The BJP's leaders saw a political vacuum forming--and recognized that Indian voters were ready for an ethos beyond embracing or rejecting the Congress every five years. Their strategy was to appeal to Hindu voters as Hindus. And the simplest way to be pro-Hindu was to be against a minority. The country's 120 million Muslims became the target, not only because they are the largest minority but also due to the residual animus against them from the 1947 partition of the subcontinent, in which the Muslim state of Pakistan was created. In 1981, some 300 lower-caste Hindus converted to Islam in the southern Indian village of Meenakshipuram and the voluble protests of the VHP brought the group to national prominence. By the end of the 1980s, the BJP focused on a squat mosque in the north Indian temple town of Ayodhya, demanding that it be torn down to uncover the foundations of an ancient Hindu temple allegedly on the site. Thumping the drum of restoring Hindu pride, while simultaneously promising a whack to the Muslims, the BJP picked up 86 parliamentary seats in 1989, compared with just two in 1984. In 1992, with the BJP's then-president in attendance, organized Hindu mobs destroyed the mosque--the first example of a national political party associating with a campaign of violence against a minority. The BJP said it was championing "Hindutva," a purposely vague concept of Indian culture. Many saw the tyranny of a religious majority poised to replace India's secular governing system.

The Ayodhya campaign, along with the continuing disintegration of the Congress, helped the BJP make it to national power for a brief 13 days in 1997 and, more durably, in an unwieldy coalition that took the reins last February. But Ayodhya also produced a backlash. The Muslim minority struck back after the mosque's demolition with anti-government riots and, in March 1993, a series of bomb blasts in Bombay that terrorized the country's business capital. The Muslims proved they were ready for sustained war--and organized attacks against them haven't been attempted since.

Today, Vajpayee's government has one populist triumph to its credit, the testing of five nuclear devices in May, and myriad failures, most notably skyrocketing inflation. In response, it has gone into campaign mode for the next elections. From out of the blue, the main national issue has become the threat of Christians to the Hindu masses. "Christianity is the new type of imperialism," thunders Mohan Joshi, central secretary of the VHP. His boss, Ashok Singhal, told a gathering of VHP faithful in December that Nobel Prize-winning economist Amartya Sen was helping Christianize India by advocating universal literacy--Christian schools presumably would do the job--and that the Nobel committee was in on the plot, having already given a peace prize to that famous Christian troublemaker Mother Teresa (Singhal subsequently denied the statement). The BJP has formally called for an investigation into foreign funds ending up in missionaries' hands. The underlying accusation is that Christian schools are fronts for forced conversions, especially of lower caste-Hindus or, in the case of the incidents in rural Gujarat, proto-Hindu tribal peoples. Leaders of Christian missions, which run 16,500 schools as well as 6,500 hospitals, orphanages and old-age homes, wearily shake their heads at the charges. "If we had been converting through our schools," says Alan de Lastic, Archbishop of Delhi, "there would be 500 million Christians in India today."

The linking of the Christian threat and Sonia Gandhi, who assiduously downplays her origins by not celebrating Christmas and constantly stressing her attachment to India, has hardly been subtle. "The rate of conversions to Christianity has increased ever since Sonia Gandhi became president of the Congress Party early last year," claims VHP international secretary Praveen Togadia. "Christians have also become more assertive." That produces head-shaking among Congressmen. Says party spokesperson Girija Vyas: "It's nonsensical. Sometimes we feel ashamed even to react to what they say."

Sonia's initial response to the attacks on Christians in December was muted; within the party, there was fear that she would walk into the BJP's trap. But she did finally visit the site of the attacks, and last week gave a speech criticizing "certain sections of our society who spread the politics of hate and antagonism." She quoted an ancient Sanskrit saying: "Truth is one, the wise pursue it variously." Gujarat's vulnerable Christians have learned how dangerous that pursuit can be, and anti-Christian tension is spreading to other areas, such as the violence-prone state of Bihar. "It's probably our lot to suffer," says Archbishop de Lastic--at least through the next election.

Reported by Maseeh Rahman/New Delhi

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R E L A T E D S T O R I E S : Martyrs Pakistan's followers of Christ face a bloody fate