New Delhi: When then Nepal Prime Minister Sher Bahadur Deuba arrived in India on 1 April 2022 for a three-day official visit, he also visited the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) headquarters at the invitation of party president J.P. Nadda.
Nadda then gifted him a copy of Integral Humanism, a book by Deen Dayal Upadhyay.
That was only the beginning of the BJP president’s interactions with the heads of governments — a new initiative taken at the behest of Prime Minister Narendra Modi, who wanted the party to have closer ties with leaders and parties in foreign countries, a senior BJP leader told ThePrint.
Such interactions are supposed to address “misapprehensions” about its ideology and politics abroad, a senior party leader said.
When the party was in the Opposition, foreign dignitaries met BJP presidents, but such meetings stopped after the party assumed power.
However, the party launched the ‘Know BJP’ initiative on the party’s foundation day on 6 April 2022 to address overseas audiences and engage with them.
Since then, Nadda has met over a dozen heads of government from Nepal, Mauritius, Kenya, Bhutan, Vietnam, and Tanzania, among others, and the foreign minister of Singapore.
Nadda also met former Nepal prime minister Pushpa Kamal Dahal, alias Prachanda, on 17 July 2022.
The Malaysian Prime Minister will visit India next week, and Nadda will likely meet PM Anwar Ibrahim, too.
“It is a part of the global outreach programme of the BJP, and this will also enhance the party-to-party connect. The idea is to exchange ideas and make them more aware of what the BJP stands for,” said Vijay Chauthaiwale, who is in charge of BJP’s foreign affairs department.
‘There is a lot of curiosity about BJP’
According to sources in the BJP, the idea behind the initiative came from Modi.
“The PM has always stressed the importance of the party, and such visits help connect with foreign dignitaries. When heads of the foreign government come to India, it provides an opportunity to connect with them, gain further political understanding of their party, and make them aware of the BJP,” said a senior party leader.
A source in the party pointed out that during the United Progressive Alliance (UPA) “it was routine that heads of the country would meet, say Sonia Gandhi”.
Explaining the rationale behind the move, a party functionary said, “There are a lot of things people do not know about India, the electoral reality of India, the structure and membership programme of the BJP, how we use the Namo App to connect with the cadre.”
“During such meetings, we get a lot of queries about such things, and during government-to-government dialogues, these things are, obviously, not taken up”.
The party invited foreign politicians to observe how the BJP fights elections and took foreign diplomats to various states in India to witness the electoral process and Modi’s rallies during the 2024 Lok Sabha elections.
“There is a lot of curiosity about BJP, and at the same time, misconceptions. Such meetings provide an opportunity to clear such misconceptions. We are planning to hold many more such programmes with foreign delegates, and more party-to-party interactions will take place, too,” said the functionary.
(Edited by Madhurita Goswami)
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