ABSTRACT
The Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) won the national elections in 1998, and again in 1999, as the largest party of the National Democratic Alliance (NDA), and this alliance governed India until 2004. The BJP is a cultural nationalist party, which propagates the Hindu nature of India, and its ideology is known as Hindutva . As such, its view of the nation is different from the territorial and secular definition of nationhood that characterizes the modern Indian nation state. 1 The BJP can also be construed as an identity political party, which seeks to establish the primacy of Hindu identity. The Hindus of India are divided along caste, regional, linguistic and to some extent religious lines as well; and a key challenge to the BJP has been to define a version of Hindu identity that appears relevant and familiar to most Hindus.
