Coalition Politics and Hindu Nationalism

Front Cover
Katharine Adeney, Lawrence Saez
Routledge, Apr 11, 2007 - Political Science - 312 pages

This new collection examines the emergence of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) in India and the ways in which its Hindu nationalist agenda has been affected by the constraints of being a dominant member of a coalition government.

Religious influence in contemporary politics offers a fertile ground for political-sociological analysis, especially in societies where religion is a very important source of collective identity. In South Asian societies religion can, and often has, provided legitimacy to both governments and those who oppose them. This book examines the emergence of the BJP and the ways in which its Hindu nationalist agenda has been affected by the constraints of being a dominant member of a coalition government. The collected authors take stock of the party's first full term in power, presiding over the diverse forces of the governing NDA coalition, and the 2004 elections. They assess the BJP's performance in relation to its stated goals, and more specifically how it has fared in a range of policy fields - centre-state relations, foreign policy, defence policies, the 'second generation' of economic reforms, initiatives to curb corruption and the fate of minorities.

Explicitly linking the volume to literature on coalition politics, this book will be of great importance to students and researchers in the fields of South Asian studies and politics.

 

Contents

Introduction
3
1 The BJP coalition
13
2 The shapes of Hindu nationalism
36
3 In part a myth
55
Part II Domestic governance
75
4 The NDA and the politics of minorities in India
77
5 Hindu nationalists and federal structures in an era of regionalism
97
6 Social justice and empowerment of the weaker sections and gender rights
116
Part III External factors
171
9 The NDA and the politics of economic reform
173
10 The NDA and Indian foreign policy
193
11 The NDA and national security
212
12 The BJP and the 2004 general election
237
13 Hindutvas march halted? Choices for the BJP after the 2004 defeat
254
Bibliography
264
Index
289

7 Managing the anticorruption rhetoric
136
8 Indian education policy under the NDA government
153

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About the author (2007)

Katharine Adeney is a lecturer in politics at the University of Sheffield. Dr. Adeney is a specialist on the comparative study of federalism in India and Pakistan. She has authored work in Political Studies and the Journal of Commonwealth and Comparative Politics. She is the Chair of the Politics of South Asia specialist group of the Political Studies Association in addition to being Secretary of the British Association of South Asian Studies.

Lawrence Sáez is a Visiting Fellow at the Centre for International Studies at the London School of Economics. Dr. Sáez's areas of academic interest include the political economy of developing countries, with a focus on India and China. Sáez has published two books: Federalism Without a Centre (Sage 2001) and Banking Reform in India and China (Palgrave 2003). He used to be associate editor for South Asia at Asian Survey.