Washington, March 21: A Wall Street Journal opinion piece by American academic Walter Russell Mead has called BJP "the most important foreign political party in the world" from the view of "American national interests". Mead said that BJP is headed for a repeat victory in 2024. It is ruling India at a time when the country is emerging "as a leading economic power".

 

"For the foreseeable future, the BJP will be calling the shots in a country without whose help American efforts to balance rising Chinese power are likely to fall short," it added.

The author believes that the BJP is poorly understood because it grows out of a political and cultural history unfamiliar to most non-Indians.

According to the Wall Street Journal, the BJP's electoral dominance reflects the success of a once obscure and marginal social movement of national renewal based on a distinctively 'Hindu path' to modernisation.

"Like the Muslim Brotherhood, the BJP rejects many ideas and priorities of Western liberalism even as it embraces key features of modernity. Like the Chinese Communist Party, the BJP hopes to lead a nation with more than a billion people to become a global superpower. Like the Likud Party in Israel, the BJP combines a basically pro-market economic stance with populist rhetoric and traditionalist values, even as it channels the anger of those who've felt excluded and despised by a cosmopolitan, Western-focused cultural and political elite," it said.

American analysts, particularly those of a Left-liberal persuasion, often look at Narendra Modi's India and ask why it isn't more like Denmark. It's not entirely wrong for them to be concerned. Journalists who are critical of the ruling coalition can face harassment and worse. Religious minorities who fall afoul of the resurgent Hindu pride that marks BJP speak of mob violence and point to hostile official measures like broad anti-conversion laws and occasional mob attacks. It also said many fear the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh, or RSS, a Hindu nationalist organization closely allied with the BJP leadership.

However, Mead believes that India is a complicated place, and there are other stories as well.

It has gained significant political ground in predominantly Christian states in India's northeast in recent years. BJP officials in Uttar Pradesh, which has 200 million people, enjoy strong Shia Muslim support. RSS activists have played a significant role in fighting caste discrimination, according to the opinion piece.

 

"After an intensive series of meetings with senior BJP and RSS leaders, as well as some of their critics, I am convinced that Americans and Westerners generally need to engage much more deeply with a complex and powerful movement," Mead wrote.

 

From a fringe of mostly marginalised intellectuals and religious enthusiasts, the RSS has become perhaps the "most powerful civil-society organization in the world". Its rural and urban development programs, religious education and revival efforts and civic activism, staffed by thousands of volunteers from all walks of life, have succeeded in forming the political consciousness and focusing the energies of hundreds of millions of people, the piece said.

Recalling his meeting with Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Yogi Adityanathand RSS chief Mohan Bhagwat, Mead writes, "The movement seems to have reached a crossroads. When I met with Yogi Adityanath, a Hindu monk serving as chief minister of Uttar Pradesh, considered one of the most radical voices in the movement--and sometimes spoken of as a successor to 72-year-old Prime Minister Modi--the conversation was about bringing investment and development to his state. Similarly, Mohan Bhagwat, the spiritual leader of the RSS, spoke to me about the need to accelerate India's economic growth, and disavowed the idea that religious minorities should suffer discrimination or loss of civil rights".

It is impossible to predict how top leaders' statements to foreign journalists will affect the grassroots. In his view, the leadership of a once marginalised movement wants to establish itself as the natural establishment of a rising power and wants to engage the outside world deeply and fruitfully without losing sight of its social and political base.

As tensions with China increase, the US needs India as a political and economic partner. Thus, Americans cannot afford to reject the invitation to engage with the BJP and RSS. For business leaders and investors seeking to engage economically with India, as well as diplomats and policymakers who want to establish a stable strategic relationship with India, understanding the ideology and trajectory of the Hindu nationalist movement is crucial.

.