BJP to stick to hardline Hindu line

Former Deputy Prime Minister of India and senior leader of the Bharatiya Janata PArty (BJP) L.K. Advani (L) walks alongside BJP President Venkaiah Naidu (R) as they arrive for a BJP National Executive meeting in Mumbai yesterday. Some 199 BJP delegates are taking part in the meeting which will discuss the removal of Gujarat Chief Minister Narendra Modi from office and the prevailing political situation after the defeat in the recent elections and efforts to regain party's premier position by taking corrective measures to overcome shortcomings. PHOTO: AFP

Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) president Venkaiah Naidu set the tone for the party's three-day wound-licking conference at a hotel here by telling delegates in the opening session there would be no deviation from its Hindutva (Hindu way of life) policy.

"The BJP has believed that Hindutva and Indianness are synonymous. They are one and the same," Naidu said.

Tap Here to Add The Daily Star As A Trusted Source

"As far as the BJP is considered, there is no question of being apologetic about Hindutva. The question of going back to Hindutva does not arise because we have never left it, nor will we ever leave it."

Naidu said the party was also not against minorities in the country but believed in "justice for all and appeasement of none."

Political analysts said factors behind the party's shock defeat were that it had lost touch with India's vast rural poor while at the same time had also too strongly projected its hardline Hindu image.

Defeated prime minister Atal Behari Vajpayee last week said for the first time that anti-Muslim riots in the western state of Gujarat, which left 2,000 people dead in 2002, had contributed to the BJP's upset election defeat.

He said this week's BJP national meeting in Mumbai would consider replacing Gujarat Chief Minister Narendra Modi, one of the party's main exponents of Hindutva who was accused by rights groups of turning a blind eye to the killings of Muslims.

However, party leader Venkaiah Naidu at the weekend shot down Vajpayee, saying Modi's leadership would not be put under the scanner at the meeting.

In his address to party leaders on Tuesday, Naidu said the party had been overconfident going into the April-May elections.

"Overconfidence might have led to complacency in certain places. Our workers and supporters in some constituencies felt that they could take it easy, since the BJP and (its allies) were anyway going to form the government," he said.