This book examines how the BJP became the world’s largest political party. It goes beyond the usual narrative of the party’s Hindutva politics to explain how, under Narendra Modi, the party reshaped the Indian polity using its own brand of social engineering. According to the findings of this book, this reconstruction was cleverly powered by new caste coalitions, the claim of a new welfare state that focused on marginalised social groups and the making of a women-voter base.
Based on data from three unique indices—the Mehta–Singh Social Index, which studies the caste composition of Indian political parties; the Narad Index, which calculates communication patterns across topics and audiences; and PollNiti, which connects and tallies hundreds of political and economic datasets—The New BJP is full of startling insights into the way both the party and the country function. Previously untapped historical records, exclusive interviews with party leaders and comprehensive reportage from across India provide a fresh understanding of the BJP’s growth areas, including the Northeast and south India.
A lucid and objective study of the BJP and India today, this book will be useful to researchers, journalists, students, activists and general public alike.
Print edition not for sale in South Asia (Bangladesh, Bhutan, India, Nepal, Pakistan and Sri Lanka).
Table of Contents:
INTRODUCTION
A ‘Jai Sri Ram’ Sticker and a Family Argument: The BJP and a Personal Retracing
PART I
THE HINDI HEARTLAND: LABHARTHEE SAMMELANS, CASTE RE-ENGINEERING, HINDUTVA AND THE WELFARE WHEEL
1. The BJP as the Party of the Village: An Introduction
2. Becoming the Hindi Heartland’s Predominant Rural Party
3. The Caste Game: How the BJP Became the Most Socially Representative Party in UP (Barring Muslims)
4. The BJP’s Political Mobilisation of Welfare: ‘Labharthees’
5. The BJP’s Muslim Model: Hindutva, the Politics of Exclusion and Why the BJP Still Wins Muslim Seats
PART II
COMMUNICATION: WHAT THE BJP FOCUSES ON
AND WHERE IT SPEAKS
6. What the BJP Says: The Changing Patterns of Its Discourse
7. Modi@Digital: Why the BJP Wins on Social Media
8. How the BJP Became the World’s Largest Political Party: Organisational Restructuring and the Use of Digital Technologies
PART III
IDEOLOGY, ECONOMIC THINKING AND GOVERNANCE
9. Roots of the BJP: The Jan Sangh Story
10. When Right Is Left: The BJP’s Economic Model in New India
PART IV
THE UMBILICAL CORD
11. The BJP’s RSS Link: The Foundational Moment
12. The Growth of the RSS
13. What the RSS Says: Issues That Matter the Most to the Sangh
14. The Sangh Parivar and Education: Tribal Communities, Vanvasi Kalyan Ashram and Christian Missionaries
PART V
BEYOND THE DOMINANT NARRATIVE: THE SOUTH, THE NORTHEAST AND WOMEN
15. The BJP’s South Model: The Karnataka Formula
16. Mergers, Acquisitions and the ‘Eight Goddesses’: The BJP’s Northeast Push
17. The Making of a New Women’s Vote: Gender, Politics and Hindutva
CONCLUSION
18 ‘Party of Ram’: A Hindu Suratrana, the Idea of ‘New India’ and Its Global Message
Postscript
Notes
Appendices 1–15
The BJP: A Timeline
Index
Acknowledgements
About the Author :
Nalin Mehta is Dean, School of Modern Media, UPES; Advisor, Global University Systems; and Non-Resident Senior Fellow, Institute of South Asian Studies, National University of Singapore. He is an award-winning social scientist, journalist and author who has held senior leadership positions in major Indian media companies and in international financing institutions like the Global Fund in Geneva, Switzerland. He has taught and held research positions at universities and institutions in Australia (ANU, La Trobe University), Singapore (NUS), Switzerland (International Olympic Museum) and India (IIM Bangalore, Shiv Nadar University).
He was previously Executive Editor, The Times of India-Online, where he led a number of AI-led tech innovations to redefine digital media. He has also served as Managing Editor, India Today (English TV channel) and Consulting Editor, The Times of India. Mehta is the author of five bestselling and critically acclaimed books, including India on Television (winner of the Asian Publishing Award for Best Book on Asian Media, 2009), Behind a Billion Screens (longlisted as Business Book of the Year, Tata Literature Live, 2015), and most recently, Dreams of a Billion (co-authored, Ekamra Sports Book of the Year, 2021).
Review :
‘The transformation of the BJP from a small player in the political scene to the premier, possibly new dominant formation in India has led to much comment but not as much quality scholarship as one might have expected. Dr Mehta brings to this subject the keen energy of a journalist and observer with the patience of an archivist. His analysis has much that will excite, surprise, and provoke critical thought even as it informs and gives a sense of perspective. It is especially notable how work on the growth of the Sangh and the party in the last two decades are matched by careful examination of key moments in the early years of the Bharatiya Jan Sangh. A book that will be indispensable for the study of contemporary India.’
—Professor Mahesh Rangarajan, Vice Chancellor, Krea University
‘I’ve had the pleasure of reading drafts of all the chapters of Nalin Mehta’s manuscript on the Bharatiya Janata Party. In my opinion, it is going to be a classic, a book that will be read widely and for a long time. Its readership will include scholars, political activists and anyone whose job or interest lies in understanding contemporary India and the processes that have shaped it.’
—Professor Robin Jeffrey, Visiting Research Professor, National University of Singapore; Emeritus Professor, Australian National University, Canberra & La Trobe University, Melbourne
‘Mehta’s masterful account of the evolution and rise of the BJP deftly weaves an enormous amount of material into an expansive and authoritative account of modern India. This brilliantly revealing portrait of the inner workings of the party—its ideological bedrock, organisational structure and economic outlook—is brimming with insights about India’s cultural contradictions, political alliances and searing religious tensions. Mehta’s benchmark study deftly brings together the freshness and vigour of on-the-ground reporting with scholarly precision and vivid descriptions of India’s political, economic and social systems. An urgent investigation of Indian democracy, its electoral system and voting patterns; written with anthropological attentiveness to local idioms, gender structure, caste conflict and class relations: a major achievement.’
—Professor Assa Doron, Professor of Anthropology and South Asia, Founding Director, South Asia Centre, Australian National University, Canberra
