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colorful woods chewing away to its heart’s content, some find it an unsightly ob-
ject to crack jokes about, some find it only a subject of interest to discuss among
academic circles. But the insect keeps growing and mutating and devouring any-

thing it gets. It nourishes itself from all the youthfulness and freshness of its sur-
rounding nature and becomes bigger, stronger, and uglier.” 85
The BJP is one of the three big members of the Sangh Parivar and
the party chairman, Atal Bihari Vajpayee is an old RSS militant and a fa-
natic Hindu nationalist. 85% of the BJP members come from the RSS and
these people are defined by pundits and intellectuals in the Indian me-
dia as RSS militants disguised as politicians. The popularity of the BJP is

thought to be based on the fanatical language it uses against both the
Muslim and Christian minorities. Vajpayee has sided with and support-
ed the Hindu militants whenever they carried out attacks on Muslims
and other minorities. Some circles try to portray him as a moderate
politician, but he revealed his deep connections with the RSS, with
which he first made contact in 1939, in an article he wrote for the RSS’s
official press, the New Delhi, under the title “The Sangh is my Soul”. He
wrote that he loved the RSS’s ideology, that he appreciated the RSS’s at-
titude towards the people, that the Sangh was like his family and “we

are all united”. 86
When Vajpayee first came to power he was considered to be a mod-
erate politician by the world. He promised to end the conflict between
Muslims and Hindus, and to deliver peace to the country, but this mod-
eration was short-lived. In the first period of the BJP government
Vajpayee revealed his true colors in the face of frequent attacks on
Muslims by Hindu militants. He did nothing to apprehend those who
were responsible for these attacks, but chose to back the security forces

and administrators, who had cooperated with the militants in these at-
tacks, and he continued this stance throughout his time in power. In an

Islam And Far Eastern Religions