The Reading Room: 8 experts on the best books on the BJP

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• Vinay Sitapati
  political scientist; author of Jugalbandi: The BJP before Modi

Recommendation: The Brotherhood in Saffron (Westview Press, 1987) by Walter Anderson, and Shridhar Damle

The Brotherhood in Saffron by Walter Anderson, and Shridhar Damle – Westview Press, 1987 (Source: amazon.in)

Why?
Because the BJP is such a polarising subject, it’s very hard to find a dispassionate, objective book on the rise of the party. In fact, too many books on the BJP tell you more about the author rather than the subject. Given this problem, The Brotherhood in Saffron is a book worth reading. It’s a pro-RSS book, no doubt about it, but it gives a view into the inner workings of the organisation and its history like nothing before.

Conversations around the BJP and the RSS today either revolve around comparisons to the Nazi party, or elevating (Narendra) Modi to the status of god. But basic things — like what a shakha is, how it operates, who are the people who wake up early to go march there — are not factored in, and this is what the book explains really well.

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• Nalin Mehta
  journalist; author of The New BJP: Modi and the Making of the World’s Largest Political Party

Recommendation: Hindu Nationalism and Indian Politics: The Origins and Development of the Bharatiya Jana Sangh (Cambridge University Press, 1990) by Bruce Desmond Graham

Hindu Nationalism and Indian Politics: The Origins and Development of the Bharatiya Jana Sangh by Bruce Desmond Graham – Cambridge University Press, 1990 (Source: amazon.in)

Why?
Most books about the BJP in the last 25 years look at it piecemeal, or from specific vantage points. So, to understand where the BJP is going and what is driving its wellsprings as a whole, I find the most useful and instructive perspective lies in its prehistory. Bruce Desmond Graham’s book on the Jan Sangh — Hindu Nationalism and Indian Politics — is fascinating in this regard.

Graham’s work is based on very strong empirical research that has stood the test of time. He clinically shines a light on the motivations of the early Jan Sangh, its interplay with the RSS and, very importantly, its overlaps with the Hindu traditionalists within the Congress. This last point is crucial. A lot of scholarship on the BJP does not end up considering this larger framework and interplay. We tend to see it all as one entity — the RSS, Hindu Mahasabha, Jan Sangh, BJP — but it’s not. If you see Graham’s work from the vantage point of today, everything which he outlined in the context of this interplay is extremely prescient. The defining aspects of today’s BJP politics – whether it is Article 370, CAA, Ram Temple or economic policies – all owe their origins to the deep debates that happened in the 1950s. Therefore, understanding how those debates unfolded to get a perspective on today is crucial.

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• Narayani Basu
  historian; author of VP Menon: The Unsung Architect of Modern India

Recommendation: The New BJP: Modi and the Making of the World’s Largest Political Party (Westland, 2022) by Nalin Mehta

The New BJP: Modi and the Making of the World’s Largest Political Party by Nalin Mehta – Westland, 2022 (Source: amazon.in)

Why?
What I like about this book is that the author’s analysis is heavily backed by data. He uses a data-based approach to understand the themes that the BJP is focusing on, and its trends and trajectories. The book does an excellent job of detailing how Hindutva actually works on the ground across India, and how its workers help project a myth of a visionary leader. However, I wish the book was more descriptive, especially when it comes to looking at the major characters in the BJP.

Besides this, I would also recommend the works of Dhirendra Jha — Gandhi’s Assassin: The Making of Nathuram Godse and His Idea of India (Vintage Books, 2022) and Shadow Armies: Fringe Organizations and Foot Soldiers of Hindutva (Juggernaut, 2019). Jha has done a very good job of breaking down Hindutva and understanding why people like Nathuram Godse and VD Savarkar are being upheld as icons by the BJP.

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• Neerja Chowdhury
  Political commentator

Recommendation: How the BJP Wins: Inside India’s Greatest Election Machine by Prashant Jha

How the BJP wins: Inside India’s greatest election machine by Prashant Jha – Juggernaut, 2017 (Source: amazon.in)

Why?
One book I found interesting was Prashant Jha’s How the BJP Wins because it gives insights into the setting up of this massive well-oiled, resource-driven machinery, probably the largest in the world today. You cannot understand the BJP, unless you understand this election machinery because, in many ways, for the BJP, winning elections is equal to governance. How did Amit Shah, who was sent to Uttar Pradesh in 2013, set up a massive machinery in the state and win the party 71 Lok Sabha seats within 11 months, at a time when the BJP was not in power at the centre? The book gave me an insight into that.

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• Suhas Palshikar
  political scientist

Recommendation: Modi’s India: Hindu Nationalism and the Rise of Ethnic Democracy (Context, 2021) by Christophe Jaffrelot

Modi’s India: Hindu Nationalism and the Rise of Ethnic Democracy by Christophe Jaffrelot – Westland’s Context, 2021 (Source: amazon.in)

Why?
Jaffrelot has been writing on BJP and Hindu nationalism for a very long time. This book is a tome of some 600-odd pages that gives you all the details of the way the BJP has worked in the country. It covers both the ideology of the BJP and its organisational strength, including data on various organisations of the BJP and RSS affiliates. One of the frameworks that Jaffrelot uses in the book is that of ethnic democracy, which I have a problem with, because majoritarianism is a much more powerful framework to understand the way the BJP functions. The idea of ethnicity doesn’t resonate with India’s reality. It smacks of the European anthropological idea that India is a community of different ethnicities. But India is about religion, and not ethnicity, which has a racial connotation. So, I like the book, but I also have problems with it.

I should also mention a small collection of six essays called The BJP in Power: Indian Democracy and Religious Nationalism, edited by Milan Vaishnav. It is useful because, for a lay reader, it’s just about a 100-page tract and for someone who is not an expert and doesn’t want to specialise, it’s a ready reference on the BJP and the way it works. The book is available for free download here: https://carnegieendowment.org/files/BJP_In_Power_final.pdf

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• Radhika Seshadaran
  Independent journalist

Recommendation: Hindu Nationalism and Indian Politics: The Origins and Development of the Bharatiya Jana Sangh by Bruce Desmond Graham

Hindu Nationalism and Indian Politics: The Origins and Development of the Bharatiya Jana Sangh by Bruce Desmond Graham – Cambridge University Press, 1990 (Source: amazon.in)

Why?
This is the work I invariably turn to when I need to cross-verify a historical detail about the BJP, a party I have covered since 1989. Graham was one of the few authors to write about the BJP’s precursor, the Bharatiya Jana Sangh, founded in 1951. Although the BJP, the BJS’s descendant, has since morphed into a behemoth ruling over most of India, it is impossible to understand and appreciate the dynamics and factors which moulded the worthy successor without delving into the BJS.
Graham was extraordinarily prescient in anticipating an inescapable contemporary reality. In his words, “What made the Jana Sangh different and more dangerous (than the minor parties struggling to survive in the ambience of post-Independence competitive politics) was that it brought into the political arena its burning vision of an India which, having returned to its roots, would be transformed into an organic Hindu nation.” The author notes that one of the BJS’s earliest forays was into Uttar Pradesh, despite the resistance it faced in the rural areas. Decades later the BJP would overcome it.

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• Liz Mathew
  journalist, The Indian Express

Recommendation: The Rise of the BJP: The Making of the World’s Largest Political Party Book (Penguin, 2022) by Bhupender Yadav and Ila Patnaik

The Rise of the BJP: The Making of the World’s Largest Political Party Book by Bhupender Yadav and Ila Patnaik – Penguin, 2022 (Source: amazon.in)

Why?
If one is looking for an authentic version of the origin and growth of the BJP from the Jana Sangh days to its rise as the world’s largest political party with a membership of 18 crore, the book that is to be picked is The Rise Of The BJP: The Making of the World’s Largest Political Party. It is authored by a senior BJP leader – former general secretary and current Union Minister – Bhupender Yadav, along with economist Ila Patnaik. It’s a good reference book that outlines the history of the BJP, it tells you the massive hard work and meticulous planning that has worked for its growth, including every important step of the party under Narendra Modi and Home Minister Amit Shah. But if you are looking for the stories behind the headlines, controversies or inner party-power equations, you will be disappointed.

(Compiled by Shashank Bhargava)

Every fortnight, we pick, you read: Catch the next Reading Room recommendation on March 26