Bharatiya Janata Party

The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) is one of two major political parties in India. It is the ruling political party of the Republic of India since 2014. The BJP is a right-wing party and has close ideological and organisational links to the much older Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh.

About Bharatiya Janata Party in brief

Summary Bharatiya Janata PartyThe Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) is one of two major political parties in India. It is the ruling political party of the Republic of India since 2014. The BJP is a right-wing party and has close ideological and organisational links to the much older Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh. The official ideology of the BJP is integral humanism, first formulated by Deendayal Upadhyaya in 1965. The party expresses a commitment to Hindutva, and its policy has historically reflected Hindu nationalist positions. Its key issues have included the abrogation of the special status to Jammu and Kashmir, the building of a Ram Temple in Ayodhya and the implementation of a uniform civil code. In the 2004 general election, the NDA suffered an unexpected defeat, and for the next ten years the BJP was the principal opposition party. Long time Gujarat Chief Minister Narendra Modi led it to a landslide victory in the 2014 general election. As of February 2019, the alliance governs 18 states and is the world’s largest party in terms of primary membership. It was founded in 1951 by Syama Prasad Mukherjee in response to the politics of the dominant Congress party. The Jana Sangh’s aims included the protection of India’s cultural identity, in addition to countering what it perceived to be the appeasement of Muslim people and the country of Pakistan by the Congress party and then-Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru.

The RSS loaned several of its leading pracharaks, or full-time workers, to the JanaSangh to get the new party off the ground. In May 1953, Merjee was arrested for violating orders from the state government restraining him from entering Kashmir. He died of a heart attack the following month, while still in jail. He was elected to succeed Mookerjee, however, he was forced out of power by RSS activists within the party, and went instead to build a committed grassroots organisation in the image of the RSS. The Hindu National Party (HNP) was formed in 1998 and is now the main political party in the state of Uttar Pradesh. It has been in power since 2004, and has a majority of seats in the Lok Sabha, the lower house of the Indian parliament. The NDA government, led by Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee, lasted for a full term in office; this was the first non-Congress government to do so. In 2008, the BJP-led coalition formed a government that lasted for one year, and since then it has led the government as Prime Minister as of February 2019, the Narendra Modi-led NDA coalition has led India to victory in 18 states. It also has the largest number of members of parliament in India, with more than 100,000 members in the national parliament and state assemblies, and the second-largest number in the world, after the UK’s Labour Party.