Political Parties In India

"[In February 2020, Police from India's Kalaburagi, Karnataka region charged party leader Waris Pathan for his alleged hate speech. In the speech Pathan allegedly expressed Anti-Hindu sentiment by positing,] To those saying we have only put our women at the forefront of the protest against the CAA, NRC and NPR, only our lionesses have come out till now and you are already sweating. Imagine what will happen if we all men came together. We are 15 crore, which can outweigh their 100 crore."

"The strange thing about the BJP is that its voters consider it a Hindu party, its enemies denounce it as a Hindu party, but the party will call itself anything except a Hindu party."

"The BJP is not a communal party; it cannot be, for the simple reason that Hindus have never been, and are not, a community in the accepted sense of the term. They represent an ancient civilization not known either to draw a boundary between the faithful and the faithless, the blessed and the damned, or to engage in heresy hunting and its counterpart, persecution of other faiths. Hindus are, in western terms, pagans."

"Unlike Islamic fundamentalists, the BJP does not claim to possess a blueprint. It shall have to struggle to evolve an Indian approach to modern problems."

"In both India and Pakistan civilian politics have taken on a military tinge, with some political parties sponsoring paramilitary organisations whose members wear uniforms, march in formation with flags and carry sticks to menace their opponents. Or in the case of India’s Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) it looks more as though the paramilitary Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) sponsors it."

"As far as the BJP is concerned, our belief has been the same for years. Justice to all, appeasement of none. We cannot support divisive politics. We strongly believe in President A. P. J. Abdul Kalam when he says we need 'unity of minds'. People who played the politics of appeasement have ruined the country, not us. Blame them."

"In some states, hundreds of our workers have been killed because of their political views. Political untouchability is gaining ground by the day. In some places, just the name of BJP is enough to create an atmosphere of untouchability.... Why are our workers killed or attacked in Kashmir, Kerala or Bengal? It is shameful and anti-democratic... But today, in the political canvas of the nation, if there is one party that lives and breathes democracy, it is the BJP."

"My philosophy is to use the stones hurled at me to make a bridge for myself; I believe in proving my critics wrong through my work. I keep saying, the more muck you throw at me, the brighter will the BJP lotus bloom. That is the nature of the lotus, it rises out of keechhad (slush) to create exquisite beauty."

"The difference between Congress and BJP cannot be more apparent... We stand with Kashmiri Pandits, they stand with those who want two Constitutions and two PMs in the country. We stand to protect and preserve national integrity, they stand to protect those who are guilty of sedition. We stand to ensure quality health to women and children, while it is proven that they loot the money meant for women and children. We stand for democracy, they stand for dynasty, we stand for India First, they stand for Family First."

"In 2008, Hindutva leader B.L. Sharma 'Prem' held a secret meeting with key members of a terrorist group responsible for a nationwide bombing campaign targeting Muslims. [...] Like's Europe's mainstream right-wing parties, the BJP has condemned the terrorism of the right — but not the thought system which drives it. Its refusal to engage in serious introspection, or even to unequivocally condemn Hindutva violence, has been nothing short of disgraceful. Liberal parties, including the Congress, have been equally evasive in their critique of both Hindutva and Islamist terrorism. Besieged as India is by multiple fundamentalisms, in the throes of a social crisis that runs far deeper than in Europe, with institutions far weaker, it must reflect carefully on Mr. Brevik's story — or run real risks to its survival."

"[T]he election of the Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) has been linked to incidents of violence against members of Dalit, Muslim, tribal and Christian communities. Reports document the use of inflammatory remarks by BJP leaders against minority groups, and the rise of vigilantism targeting Muslims and Dalits."

"Justice for all and appeasement of none."

"To say that the BJP is communal is absolutely absurd and without any basis."

"After the Ayodhya demolition, the Congress government threatened to outlaw the BJP... but several socialist and casteist parties, the BJP's erstwhile allies in the struggle against the Emergency, refused to support the necessary legislative reform because they remembered all too well how small the distance is between such rhetoric of "protecting democracy against the communal forces" and the imposition of dictatorship... In several cases, moreover, elected candidates for the BJP or the Shiv Sena have been taken to court for "corrupt electoral practices", meaning the "use" of religion in their campaigns; some of them won their cases, some of them lost, but the danger inherent in openly identifying with the Hindu cause was certainly driven home. [...] Without exaggeration, the BJP's Ayodhya campaign was the single biggest public relations disaster in world history. [...] Even though the BJP's White Paper on Ayodhya and the Rama Temple Movement (1993) is a well-written and generally complete document, certainly the best chronology of the whole Ayodhya dispute, it leaves out a discussion of the one historical fact that justifies and lends importance to the Ayodhya movement, viz. that the demolition of the medieval Rama temple at the site was by no means an isolated event, but a necessary consequence of Islamic doctrine."

"Today the BJP is the only major party with a fully developed and actually functioning intra-party democracy."

"However, contrary to what the observers all think or say, the present BJP government under Narendra Modi, while numerically strong, is ideologically extremely weak. It is not in any way Hinduizing or "saffronizing" the polity or the education system. It is continuing the Congressite-Leftist anti-Hindu policies mandated by the Constitution, or at best looking the other way but not changing the Constitution to put a definitive stop to such policies. Thus, subsidized schools can be Christian or Muslim, but not Hindu: in the latter case, either they get taken over by the state and secularized, or at best, they have to do without subsidies. Temples are nationalized and their income channeled to non-Hindu purposes, a treatment against which the law protects churches and mosques. And this is no less the case in BJP-ruled states, where the Government could have chosen not to avail of the opportunities given to it by the Constitution."

"The record of BJP governance has utterly disproved the shrill allegations of “Hindu fascism”."

"[B]oth of these forces are driving illiberal political movements in many parts of the world... India was a liberal society created by Nehru and Gandhi but under the BJP and Prime Minister Modi it's shifted its national identity to one based on Hindu nationalism. In Hungary, with the rise of Viktor Orbán and the party Hugarian national identity has been redefined. Orbán has said Hugarian national identity is based on Hugarian ethnicity, which... is one of the reasons that World War II happened, because the Germans wanted to define German identity on the basis of German ethnicity, and there were many Germans living in... surrounding... central Europe... and that was... the trigger that led to the outbreak of the Second World War."

"The BJP seeks to link up internationally with the democratic, non-racist Right."

"The distinctive feature of the Muslim League in Kerala is that it strove to keep the community at the centre of the state’s politics, unlike other Muslim political formations elsewhere in India that revelled in confessional isolationism. As a result, the Kerala Muslims emerged as probably the only community of that faith in India that achieved genuine political empowerment on the one hand and, on the other, lived out the promise of equal citizenship enshrined in the Constitution."

"If organising a religious community politically on the basis of antagonism to another is communalism, the IUML has never mobilised its cadre nor used its political and often administrative clout to create religious divides. On the contrary, whenever the state faced a communally sensitive situation, the party rose to the occasion and played a stellar role in dousing the flames. It is pertinent to mention that the decision to establish the Sree Sankaracharya University of Sanskrit, Kalady, for “the promotion and development of the study of Sanskrit, Indology, Indian Philosophy and Indian languages” was taken when a Muslim League leader was Kerala’s minister of education."

"Samajwadi Party chief Akhilesh Yadav slammed the Uttar Pradesh government in the state, saying the children’s lives could have been save if the police had done their job. “They (BJP government) can't hide their shortcomings. This encounter is not going to hide their failure, " he said referring to the encounter during which Sajid was shot dead"

"SP leader Shivpal Singh Yadav who is also the party's nominee for the upcoming Lok Sabha poll in Budaun, slammed the government, saying law and order has totally failed in the state. "The incident in Budaun is very saddening," he told reporters. On the encounter, he said, "I congratulate the district and police administration for the action but the truth behind the incident must also come out.""

"I had joined the party in presence of all major Samajwadi Party leaders, including Mulayam Singh Yadav. So this joke is really sad."

"Shahid Siddiqui, the editor of Urdu daily, Nai Duniya, faced severe attack and abuse for simply doing an interview with Modi in which Modi defends himself against various charges leveled against his government. Siddiqui had asked him all the stereotypical questions hurled by anti-Modi groups and was in no way soft towards Modi. Yet, he was vilified for simply allowing Modi newspaper space to state his version, so much so that he was expelled from Samajwadi Party. It is not surprising that Siddiqui fell in line within no time and began mouthing anti-Modi rhetoric. What kind of journalism do the self-appointed defenders of minority rights want to promote in India that does not give a journalist the right to interview a thrice-elected chief minister simply because the Congress and the Left parties feel threatened by him?"

"Homosexuality is unethical and immoral, it is against the culture of the country and we will fight it."

""BJP wants to win elections by creating riots and communal tension in UP and that is why it is itself carrying out such incidents and creating communal tension in the districts, the result of which is today's incident in Badaun," Samajwadi Party said in a post on X. "When BJP has lost on the real issues of the people, then religious dispute, religious fight is the last weapon left for BJP. At the behest of BJP, many goons and miscreants are roaming freely and are committing such incidents due to which fights are increasing in the society," it added."