For weeks, the announcement of India’s election results loomed as a moment of dread for millions of people who cherish the country’s commitment to secular democracy.
Throughout the marathon voting process, it seemed all but inevitable that Prime Minister Narendra Modi, who has fired up his right-wing Hindu supporters with attacks on India’s founding values, minorities and basic decency, would win a third consecutive landslide victory. His Bharatiya Janata Party was so confident of winning more seats than ever before that it provoked opponents in the long run-up to the election with the slogan “More than 400 seats this time.”
But as the results began to roll in on Tuesday, it was as if someone snapped their fingers and India woke up from a long hypnotic trance. Modi, who recently claimed that his birth was not a “biological” event but was sent by God, found himself unable to give his party even a simple majority in Parliament and to form a government on his own. He will probably remain prime minister for another five years. But his spell with voters seems to have broken, and with it, “Hindutva” – the BJP’s plan to turn India into a majority Hindu state – may have finally stalled.
Modi has been a commanding presence in India since first coming to power in 2014, but now his momentum is fading. In the 2019 general election, his party won 303 of the 543 seats in the parliament. His government, including 50 members from minority coalition partners, swamped the opposition. This time, his party won far fewer seats, 240, but with the help of partners he needs more than ever, he will be able to form a new coalition government. The opposition Indian Alliance, made up of the once-dominant Indian National Congress and more than 20 mostly regional parties, nearly matched the BJP’s number of seats, despite a highly unfair election campaign.
During its decade in power, Modi’s party has seized or subverted almost every important institution in India in an authoritarian style. One of the world’s richest parties, it created a fundraising mechanism using anonymous political donations that was ruled unconstitutional by India’s Supreme Court earlier this year. It has used government agencies to hunt down rivals, ensnaring them in endless investigations, freezing party bank accounts, and even jailing two opposition-ruled state chief ministers ahead of the polls. The BJP has used power, money, and pressure to split other parties and drive them away. It has effectively turned major TV channels and newspapers into propaganda weapons, offering financial rewards to those who cooperate and enforcement agencies to those who don’t.
The government-controlled media portrayed the election as a battle between a predestined natural winner and a bunch of opposition wannabes. In the end, the opposition Indian Alliance, represented by Congress leader Rahul Gandhi, won the support of voters who had suffered the consequences of Modi’s failed governance and misinformation spread through the media.
The young alliance shattered Modi’s aura of invincibility with a back-to-basics message that highlighted his failure to deliver even minimal economic benefits for many in the country who face historically high unemployment, rising prices and widening inequality despite booming financial markets.
Pinning hopes on the Indian Union may have seemed like a bold gamble. But its electoral success is an important statement that despite differences and the culture of fear that has underpinned Modi, India still has political parties that are united in their commitment to constitutional values and their will to stand up to Hindutva. The Union spans a broad range of the country’s political base, including states that are far more socially and economically advanced than many of the ruling party-controlled states. If the Indian Union can build on its success to challenge Modi, it will be good news for India.
Earlier this year, Mr. Modi, playing the role of priest-king, inaugurated a new Hindu temple in the pilgrimage city of Ayodhya, the culmination of a Hindu right-wing movement to build the temple on the site of a centuries-old mosque illegally destroyed by a Hindu mob in 1992. The structure was meant to symbolize the triumph of Hindutva and the alienation of India’s 200 million Muslims, who have been vilified by Mr. Modi and violently attacked by Hindu mobs, and ensure that Hindu voters would lead him to an easy victory. But even with the temple and a new airport, new roads and an improved train station near Ayodhya to lure worshippers, his party lost the seat in Faizabad, where Ayodhya is located.
With the Indian Union election campaign drawing attention to Modi’s failure to govern and the Bharatiya Janata Party’s goal of amending India’s comprehensive constitution, the prime minister went beyond the usual dog whistles and hit a low point by portraying the opposition as essentially trying to hand the country over to Muslims. But Modi’s stepped-up anti-Muslim rhetoric does not seem to have helped him. In fact, it may have done him more harm than good. Modi himself retained his seat, but by a narrower margin than in the last election.
The Indian coalition has weakened Mr. Modi and reopened the country’s political space. Mr. Modi will remain in power, but there is cautious hope that his government, which depends on its non-Hindutva allies for survival, will have less room to undermine democracy and terrorize Muslims and critics, and that state institutions like parliament and the courts will function properly again.
On the ground, the changes brought about by Modi’s Hindutva movement over the past decade have not been eradicated and there is still much work to be done, but supporters of a secular, democratic India can now breathe a little easier.
