The NDA should know, if it has any sense, that the BJP is not an ordinary, "normal" party, with solely a  parliamentary agenda. It is both a party and part of a social movement that challenges and seeks to redefine the very nature of Indian nationhood by giving primacy to just one of India's many, many communities. Its long-term goal is to transform this society along Hindutva lines. This totally violates the liberal-democratic, secular, federalist spirit of the Constitution and the foundational premises of our freedom struggle. The BJP resides in that twilight zone that lies between parliamentary democracy with ds openness and pluralism, on the one hand, and parochial, paranoid, exclusivism, on the other. It has shown no sigos of changing its character. This is unsurprising. Parties of its ilk do not change radically. They are not free to do so, being controlled from the outside.

The RSS-BJP link is not a marginal one, nor some kind of historic hangover. It is an organic, living connection. It is so intimate that the RSS could demand last year that all BJP State units be led by longstanding pracharaks. This was considered so "natural" that there was no fuss. It just won't do to pretend that the BJP under Vajpayee has evolved into a different party. For one, Vajpayee does not control the organisation; he ceded that function 15 years ago to others. And for another, he is not very different from Sangh hard-liners on the core issues that matter. He is just a more shrewd, devious and manipulative - not "liberal" or pluralist - face of the Hindutva phenomenon, one that is more acceptable to our communalised upper class elite. (Source: The Frontline, 10 September, 1999)