Buoyed by panchayat wins, Nepal Janata Party works to expand — ‘will make Nepal Hindu Rashtra’

NJP vice president Khem Nath Acharya visited India & met BJP chief J.P. Nadda and other leaders earlier this month. In an interview, he speaks about party & its roots in Sangh ideology.

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.

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  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’.