Bharatiya Janata Party

The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP; lit. 'Indian People's Party') is a Hindu nationalist political party in India, sitting on the right-wing to far-right of the political spectrum; it is one of the two major Indian political parties alongside the Indian National Congress. Since 2014, it has been the ruling political party in India under the incumbent prime minister Narendra Modi. The BJP follows Hindutva, a Hindu nationalist ideology; the party has organisational and ideological links to the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS), a Hindutva paramilitary volunteer organisation. It is the country's biggest political party in terms of representation in the parliament as well as state legislatures while also being the largest in the world by claimed membership numbers, with having more than 140 million members as of 2025.

The party's origins lie in the Bharatiya Jana Sangh, which was founded in 1951 by Indian politician Shyama Prasad Mukherjee, after he left the Hindu Mahasabha to form a party as the political wing of the RSS. After the Emergency of 1975–1977, the Jana Sangh merged with several other political parties to form the Janata Party; it defeated the then-incumbent Indian National Congress in the 1977 general election. After three years in power, the Janata Party dissolved in 1980, with the members of the erstwhile Jana Sangh reconvening to form the modern-day BJP. Although initially unsuccessful—winning only two seats in the 1984 general election, it grew in strength on the back of the Ram Rath Yatra in Uttar Pradesh. Following victories in several state elections and better performances in national elections, the BJP became the largest political party in the Parliament in 1996; however, it lacked a majority in the lower house of Parliament, and its government, under its then-leader Atal Bihari Vajpayee, lasted for only 13 days.

After the 1998 general election, the BJP-led coalition known as the National Democratic Alliance (NDA) under prime minister Vajpayee formed a government that lasted for a year. Following fresh elections, the NDA government—again headed by Vajpayee—lasted for a full term in office; this was the first non-Congress government to do so. In the 2004 general election, the NDA suffered an unexpected defeat, and for the next ten years, the BJP was the principal opposition party.