Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP): The forgotten populist radical right party

This paper focuses on the biggest and arguably, most successful, party within the literature on the populist radical right—the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), or Indian People’s Party, in India. Despite its success, however, the BJP has thus far been largely ignored in the party family. Hence, this paper provides an in-depth analysis of the BJP’s guiding ideology—Hindu nationalism—and situates the elements of nativism, populism, and authoritarianism as defining attributes of the populist radical right as a springboard for comparison. It draws attention to “the people” versus “the elite” dichotomy within populism, highlighting that the BJP was elite-driven in its origin and continues to represent elite interests. The inclusion of the BJP as a case study also challenges much of the ‘received wisdom’ of pre-existing literature, in particular the so-called Third Wave of the populist radical right. In recent years, the increasing use of violence sharply contrasts with the BJP becoming a mainstream party in the electoral arena, which has seized upon the opportunity to legislate in line with a Hindu nationalist agenda. The resulting effectiveness of a populist radical right party in government generates lessons for this body of scholarship, not least thinking beyond a “Western” and European focus; whether a post-industrial precondition is necessary; favoring pro-market neoliberal policies; and challenging previous claims of weak party organization as characteristic of the populist radical right.