Indian Foreign Policy

7	Foreign policy, identity and theBJP Correcting the ‘emasculation of state power’?1

The end of the Congress Party's dominance of Indian politics in the 1990s ushered in a period of unstable coalition governments. The Hindu nationalist BJP, whose electoral fortunes had been on the rise since the 1980s, came to power as the leading member of the National Democratic Alliance (NDA) which formed government in 1998 and stayed in power until 2004 when it was defeated by the United Progressive Alliance led by the Congress. Scholarly opinion has been divided on the role of Hindu nationalist ideology on the BJP-led coalition's foreign policy and the extent to which the NDA brought about a change in direction in Indian foreign policy. Some scholars ...