BJP’s foundation day: A look at the history and achievements of the party

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On Thursday, April 6, the Bharatiya Janata Party will commemorate its 42nd foundation day. Since its beginnings in the early 1980s, the party that is today India's largest political party in terms of both party membership and representation in parliament has gone a long way.

The party has successfully overcome many setbacks and failures, established a solid base in the Indian political landscape, and fundamentally altered the long-standing ideological underpinnings of India's domestic and foreign policies.

Here is a look at the party's history of achievements and failures:

The party's ideological origins can be dated back to 1951 when the then Congress politician Shyama Prasad Mukherjee broke away from Jawaharlal Nehru's leadership to form the Bhartiya Jana Sangh (BJS).

The party was formed in opposition to the political practices of the Congress party and in collaboration with the Hindu nationalist organisation Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS). The BJS's mission was to protect Hindu identity and culture. The BJS struggled in its early years after being founded at a time when the Indian National Congress was essentially the face of Indian politics. In the 1952 elections the party only won three Lok Sabha seats.

Members of the BJS protested vehemently against the Congress government in 1975 when the then Prime Minister of India Indira Gandhi declared a state of emergency throughout the nation. The BJS joined forces with a number of other parties to become the Janata Party after the Emergency was lifted.

The Janata Party secured a majority in the 1977 general elections, forming the government at the center with Morarji Desai as prime minister.

Also read: BJP foundation day: Know how the party was formed?

Desai was forced to resign in 1980 due to the political disagreements within the party and fresh elections were held. The Janata Party dissolved soon after, and a large number of its members who were previously members of BJS formed the BJP.

With Gandhian socialism as its ideological cornerstone, the BJP maintained an accommodating stance under the party chief Atal Bihari Vajpayee. However, the BJP made changes to its political tenets following the party's crushing setback in the 1984 elections. During 1980s India was witnessing a time of severe Hindu-Muslim clashes in the country and so the party found an ideal dispute to uphold as its political mandate in the Ram Janmabhoomi movement, initiated by the Vishwa Hindu Parishad (VHP).

On December 6, 1992, the BJP along with the VHP organised a mass rally in Uttar Pradesh and demolished the 16th century mosque, Babri Masjid in Ayodhya. The incident sparked large scale communal riots and has been a huge trigger for communal polarisation, both in the state and the country.

When the general elections were held in 2014, the BJP made a sweeping victory upholding Narendra Modi's image as its prime ministerial candidate and the successes he achieved in Gujarat as its chief minister.

In 2019 general elections again, Narendra Modi and his ruling BJP swept back to power. The party won 303 seats in the Lok Sabha, the lower house of India's parliament, bettering the 282 seats they won in 2014 - a performance that not many thought was possible.

At present, the stronghold maintained by the party in central and state governments, is largely derived from the popularity of the prime minister, also referred to as the ‘Modi wave'.