Wall Street Journal: BJP is the most significant party in the world

According to Walter Russell Mead's opinion post in the Wall Street Journal, the BJP is the most significant foreign political party in the world and may also be the least understood.

"From the perspective of US national interests, the Bharatiya Janata Party, which is in power in India, is the most significant foreign political party in the whole globe. It could also be the least understood, according to the WSJ article. With wins in 2014 and 2019, the BJP is expected to win again in 2024, according to the journal, which also said that Japan and India are becoming as key players in US policy in the Indo-Pacific.

"The BJP will remain in charge for the foreseeable future in a nation in which US attempts to counter expanding Chinese dominance are likely to fall short," it said.

According to the author Mead, the reason why most non-Indians are unaware with the BJP's political and cultural roots is because of this.

According to a Wall Street Journal article, the BJP's electoral victory underscores the triumph of a hitherto obscure and marginal social movement for national rebirth built on the efforts of decades of social philosophers and activists to define a distinctly "Hindu route" to modernisation.

"Like the Muslim Brotherhood, the BJP opposes many of the principles and ideals of Western liberalism while embracing important aspects of modernity. Similar to the Chinese Communist Party, the BJP wants to turn India, a country of more than a billion people, into a superpower. Similar to the Likud Party in Israel, the BJP "channels the rage of people who have been alienated and hated by a cosmopolitan, Western-focused cultural and political elite while maintaining a fundamentally pro-market economic posture with populist language and conventional values," it said.

While analyzing Narendra Modi's India, American observers, especially those of the left-liberal school, often question why it isn't more like Denmark. These worries aren't entirely unfounded. Critics of the governing alliance in the media may experience harassment or worse. Religious minorities that clash with India's growing Hindu pride under the BJP complain of mob violence and mention antagonistic government actions including broadly worded anti-conversion legislation as well as sporadic outbreaks of mob violence. The Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh, or RSS, a national Hindu nationalist group with deep links to the BJP leadership, is feared by many.

Mead contends that India is a complex country with a variety of tales, nevertheless.

The northeastern states of India are home to some of the BJP's most notable recent electoral victories. Shia Muslims are a significant source of support for the BJP administration in Uttar Pradesh, a state with a population of around 200 million. The opinion post claimed that RSS workers had been crucial in the battle against caste prejudice.

According to Mead, Americans and Westerners in general need to engage with a complicated and powerful organization much more intimately. "Following an extensive series of talks with top BJP and RSS officials, as well as some of its detractors," he wrote.

The RSS has evolved into what has been called "the most powerful civil-society organization in the world" from a group of primarily outcast academics and religious enthusiasts. The Wall Street Journal article also stated that the organization's programs for rural and urban development, religious education and revival work, and civic activism, all of which are staffed by thousands of volunteers from all walks of life, have been successful in raising the political consciousness and channeling the energies of hundreds of millions of people.

Mead says, "The movement appears to have reached a crossroads," recalling his encounter with Yogi Adityanath, the chief minister of Uttar Pradesh, and Mohan Bhagwat, the head of the RSS. Yogi Adityanath, a Hindu monk who is the chief minister of Uttar Pradesh and is regarded as one of the movement's most extreme voices (and who is sometimes mentioned as the 72-year-old Prime Minister Modi's successor), and I talked about attracting business and growth to his state. Similarly, Mohan Bhagwat, the spiritual head of the RSS, disagreed with the notion that religious minorities should face discrimination or lose their civil rights and talked to me about the need to hasten India's economic progress.

It is hard to foresee how these remarks made by senior authorities to a foreign journalist would filter down to the general public. But, he continues, I did get the sense that the leadership of a previously marginalized organization wants to present itself as the natural establishment of a growing power and seeks to interact extensively and productively with the outside world without losing touch with its social and political base.

Americans cannot afford to decline the opportunity to communicate with the BJP and RSS. The US needs India as a political and economic ally as tensions with China increase. According to the Wall Street Journal, for diplomats and policymakers hoping to put the strategic relationship on a solid foundation as well as for business leaders and investors seeking to engage economically with India, understanding the ideology and trajectory of the Hindu nationalist movement is crucial.