Bharatiya Janata Party

Origins

The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) was founded on 6 April 1980 by former members of the Janata Party who had earlier belonged to the Bharatiya Jana Sangh, a Hindu-nationalist party founded in 1951 by Syama Prasad Mookerjee. The Jana Sangh had merged into the Janata Party coalition that defeated the Congress party in the 1977 general election, held in the aftermath of the Emergency (1975–1977); when the Janata coalition splintered over the question of dual membership — whether Jana Sangh-descended members could simultaneously belong to the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS), the Hindu nationalist volunteer organization founded in 1925 — the former Jana Sangh faction, led by Atal Bihari Vajpayee, Lal Krishna Advani, and others, regrouped as the BJP. The party has retained a formal ideological and organizational relationship with the RSS since its founding, describing its guiding philosophy in terms of "integral humanism," a doctrine articulated by Jana Sangh leader Deendayal Upadhyaya, alongside Hindutva, the ideology of Hindu cultural and national identity associated with V. D. Savarkar.

The Ayodhya Movement and Rise to National Prominence

The BJP won only two Lok Sabha seats in the 1984 general election, held shortly after Indira Gandhi's assassination. Its national profile grew substantially through the 1980s and early 1990s through its involvement in the Ram Janmabhoomi movement, a campaign asserting that the Babri Masjid in Ayodhya, Uttar Pradesh, stood on the birthplace of the god Rama and should be replaced with a temple. L. K. Advani led a nationwide Rath Yatra (chariot procession) in 1990 to mobilize support for the campaign. On 6 December 1992, a large crowd of Hindu nationalist activists demolished the Babri Masjid, an event followed by widespread communal violence across India. The BJP's Lok Sabha seat count rose from 2 in 1984 to 120 in 1991 and 161 in 1996, tracking the movement's mobilizing effect.

Vajpayee Government (1996–2004)

The BJP formed its first national government in 1996 under Vajpayee, which lasted only thirteen days for want of a parliamentary majority. After a further short-lived United Front interlude, the BJP returned to power in 1998 at the head of the National Democratic Alliance (NDA) coalition, and again after the 1999 election, with Vajpayee serving as Prime Minister until 2004. This government conducted nuclear weapons tests at Pokhran in May 1998 (Pokhran-II), prompting international sanctions, and fought the Kargil War against Pakistani-backed forces later that year. It pursued economic liberalization measures continuing reforms begun by Congress governments in the early 1990s, including further privatization of state enterprises. The BJP unexpectedly lost the 2004 general election to a Congress-led coalition.

Modi as Gujarat Chief Minister

Narendra Modi, an RSS pracharak (full-time worker) who had risen through BJP organizational ranks, became chief minister of Gujarat in October 2001. In February and March 2002, following the burning of a train carriage at Godhra that killed 59 Hindu pilgrims, widespread communal violence broke out across Gujarat in which more than 1,000 people, most of them Muslim, were killed. A Special Investigation Team appointed by the Supreme Court of India later examined Modi's conduct as chief minister during the violence and did not find sufficient evidence to prosecute him; he continued as Gujarat's chief minister until 2014, winning re-election three times on a platform that increasingly emphasized economic growth and infrastructure development, which formed the basis of his subsequent national political profile.

Return to Power under Modi

The BJP returned to national office in 2014 under Modi, winning 282 of 543 Lok Sabha seats — the first single-party majority in India since 1984 — and was re-elected in 2019 with an increased 303 seats. The Modi governments carried out several major policy changes, including demonetization of high-value currency notes in November 2016, introduction of the Goods and Services Tax (GST) in July 2017, and the abrogation of Article 370 in August 2019, which revoked the special constitutional status of Jammu and Kashmir and reorganized the state into two union territories. In February 2019, following a suicide bombing that killed Indian paramilitary personnel in Pulwama, the Indian Air Force conducted air strikes on a target in Balakot, Pakistan. In January 2024, Modi presided over the consecration of the Ram Mandir in Ayodhya, built on the site of the demolished Babri Masjid following a 2019 Supreme Court ruling awarding the disputed site to Hindu litigants. In the 2024 general election the BJP won 240 seats, short of a majority on its own, and formed a government for Modi's third term through the NDA coalition, with support from allied parties including the Telugu Desam Party and Janata Dal (United).

Policy Initiatives

Alongside GST and the abrogation of Article 370, the Modi governments have launched a series of flagship named programs: Make in India, aimed at boosting domestic manufacturing and foreign investment; Swachh Bharat Abhiyan, a sanitation campaign focused on building household toilets and ending open defecation; Digital India, promoting e-governance and broadband access; the Pradhan Mantri Jan Dhan Yojana, a financial-inclusion program opening bank accounts for previously unbanked citizens; and the Pradhan Mantri Ujjwala Yojana, which subsidized LPG cooking-gas connections for low-income households. The Unified Payments Interface (UPI), a real-time digital payments system developed by the National Payments Corporation of India and expanded rapidly during this period, has become one of the world's most widely used mobile payment systems. The Aadhaar biometric identification system, begun under the previous Congress-led government, was substantially expanded and linked to welfare delivery under BJP rule.

Organization and Leadership

The BJP is organized as a cadre-based party modeled partly on RSS structures, with a national president — J. P. Nadda has held the position since 2020 — and state units contesting assembly elections across India. Amit Shah, BJP president from 2014 to 2020 and subsequently Union Home Minister, is credited with substantially expanding the party's organizational reach into states where it had previously been weak, including in eastern and southern India. By claimed membership figures the party has been described as the world's largest political party, though such claims are difficult to independently verify.