About the Book
‘THIS IS GOING TO BE A CLASSIC, A BOOK THAT WILL BE READ WIDELY AND FOR A LONG TIME. ITS READERSHIP WILL INCLUDE SCHOLARS, POLITICAL ACTIVISTS, AND ANYONE WHOSE JOB OR INTEREST LIES IN UNDERSTANDING CONTEMPORARY INDIA ...’ —PROF. ROBIN JEFFREY‘
In election after election since 2014, both at the Union and state levels, the BJP has won more elections than it has lost—a clear indication of growth beyond its core Hindu base. The question is, why do so many people across divisions of caste, religion and gender vote for a party with unapologetically aggressive Hindutva politics? Are its much-publicised development schemes, whatever their flaws, the big pull factor? Or the active mobilisation of the RSS cadre to its cause? In this fascinating revisionist history, political scientist and journalist Nalin Mehta examines how the BJP became the world’s largest political party. He goes beyond the usual narrative of the party’s Hindutva politics to explain how, under Narendra Modi, it reshaped the Indian polity using its own brand of social engineering. This reconstruction was cleverly powered by new caste coalitions, the claim of a new welfare state that focused on marginalised social groups and the making of a women voter base.
Based on data from three unique indices—the Mehta–Singh Social Index, which studies the caste composition of Indian political parties; the Narad Index, which calculates communication patterns across topics and audiences; and Poll Niti, which connects and tallies hundreds of political and economic datasets—The New BJP’s full of startling insights into the way both the party and the country function. Previously untapped historical records, exclusive interviews with party leaders and comprehensive reportage from across India provide a fresh understanding of the BJP’s growth areas, including the Northeast, women voters and South India. A lucid and objective study of the BJP and India today, this is a book that demands engagement and debate from every side of the political divide.
About the author
Professor Nalin Mehta is Dean, School of Modern Media, UPES; Advisor, Global University Systems; and Non-Resident Senior Fellow, Institute of South Asian Studies, National University of Singapore. He is an award-winning social scientist, journalist and author who has held senior leadership positions in major Indian media companies and in international financing institutions like the Global Fund in Geneva, Switzerland. He has taught and held research positions at universities and institutions in Australia (ANU, La Trobe University), Singapore (NUS), Switzerland (International Olympic Museum) and India (IIM Bangalore, Shiv Nadar University).
He was previously Executive Editor, The Times of India - Online, where he led a number of AI-led tech innovations to redefine digital media. He has also served as Managing Editor, India Today (English TV channel) and Consulting Editor, The Times of India. Mehta is the author of five bestselling and critically acclaimed books, including India on Television (winner of the Asian Publishing Award for Best Book on Asian Media, 2009), Behind a Billion Screens (longlisted as Business Book of the Year, Tata Literature Live, 2015), and most recently, Dreams of a Billion (2020, co-authored).
Review
“How did India become a BJP-centric polity, from first being ruled mostly by the Congress, to a period of coalitions drawn from regional players and socialists and then a bipolar system? Mehta examines all these templates.” — The Hindu
“Amid the recent flurry of party-specific treatises, Nalin Mehta has offered a work of empirical ambition, with a blend of data-rich insight, the analytical frame of a political scientist, and journalistic reportage. The book will provide students of politics some of the tools to revisit the BJP turnaround story and its rise to the pivot of Indian polity and reshaping social coalitions.” — Newslaundary
“Journalist Nalin Mehta explores the re-invention — missed by the naked eye of many — in his new book, ‘The New BJP: Modi and the Making of the World’s Largest Political Party’. Rather than indulging in the usual political commentary based on subjective reasoning, Mehta’s book uses crunching of hard data to dig facts and insights.” — India.com
About the Author
Professor Nalin Mehta is Dean, School of Modern Media, UPES; Advisor, Global University Systems; and Non-Resident Senior Fellow, Institute of South Asian Studies, National University of Singapore. He is an award-winning social scientist, journalist and author who has held senior leadership positions in major Indian media companies and in international financing institutions like the Global Fund in Geneva, Switzerland. He has taught and held research positions at universities and institutions in Australia (ANU, La Trobe University), Singapore (NUS), Switzerland (International Olympic Museum) and India (IIM Bangalore, Shiv Nadar University).
He was previously Executive Editor, The Times of India - Online, where he led a number of AI-led tech innovations to redefine digital media. He has also served as Managing Editor, India Today (English TV channel) and Consulting Editor, The Times of India. Mehta is the author of five bestselling and critically acclaimed books, including India on Television (winner of the Asian Publishing Award for Best Book on Asian Media, 2009), Behind a Billion Screens (longlisted as Business Book of the Year, Tata Literature Live, 2015), and most recently, Dreams of a Billion (2020, co-authored).
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