Hindu nationalists stake out turf

Hindu nationalists stake out turf

By Nelson Graves

NEW DELHI (Reuter): They have canceled a big U.S.-built power project, launched a drive to kick foreign consumer goods out of India and threatened Moslem pilgrims.

Flexing their muscles months before general elections, Hindu nationalists have begun drawing battle lines for a fight which threatens to have anti-foreign, anti-Moslem overtones.

The themes are part of a broad strategy sketched out last month by leaders of the main opposition Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), by far the largest Hindu nationalist party.

In 1984 general elections, the BJP won two of 545 seats in the lower house of parliament. They raised the number to 85 in 1989 and to 120 two years later.

Now the BJP says it is ready to capitalize on a gaping split in the ruling Congress party and voter disenchantment to clinch power in general elections due by mid-1996 but expected early next year.

"Even our critics admit that the BJP is now unstoppable," party president L.K. Advani said recently.

He may have overstated his case, according to political analysts who say polls could well yield a badly hung parliament.

That would usher in a period of power-sharing, only the third since India gained independence from Britain in 1947. For all but three years since then, Congress has ruled India.

Few doubt that the BJP, fresh from some important victories in recent state polls, will improve on its 1991 performance in coming elections and perhaps finish ahead of Prime Minister P.V. Narasimha Rao's Congress party.

The BJP expects to reap political gains from a decision last week to cancel a $2.8 billion power project in the western state of Maharashtra.

The BJP and its radical Hindu partner, Shiv Sena, say the project, India's biggest foreign investment, would have cost consumers too much and has alleged that the deal, struck by a former Congress state government, was tainted by kickbacks.

Enron Corp, which led the U.S. consortium building the plant, has denied the allegation.

The issue fits in nicely with the BJP strategy of painting Congress as anti-poor, corrupt and partial to foreign firms.

The BJP supports a campaign launched on Wednesday by an independent Hindu nationalist group against foreign consumer products including U.S. soft drinks Pepsi and Coke.

"Computer chips, yes. Potato chips, no," former BJP president Murli Manohar Joshi told Reuters on Wednesday.

India, surrounded by high tariffs, was virtually self- sufficient in 1991 when Rao launched reforms which have opened the country to foreign investment and boosted trade.

But the BJP reckons a nationalistic tilt against foreign consumer goods could play well with Indians who are proud of those home-grown brands now having trouble competing.

Shiv Sena leader Bal Thackeray threatened retaliation against Moslem Haj pilgrims last month if Hindus on a pilgrimage in Kashmir this week were attacked by Islamic militants.

Thackeray's threat drew a quick riposte from a Moslem separatist group which vowed to kill him.

The BJP was accused of whipping up communal passions in 1992 when Hindu zealots ripped down the 16th century Babri Masjid mosque in the northern town of Ayodhya. Some 3,000 people were killed in Hindu-Moslem riots that followed.

The party has since tried to strike a less provocative stance. Now it is pushing for a uniform civil code which would force Moslems to comply with standards in marriage and divorce that are contrary to their normal religious practices.