed to Hindu
temples along the route. By 1984–86 the processions were designed to
reclaim certain mosques for Hindu use, especially that at Ayodhya ̄. The
marches asked for sacrifice to liberate the “place of Ra ̄ma’s birth” (Ayodhya ̄)
and while the response in Ayodhya ̄ itself was modest, a number of Hindus
along the way were energized. In 1990 yet another yatrawas performed,
this time launched by the BJP in seeking votes. Hindu symbols were used for
political ends: the national journey (to Ayodhya ̄) was a pilgrimage; the
vehicle carrying the leader of the BJP, at the time Advani, was the “chariot
of Ra ̄ma.” Indeed, the symbol of the BJP is the lotus revered as a sacred
symbol of “new creation” throughout the subcontinent and frequently held
iconographically by a goddess. Advani exhorted the faithful to be devoted
to Ra ̄m and exercise people’s power.
Religion in Contemporary India 219