1995-10-01a- CIA Conference Report: THE CHALLENGE OF ETHNIC CONFLICT TO NATIONAL AND INTERNATIONAL ORDER IN THE 1990S GEOGRAPHIC PERSPECTIVES 01-Oct-95

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been a difficult one, reminiscent in many ways of the heightened respectability by being admitted into the
American civil rights movement in respect to blacks. hodgepodge anti-Congress Janata coalition that swept
In some parts of India, especially Bihar, the peas- to power in 1977. The period 1990-91 witnessed a
antry-for whom the Scheduled Castes mainly work dramatic rise in the strength of the Bharatiya Janata
as landless laborers-have responded with incredible Party (BJP), successor to the Jan Sangh. This was
brutality to attempts by Scheduled Castes to better especially marked in India's conservative Hindi heart-
their lot. In other areas, most notably Maharashtra, land.
large numbers of the group have adopted a new ethnic
identity by conversion to Buddhism, employing a Some observers of the Indian political scene anticipate
social dynamic comparable to that of the Black Mus- that the BJP will be able to form the next government,
lim movement among blacks in America. Other Hari- either alone or at the head of a new anti-Congress coa-
jans have been converting to Islam. lition. The changed fortunes of the Hindu nationalists
may be attributed to a variety of factors. Among them
Hindu Nationalism are the termination of the Nehru family dynasty, the
Hindu ethnicity sank roots even before the turn of the decline in public confidence in the long-ruling and
present century. Within the Congress Party there increasingly corrupt and scandal-ridden Congress
emerged the powerful conservative voice of a Marathi Party, and the failure of any other ideologically based
Brahman, Bal Gangadhar Tilak, who perceived in the party to win the allegiance of a major segment of dis-
increasing Westernization of India's elite the seeds of enchanted Congress supporters. No less important has
the destruction of Hindu culture. He sought, some- been the BJP's ability to project the sense that it stands
times violently, to oppose the British presence. No for the true India. It appeals mainly to the landed,
less conservative in some respects, but far more toler- albeit nonelite, segments of the rural population and to
ant of non-Hindu perspectives, was Mohandas Gan- the lower middle class of the urban population. Nei-
dhi. Gandhi's commitment to nonviolence and his ther of these groups has previously enjoyed a large
fruitful collaboration with the liberal and secular- share of political power over any sustained period.
minded Jawaharlal Nehru lessened the following for Implicit in the appeal of the BJP is a certain rejection
Tilak's brand of Hindu nationalism for decades but of Western influences, along with a generous dose of
could hardly extinguish its appeal. Even before Tilak's anti-Islamic sentiment vis-a-vis both Pakistan's and
death in 1920, Hindu nationalism was institutionalized India's own Muslim population.
in various guises, beginning with the Hindu Mahas-
abha, founded in 1907 in part as a reaction to the cre- The BJP's cynical exploitation of popular Hindu emo-
ation of the Muslim League. Although never posing a tional sentiment in regard to the controversial destruc-
serious challenge to Congress, the Mahasabha was tion of a 16th-century mosque allegedly built over the
particularly influential in the period before and just site of Lord Rama's birth put the BJP at the center of
after partition in fomenting anti-Muslim activities and public attention and was instrumental in bringing on
in giving credibility to Jinnah~s aforementioned two- the most serious wave of Hindu-Muslim communal
nation theory. Also noteworthy is the militant and fas- violence since the period of partition. This led to the
cistic Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (National Vol- dismissal of BJP ministries in four states in December
unteer Association), one of whose members 1992 and their replacement by President's Rule. (This
assassinated Gandhi in 1948. Founded in 1925, it is shown on figure 12.) Some commentators argue that
remains a potent force, especially in Maharashtra, the the BJP leadership is more representative of the true
region of its inception. India than was the Congress Party-as well as less
corrupt-and anticipate that, once in power, the party
Despite their high visibility and local prominence, no will act with a considerable degree of responsibility
Hindu nationalist party in the postindependence and will restore stability to the nation. I am inclined to
period even came close to gaining control over any doubt that assessment.
state legislature, not to mention Parliament, until
1990. The Bharatiya Jan Sangh, however, gained
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