NEW DELHI: When India’s embattled Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) went into state elections earlier this year, it tried to play on fears of the enemy without — Pakistan — and failed.

Now hardline Hindus in the BJP, which dominates the ruling coalition government, are widely perceived as trying to play on fears of an enemy within — among the minority Muslim population — to try to revive its flagging electoral fortunes.

It is a potent combination which at the very least has made India’s complex social and political fabric even more unpredictable than ever; at the very worst laid the groundwork for a new outburst of still simmering communal violence.

The country had already been shaken by Hindu-Muslim violence in western Gujarat state, in which more than 800, mostly Muslims, died. Then Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee appeared to blame it all on Muslims by highlighting the risks of “militant” Islam.

“Muslims, wherever they are, don’t want to live peacefully. They want to spread terror in the name of religion,” he said last Friday at a public meeting in Goa. “Leaders around the world I have met are worried about this.

“There are two faces to Islam, one...teaches tolerance and truth, and the other is militancy, jihad in the name of Islam, they want the whole world to be in the Islamic fold. This is the face we are seeing nowadays everywhere,” he said.

The comments, though softened later, drew howls of outrage from the English-language press, the opposition Congress party and even from his own secular coalition government allies.

Mostly Hindu India, but with a 12 per cent Muslim population, has long prided itself on its secularism and Vajpayee’s comments were seen as gambling with this secular tradition in order to win Hindu votes.

“He maligned the entire Muslims of the world in his speech,” said Khushwant Singh, a Sikh and veteran campaigner for religious tolerance. “It gives encouragement to lumpen elements elsewhere.”

But as a sign of how far opinions have been polarized, Vajpayee’s speech — along with a decision to hold early state elections in Gujarat state to consolidate the Hindu vote — was welcomed by the party faithful, and by the widely read Hindi-language press.

“Vajpayee’s assertion that Islamic militancy is the main danger facing the world today is absolutely right,” the mass circulation Hindi daily Dainik Jagran said. “It’s not right to conceal the dangers posed by Islamic fundamentalism.”

ROLL BACK TO SEPT 11: To understand the depths of India’s current crisis, you have to roll back to the Sept 11 attacks, which led to the US campaign against the Al Qaeda network in Afghanistan.

Despite Washington’s insistence its “war is on terrorism”, not Islam, many Indians privately cite the US campaign to justify the BJP’s current hardline stance against militancy.

Then on Dec 13, militants who New Delhi said had links with Pakistan attacked the Indian parliament — triggering a massive military build-up between the two nuclear rivals.

To this day, a million men are massed along the border, and analysts see little chance of any climbdown soon, and Vajpayee facing domestic upheaval.

It is in that explosive context that India’s domestic crisis is now playing out.

The BJP — which had put aside its hallmark Hindu revivalism to win support from secular coalition allies when it took office in 1999 — first tried to use the Pakistan threat to swing voters behind it in a string of state elections in February.

In Uttar Pradesh state, the BJP’s traditional heartland, BJP Chief Minister Rajnath Singh even had pictures of soldiers and tanks emblazoned on his campaign truck to make the point.

Playing on fears of Pakistan failed. The BJP was defeated in Uttar Pradesh and in three other states, leaving it in control of only three states in the country, including Gujarat.

Last Friday, Vajpayee fell into line with hardliners in his party by blaming Muslims in Godhra for starting the violence.

The enemy without had become the enemy within, and party hardliners say they are willing to use this to win votes.

“Forget about whether holding elections in Gujarat is right or wrong, the fact is we will sweep the elections. No Muslim will have the guts to come out and vote,” said a BJP leader.

In any other country, the current situation would be a recipe for a swing even further to the far right. —Reuters