NEW DELHI: Halfway through the Indian coalition government’s five-year term, the country’s ruling party is having a midlife crisis.

The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), which heads a fractious coalition of more than 20 parties, has so far managed to balance its Hindu-nationalist roots and the secular ideals laid out in India’s constitution. But analysts say a string of defeats in state elections indicate the BJP is pleasing neither the sectarians nor the secularists.

So when the BJP held a party conference last weekend in Goa state, the question facing it seemed clear: Was it wiser to continue the tightrope-walking act, or stop trying to moderate the party ideology that this country of one billion is, at root, a Hindu nation?

The course the BJP chose would affect more than just the party itself. Many of the BJP’s coalition partners have threatened to pull out if the party abandons its commitment to secularism. While no single party could take away the coalition’s majority in Parliament by withdrawing, defections could weaken it severely.

After three days of soul-searching, the BJP decided there was merit in both paths. While the party would make a concerted effort to strengthen its Hindu identity, Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee would continue to play the role of a consensus- building moderate at the national level.

“We will strictly and scrupulously adhere to the agenda of the coalition government,” said Home Minister L.K. Advani, a senior party leader. “But at the same time there is no reason for the party to be apologetic about our ideological moorings.”

At the heart of the BJP’s image crisis is Vajpayee, who has impeccable Hindu-nationalist credentials yet has steered the government along a centrist course that has mollified Hindus and Muslims alike. His opponents call him “the right man in the wrong party”; his colleagues refer to him as a useful “mask” for their radical brand of Hindu politics.

But Vajpayee’s ability to placate India’s many political, religious and ethnic interests was acutely tested when religious rioting broke out in Gujarat state, killing more than 800 people, most of them Muslims, since late February.

When Vajpayee visited Gujarat, he said he was filled with shame at the plight of the many Muslim victims. But addressing BJP members and supporters in Goa on Friday, Vajpayee blamed the Muslims for what befell them, noting that the riots were sparked by an attack by Muslims on a train that killed about 60 Hindus.

In a hawkish speech, he accused Muslims around the world of being unable to live peacefully with people of other religions. “There are two faces to Islam. One teaches tolerance and truth, and the other, militancy,” he said.

In New Delhi on Sunday, in a meeting with his angry, secular coalition partners, he did another flip-flop and said he did not mean to defame all Muslims but only those who practice terrorism.

“We always referred to the mask he wore and dropped, but now the mask seems to have pretty well gone,” the leader of the opposition Congress party, Sonia Gandhi, said at a news conference. “Now the BJP stands thoroughly exposed. They have only one face now.”

Anger over the BJP’s handling of the violence in Gujarat stems from more than Vajpayee’s rhetoric. Gujarat’s state government, headed by the BJP, was widely accused of standing idly by as the riots peaked, and many of the BJP’s partners in the national government have demanded the firing of Gujarat’s chief minister, Narendra Modi. The BJP has refused.

This week opposition lawmakers have brought parliament to a standstill and maintained pressure on the BJP. The Telugu Desam Party, part of the coalition, continues to demand Modi’s removal but has stopped short of threatening to quit the government.

BJP hardliners, however, say their party’s woes stem not from its Hindu-nationalist ideology but from its efforts at moderation.

“The dilution weighs heavily on our hearts,” said a BJP member of Parliament, B.P. Singhal. “The issues that had the power to push the party up also possess the power to bring it down.”—Dawn/The Washington Post News Service.