A comprehensive, unbiased and\n timely biography of the Bharatiya Janata Party. The counting of votes in the\n general elections of 2014 began on the morning of 16 May. By mid-day, the\n Bharatiya Janata Party stormed into power with a full majority in the Lok\n Sabha, the only other party after the Congress in 1984 to have received such\n a resounding mandate. The BJP traces its origins to the Bharatiya Jana Sangh,\n originally set up by Syama Prasad Mookerjee in 1951 to take up the cause of\n Bengali Hindus in erstwhile East Pakistan. A bit player in Indian politics,\n the Jana Sangh only entered the big league after it forged an alliance with\n several other players to form the Janata Party and take on Indira Gandhi in\n 1977. This coalition broke up in 1980 and it was then that the BJP emerged in\n its present avatar. Today, the party has a pan-Indian presence with a devoted\n base, not just within the country but also among the Hindu diaspora\n worldwide. However, the BJP's remarkable rise has not been without struggle.\n It was only in 1998 nearly two decades after its founding that the party\n first tasted power. Voted out in 2004, the BJP sat in the Opposition for a\n decade before taking up the reins again in 2004. And, while the BJP, since\n its inception, has presented a popular democratic alternative to the\n Congress, it has struggled to shed its image of being overtly wedded to the\n pro-Hindutva agenda. In The Saffron Tide, a timely biography of the BJP,\n Kingshuk Nag traces the history of the party of India and crystal-gazes to\n estimate the course that it will chart for itself in the coming years.\n Balanced, informative and thought-provoking, this volume will be\n indispensable for anyone interested in the political history of\n post-Independence India. Key Features: Written by an author and political\n journalist with years of experience under his belt, this book will be the\n most current and first comprehensive biography of the party since The\n Brotherhood in Saffron by Walter Anderson and Shridhar Damle that was\n released in 1988. It is extremely timely, keeping in mind the general\n elections. The forward-looking epilogue has been written after the results\n were declared and this is the first book in the market that talks about the\n aftermath of the result. In a completely unbiased manner, Kingshuk Nag traces\n the BJP's rise in a book that will be read by all those interested in the\n party's philosophy, its origins and its future.