Summary
Violence between Muslims and Hindus in India has left hundreds dead. The largest repercussion in the country has been a crisis within India's ruling coalition and the ruling party itself. This division will help the opposition take more power and likely slow engagement with the United States.
Analysis
Fears of continued clashes over a disputed religious site in northern India eased March 5, following five days of violence between Hindus and Muslims which has resulted in the deaths of at least 600 people. Radical Hindu group Vishwa Hindu Parishad (VHP - World Hindu Council) agreed to allow India's courts to rule on the ownership of a site in the city of Ayodhya where a Muslim mosque was burned down in 1992 and where Hindu activists want to erect their own temple. However, the group also said it wanted the government to hand over a plot adjacent to the site where it could begin construction June 2.
Political disagreements over Ayodhya are forcing the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) into an identity crisis, as it is being forced to navigate between its technocrats and hard-liners. The BJP can continue to try and straddle this ever-widening divide or choose to essentially abandon one of these factions. Either way, its control over the government will suffer.
The next round of national elections is still two years away, but an increasingly ineffective BJP will lose ground to its opponents, assuming it can continue clinging on to power. This will hamstring the government's domestic and foreign policies. The BJP's need to focus more on domestic matters, as well as the return of the rival Congress Party, will likely slow India's engagement with the United States.
The VHP's compromise was the first relief to the Indian government after the tension over the use of the site erupted last week when 58 Hindu activists were killed while traveling by train from Ayodhya. The destruction of the Muslim mosque in 1992 triggered widespread Hindu-Muslim riots throughout India that left 2,000 dead. The VHP had originally planned to march to the site on March 15 and begin constructing the temple on the mosque's ruins, even if it meant a confrontation with Muslim groups and security forces there.
The VHP is one of several Hindu nationalist parties that rose to power in India during the late 1990s. The BJP is the largest of these, as it holds the post of prime minister and forms the biggest bloc in the lower house of parliament.
While the BJP certainly has its share of hard-liners, much of the party's initial popularity stemmed from its fiscal restraint and moderately free-market positions on economic policy. Electoral fatigue with the Congress party, which ruled Indian politics since the time of Ghandi until the mid-1990s, also contributed to the BJP's rise.
Many officials in the party view radical coalition members like the VHP with a mixture of annoyance and disdain, while secular allies in the coalition government are reconsidering their relationship with the BJP and are applying substantial pressure on it to decrease its support for radical Hindu causes.
The debate over Ayodhya is becoming a litmus test which secular parties in the coalition can use to judge the BJP. All of the secular parties oppose the VHP's plans to construct a temple there and three have formally announced they will quit the coalition if the group is allowed to proceed with its plans, according to the Times of India.
The crisis comes at a bad time for Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee, who just saw his party lose elections in four states last month. Domestic politics stifled much of his economic program, and India's economy is suffering along with the rest of the world. The Congress Party, Vajpayee's biggest rival, is making a comeback; it won three of the elections the BJP just lost. Even rushing the army to the western border during the ongoing crisis with Pakistan didn't spur voters to rally around the BJP.
Vajpayee is now being pushed into choosing whether to embrace the BJP's Hindu nationalist roots, which will alienate the party from a large number of voters, or to move closer to the political center and discard the party's ideological core along the way.
Moving toward the political center makes the most sense on paper, as Vajpayee may be able to steal some votes away from Congress and other parties. And India's foreign policy planners don't like spending their time defending the finer points of Hindu nationalism to the outside world. But dropping the extremist parties is next to impossible for the BJP, comparable to Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon declaring Israel to be a secular state.
Vajpayee will likely attempt to muddle through a middle ground, deferring to the courts rather than making a political decision over the status of the disputed Ayodhya site, which will alienate both sides of the BJP in the process. This division will hamstring the BJP's political capabilities, leaving room for the Congress Party to return to power.
Violence between Muslims and Hindus in India has left hundreds dead. The largest repercussion in the country has been a crisis within India's ruling coalition and the ruling party itself. This division will help the opposition take more power and likely slow engagement with the United States. Analysis
Fears of continued clashes over a disputed religious site in northern India eased March 5, following five days of violence between Hindus and Muslims which has resulted in the deaths of at least 600 people. Radical Hindu group Vishwa Hindu Parishad (VHP - World Hindu Council) agreed to allow India's courts to rule on the ownership of a site in the city of Ayodhya where a Muslim mosque was burned down in 1992 and where Hindu activists want to erect their own temple. However, the group also said it wanted the government to hand over a plot adjacent to the site where it could begin construction June 2.
Political disagreements over Ayodhya are forcing the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) into an identity crisis, as it is being forced to navigate between its technocrats and hard-liners. The BJP can continue to try and straddle this ever-widening divide or choose to essentially abandon one of these factions. Either way, its control over the government will suffer.
The next round of national elections is still two years away, but an increasingly ineffective BJP will lose ground to its opponents, assuming it can continue clinging on to power. This will hamstring the government's domestic and foreign policies. The BJP's need to focus more on domestic matters, as well as the return of the rival Congress Party, will likely slow India's engagement with the United States.
The VHP's compromise was the first relief to the Indian government after the tension over the use of the site erupted last week when 58 Hindu activists were killed while traveling by train from Ayodhya. The destruction of the Muslim mosque in 1992 triggered widespread Hindu-Muslim riots throughout India that left 2,000 dead. The VHP had originally planned to march to the site on March 15 and begin constructing the temple on the mosque's ruins, even if it meant a confrontation with Muslim groups and security forces there.
The VHP is one of several Hindu nationalist parties that rose to power in India during the late 1990s. The BJP is the largest of these, as it holds the post of prime minister and forms the biggest bloc in the lower house of parliament.
While the BJP certainly has its share of hard-liners, much of the party's initial popularity stemmed from its fiscal restraint and moderately free-market positions on economic policy. Electoral fatigue with the Congress party, which ruled Indian politics since the time of Ghandi until the mid-1990s, also contributed to the BJP's rise.
Many officials in the party view radical coalition members like the VHP with a mixture of annoyance and disdain, while secular allies in the coalition government are reconsidering their relationship with the BJP and are applying substantial pressure on it to decrease its support for radical Hindu causes.
The debate over Ayodhya is becoming a litmus test which secular parties in the coalition can use to judge the BJP. All of the secular parties oppose the VHP's plans to construct a temple there and three have formally announced they will quit the coalition if the group is allowed to proceed with its plans, according to the Times of India.
The crisis comes at a bad time for Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee, who just saw his party lose elections in four states last month. Domestic politics stifled much of his economic program, and India's economy is suffering along with the rest of the world. The Congress Party, Vajpayee's biggest rival, is making a comeback; it won three of the elections the BJP just lost. Even rushing the army to the western border during the ongoing crisis with Pakistan didn't spur voters to rally around the BJP.
Vajpayee is now being pushed into choosing whether to embrace the BJP's Hindu nationalist roots, which will alienate the party from a large number of voters, or to move closer to the political center and discard the party's ideological core along the way.
Moving toward the political center makes the most sense on paper, as Vajpayee may be able to steal some votes away from Congress and other parties. And India's foreign policy planners don't like spending their time defending the finer points of Hindu nationalism to the outside world. But dropping the extremist parties is next to impossible for the BJP, comparable to Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon declaring Israel to be a secular state.
Vajpayee will likely attempt to muddle through a middle ground, deferring to the courts rather than making a political decision over the status of the disputed Ayodhya site, which will alienate both sides of the BJP in the process. This division will hamstring the BJP's political capabilities, leaving room for the Congress Party to return to power.
