By Ramesh Thakur

The group most directly implicated in the attacks, including the brutal killing of an Australian missionary and his two young sons, is the Bajrang Dal. Named after an alias of the Hindu monkey god Hanuman, the Bajrang Dal is part of the same Sangh Parivar (the saffron-clad Hindu family) to which the Bharatiya Janata Party belongs. Hindus make up four-fifths of the Indian social mosaic, Muslims 11 percent and Christians just 2 percent.

The BJP is committed to refashioning the Indian polity in the image of "Hinduness." Like most religious movements that draw their vitality from a reaction to the perceived evils of Western cultural imperialism, the BJP adopted policies that were symbolically important to its Hindu constituency: advocacy of Hindi language and ayurvedic medicine, protection of the cow and a hawkish stance on defense, including the acquisition of nuclear capability.

The BJP made enormous strides over the past decade, culminating in being the majority party in the coalition federal government in 1998. Much of this success was achieved on the back of an anti-Muslim campaign, tapping into the backlash against appeasement of Muslims by Congress governments. The climax of the anti-Muslim drive was the destruction of the 16th century mosque in Ayodhya in December 1992.

Many feared that the BJP is the Trojan horse of Hindu fascism. Others hoped that the BJP had exhausted the political potential of Hindu chauvinism and would become a sober party of the center-right. The fears of the first group were fed by the vitriolic hatred directed at Muslims by the BJP. The hopes of the second group rested on the tradition of tolerance of Hindus and the need for the BJP to moderate its image if it wishes to capture the vast middle ground: the restrictions of respectability.

The challenge for the BJP is to preserve the loyalty of its niche Hindu support and yet reach out to a broader coalition of social forces. The Sangh Parivar has sabotaged moves to shift the ruling party from a posture of religious extremism to one of political centrism. The BJP's support base is concentrated among upper-caste, urban, middle-class Hindus. The Congress Party wins when it successfully mobilizes minority groups under its wings. The Muslims have been returning to the Congress fold in large numbers. In state elections held recently, third party votes collapsed, Congress under Sonia Gandhi was triumphant and the BJP was routed.

Interpretations of subsequent attacks against the Christians vary from this point. The charitable argue that the party extremists have decided to abandon the sinking ship of government and reclaim the militant Hindu identity for the Sangh Parivar. They point to the discomfort caused to moderate prime minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee and his denunciations of the attacks on Christians.

The cynics respond that the good cop-bad cop routine is an old one. The real target of attacks is Gandhi. Support for the bomb has not translated into votes for the BJP. Indians have readily accepted Gandhi as the nation's daughter-in-law, and therefore as the inheritor and preserver of the family traditions, honor and culture. Her defense of the Christians allows the BJP to draw the people's attention to her Italian Catholic identity. This is then merged with the Muslim support for the Congress in an effort to rally the nationalist sentiment and sow doubts about how reliable Gandhi would be in defending Hindu India's interests against an international Muslim-Christian conspiracy.

Will it work? The model for the BJP may well be the demolition of the Ayodhya mosque. The target of attack by the militants was a single structure. The focus of mobilization by the BJP was the Hindu nation through reminders of historical injustice by the entire Muslim community. The Christian missionaries came after the Muslim conquerors and were the curtain raisers to British conquest of the subcontinent. They left after following policies of divide and rule that partitioned India into a Hindu and Muslim majority state each. The not-so-subtle message is that Gandhi is an international agent of influence who will complete the outsiders' agenda of reconquering or dismembering India.

If the cynical analysis should be true, the BJP may have mounted same the tiger of religious ethnonationalism that has destroyed former Yugoslavia and devastated Sri Lanka. This would be an ironic legacy of a party committed to building a strong Hindu nation. But then, irony is never the strong suit of religious chauvinists.

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