NEW DELHI (AFP) -- A crisis within India's main opposition, the Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), appears to have worsened a month after their drubbing in general elections.

The disastrous showing by India's right-wing has provoked a bitter leadership struggle and an even more intense debate over the party's future ideological direction, with members unsure whether to head for centre ground.
Over the weekend, the party held what was slated to be a crucial summit of its top-ranking members, all of whom were said to agree that party policy should be recast towards “an inclusive, tolerant philosophy.”
What the party was hoping to do was take back some of the centre ground from the governing Congress Party, whose resounding election win appeared to show Indian voters were uninterested in the sectarian politics of old.
But things did not work out that way for the BJP, with policy discussions cast aside and top party officials at each others' throats.
“The situation in the party is volcanic,” senior BJP official Sushma Swaraj admitted before the talks.
“If the BJP does not make an assessment (of policy) now they will never recover,” was the bleak assessment of another senior BJP leader, Jaswant Singh.
The fall-out from the election defeat has also prompted the resignation of top BJP member Yashwant Sinha, who accused party leaders of being too self-centered to serve the public.
The weekend meeting ended in more acrimony, with the spat prompting the emergence of two rival factions within the once-powerful party.
On the one side are moderates, who blame inflammatory anti-Muslim campaign speeches by the likes of Varun Gandhi -- a hawk and the black sheep of the Nehru-Gandhi political clan who dominate Congress.
“Change is good. Muslims must not go off the party's radar,” the BJP's prime ministerial candidate, L.K. Advani, said in an appeal for the party to be more inclusive.
“It has been suggested that the BJP doesn't need Muslim votes ... it is a mistake,” said a Muslim member of the party, Mukhtar Abbas Naqvi.
The moderates are worried that the search for a new leader will focus on the BJP chief minister of Gujarat, Narendra Modi, who has built an image as a business-savvy modernizer.
But Modi is tainted by horrific anti-Muslim riots that rocked Gujarat in 2002 following the torching of a train carriage carrying Hindu pilgrims.
On the other side are hardliners who feel the BJP is drifting too far away from the militant Hinduism that originally propelled the party to prominence.
“If a party cannot satisfy its own core constituency... then it is a love lost,” said Pravin Togadia, leader of the Vishwa Hindu Parishad (VHP), a hardline Hindu outfit aligned with the BJP.
Traditionally, the BJP has close links with right-wing Hindu revivalist groups, champions of a sectarian Hindu nationalist philosophy.
Raghuvir Tyagi, a professor of political science at Delhi University, said the BJP was in disarray and will have a hard time recovering.
“The damage is done and recasting the agenda is just a waste of time,” he said. “The BJP is collapsing like a pack of cards.”
According to the Indian Express newspaper, the world's largest democracy now finds itself with no powerful opposition voice.
“Post-elections, the (BJP) party has never looked like getting it's act together. India cannot afford a situation in which the government winds up with not having to defend its agenda,” it said.