THERE WAS A TIME WHEN THE SYMBOLS employed by the Bharatiya Janata Party, India's main opposition group, were entirely Hindu: the lotus flower was its election icon, and top leaders rode around the country atop mechanized versions of chariots from Indian religious epics. The semiotics were effective: by appealing to the sentiments of India's 740 million Hindus, nearly 80% of the population, the B.J.P. now controls 119 seats in the 545-member Parliament, up from a mere two in the 1980s.

At a convention in Bombay earlier this month, however, the B.J.P. displayed a very different kind of symbol. As the party leadership took seats on a cloth-covered dais, a vast canvas mural loomed behind them showing New Delhi's Red Fort, built in the 17th century by Shah Jahan, a Muslim Emperor. This time, religion was beside the point: the Red Fort is the symbol of national power in India. The Prime Minister delivers a speech from one of its higher platforms each year on Independence Day, and the B.J.P.'s message was plain: the ramparts and turrets would soon be theirs. Thundered party ideologue Atal Behari Vajpayee: "Our gallop to New Delhi is unstoppable."

Just a few years ago, many Indians agreed, and the rumble of those hooves created major consternation as India and the outside world pondered the implications of a religion-based government in a land that is home to 190 million non-Hindus. But the B.J.P. has thrown a few shoes recently, making its gallop to power far less than certain in the next general election, to be held in the first half of 1996. So cloudy are the party's prospects that the leadership has toned down its lotus and chariot act, which seemed to be backfiring. The B.J.P.'s main pitch in the next campaign will be that India needs a change from the Congress Party, which has governed for 44 of the past 48 years. According to one of its more popular slogans, the B.J.P. IS THE PARTY WITH A DIFFERENCE.

That assertion worked for Bill Clinton in 1992 and countless politicians before him. But the B.J.P. is also attempting a quiet shuffle to the political center, which could conceivably broaden its mass appeal--and simultaneously erode its core support among the Hindu right. With each sideways step, it edges closer to the party it is determined to repudiate. "Much like the Congress," says Ashis Nandy, director of the Center for the Study of Developing Societies, "the B.J.P. is trying to emerge as a catch-all framework that can accommodate the entire spectrum of political opinion."

That isn't an easy task in any country. The B.J.P. has to convince the electorate that it can be for India what the Congress was, only better. The party's strongest weapon so far is a continual broadside against Congress's blunders and loose ethical standards. High on the roster of mistakes is Kashmir, where a seven-year separatist insurgency has claimed nearly 20,000 lives. The B.J.P.'s idea of a solution remains rooted in the party's pro-Hindu, rightist past. Instead of greater autonomy for the Kashmiris, as Prime Minister P. V. Narashimha Rao has proposed, the B.J.P. wants to remove all the state's special privileges, which it denounces as preferential treatment for non-Hindus. On morals, the Congress has provided plentiful ammunition to any potential sniper. Last summer, for instance, a junior Congress leader was accused of murdering his wife and having her body incinerated in a tandoor oven in a New Delhi hotel. Corruption has reached all time highs, in the public perception at least. Said B.J.P. spokesperson Sushma Swaraj: "Six years ago Rajiv Gandhi was defeated over a $50 million corruption scandal. Under the Rao government, the various scams run up to $5 billion." The B.J.P. also portrays the Congress as an undisciplined organization prone to factional ruptures that rattle the government in New Delhi and cause serial collapses of state governments.

B.J.P. leaders say they practice intraparty discipline--and many people believed them as long as the party remained out of power. But this year, two state governments controlled or supported by the party fractured in the unattractive manner of Congress governments of the past. In the western state of Gujarat, the B.J.P. had two-thirds of the seats in the local legislature, ample opportunity to show party discipline in action. But six months after the house was convened, two rival B.J.P. factions fell out and publicly traded accusations of corruption and gangster connections.

On policy, the Congress and the B.J.P. are more alike than different. Both parties envision India as a modern, industrialized country with a strong military. But one issue prompts clear-cut divergence. For political purposes, the B.J.P. lambastes Rao's economic liberalization program and proposes instead a policy it calls "Swadeshi," a Hindi term for economic nationalism and self-reliance. The B.J.P. questions Rao's quest for more foreign investment, and in the past six months, state governments controlled or supported by the B.J.P. have shut down a $2.8 billion power plant being built by Enron Corp. of the U.S. and a Kentucky Fried Chicken outlet in New Delhi. Depending on which B.J.P. leader you listen to, certain foreign investors such as Coca-Cola and Pepsi might be asked to leave if the party comes to power in 1996.

The B.J.P.'s policy owes less to ideology than to an apparent desire for publicity. Taking a longer perspective, its public doubts over foreign investment were standard Congress policy for 44 years--and if they resonate with the public, the B.J.P. can thank a succession of Congress leaders who preached the doctrine of economic self-reliance.

The party's main hope is that public disgust with the Congress has reached the same levels as in 1977, when voters turned out the government of Indira Gandhi, and in 1989, when her son Rajiv was ousted. One problem with that analysis is that Rao, a cautious and skillful politician, doesn't attract the loyalty the Gandhis did--or the sort of anti-Congress backlash so evident in those two elections. And Indian voters well remember the fractious, inept governments that replaced the Congress and were themselves swiftly booted out of office. Says Sitaram Kesri, Federal Welfare Minister: "Voters have seen that these non-Congress parties make tall claims, but once installed in office, they crack and crumble to pieces." Vulnerable as the Congress may seem, the B.J.P.'s passage to the Red Fort will be anything but an easy chariot ride.

--Reported by Anita Pratap, New Delhi