New Delhi: A political party with the lotus as its election symbol and a Hindu Rashtra as its ultimate goal. Sound familiar?
No, it’s not the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP). This is the Nepal Janata Party (NJP), a Nepalese political outfit inspired by the growth and the trajectory of India’s BJP that’s now planning to expand its base in the Himalayan country.
In Nepal’s politics, which is primarily dominated by Left and Centre-Left parties, the NJP stands apart because of its Hindutva credentials. The party has been making plans to contest the 2027 general election in Nepal after having won 17 seats in local elections last year.
Earlier this month, the NJP’s 46-year-old senior vice-president, Khem Nath Acharya, visited Delhi. In the national capital, he met BJP leaders including party chief J.P. Nadda, general secretary (organisation) B.L. Santhosh, Union minister Arjun Ram Meghwal and Ladakh MP Jamyang Tsering Namgyal. He also met yoga guru Ramdev’s associate Bal Krishna and a number of leaders in Delhi and Haryana.
“In devbhoomi (God’s land) Nepal, where more than 80 percent of the population practises Hinduism, Hindus are still scared of their Hindu identity because the country is run by so-called seculars,” he told ThePrint in an interview. “Religious conversions are a big threat today. We have been raising our voice for quite some time and now we feel the time has come to make Nepal a Hindu Rashtra.”
The NJP, he said, was founded in 2004 and had been contesting various elections in Nepal since 2006. But it wasn’t until last year that the party gained some electoral success.
“In a local (village-level) election, we won in three panels in which 17 people got elected. We made the party fully active two and a half months ago. The symbol was given to us 19 years ago,” he said, adding that the party had become particularly active in the past three months.
Acharya’s visit comes at a time when a report by the US Department of State alleging interference by Indian Hindutva groups in Nepal’s politics has caused a stir. The report claims that groups associated with the BJP have been providing funding to influential politicians in the Himalayan country to abandon secularism.
During his visit, Acharya spoke to ThePrint about NJP, its shared ideology with the BJP and its stated political aims and plans — including making Nepal a ‘Hindu Rashtra’.
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‘Same but different’
At first glance, the NJP is much like the BJP. Not only does it follow the ideals of Hindu identity and BJP icon Deendayal Upadhyaya’s “integral humanism” — a philosophy that keeps human beings at the core of all social, political, and economic models — but like the Indian party, draws much of its membership from the Sangh Parivar.
Acharya, for instance, has been associated with Hindu Swayamsevak Sangh (HSS), which decribes itself as a “social, educational, and cultural organisation for Hindus living outside India”.
When asked about his visit to India and the similarity between NJP and the BJP, Acharya said that the election symbols were much the same but “a slight variation”. For context, while the the BJP election symbol has green leaves, NJP’s is saffron throughout except for the stem.
“The NJP and the BJP are the same on the ideological front as well as on the principle of Hindu Rashtra,” he said. “We believe in the integral humanism ideology propounded by Deendayal Upadhyaya just like the BJP”.
The politics of Nepal is “slowly changing”, he said. Even the “so-called seculars and communists” will not be able to do their politics without acknowledging Nepal as a Hindu nation.
Indeed, in 2022, Prem Ale — then the minister for tourism and culture and a leader of the Communist Party of Nepal (Unified Socialist) — had said the demand to make Nepal a Hindu state “will be considered”. Ale, who was speaking at the opening of the two-day executive council meeting of the World Hindu Federation in Kathmandu, had added that should such a demand rise, he would “play a constructive role”.
According to Acharya, the NJP stands a better chance in the 2027 general elections. The party, he says, has 40,000 members and is looking to contest 100 of the Nepal Parliament’s 275 seats in the 2027 elections.
“We have now revived the party and have managed to win 17 seats in local panchayat elections, which is a starting point for us,” he said. “We are confident of doing well (in the 2027 elections) as many issues related to the Hindu community that we have been highlighting are resonating with the voters.”
On ‘Hindu Rashtra’ and shared ‘Sangh’ ideology
Acharya’s visit comes at a time when Nepal is seeing a distinct rise in Hindu nationalism. In February this year, the country’s former king, Gyanendra Shah, reportedly joined a campaign to make it a ‘Hindu kingdom’ once more, just as it had been before the democracy movement in 2006 led to the abolition of the monarchy two years later.
But Acharya refused to share details of what was discussed in his meetings with BJP leaders in the capital.
“It was a political visit and it’s not wise to share everything, but we did meet a number of leaders such as BJP president J.P. Nadda.” he said. “We visited the BJP office twice to meet the general secretary (organisation) (referring to Santosh) and a few BJP MPs. We also met BJP leaders from Haryana.”
He added that he met the leaders because of their shared Sangh backgrounds.
“I am also a Sangh leader and the BJP also has a Sangh background. That’s why I wanted to meet the leaders and exchange our views,” he said.
The lotus, he said, blooms everywhere in Nepal, “in plains as well in the Himalayan region”.
“From a religious point of view, it’s linked to Lakhsmi and Buddha ji, which is why we decided on this symbol and it became our election symbol,” he said.
He also spoke a little about his party’s decision to follow Deendayal Upadhyaya’s “integral humanism”, which according to him, “stems from the Vedas and the Upanishads“.
“The Vedas originated in Nepal,” he said. “Deendayal ji gave this philosophy a written form and the BJP has been following this ideology for quite some time. We are a little late but we are also following the same ideology.”
The party’s stated aim, he said, is to make Nepal a Hindu Rashtra. It’s for this reason that it seeks to strengthen its ties with the BJP.
“We’ve been trying to meet the Hindu samaj (community) leaders across the world,” he said. “We’re also looking at ways to strengthen the relationship between the two countries (India and Nepal) and ensure that a third country can’t weaken these ties.”
(Edited by Uttara Ramaswamy)
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