NEW DELHI: India’s polls may return Narendra Modi to power for a third term but Tuesday’s results did not have the taste of win for extremist prime minister. Indeed, as the early counts of the votes started to roll in, it was clear this was going to be one of the most discomfiting moments for Modi and his BJP in over a decade.
According to The Guardian, the BJP went into these polls, which began way back in April, with a confident arrogance and the slogan “ab ki baar, 400 paar”, a target to win 400 seats – more than two-thirds of parliament, a feat only obtained once before. Narendra Modi’s return to power, with the same if not stronger majority, was referred to by pundits and analysts as almost an inevitability, given the carefully curated cult of personality that has built up around the leader and his centralization of power over the past decade. As late as this past weekend, exit polls predictable a BJP landslide and tens of thousands of ladoos [sweets], were prepared in anticipation of victory parties across India.
Yet that sweeping majority has not materialized, and instead a more diverse and complicated picture of India’s political landscape appeared. The BJP as a singular party looks set to lose more than 60 seats, bringing its predicted total down to around 240 – not enough to form a majority on its own and making it dependent on its political partners for the first time.
While the BJP’s alliance as a whole has likely won just under 300 seats, enough to form a majority government under Narendra Modi, it is with a far more weakened mandate than ever before. Many of its political allies have a far less hardline Hindu extremist agenda than the BJP and several court back from Muslim voters.
It is expected to make it far harder for Modi to move forward with many of his more radical and extremist Hindu-first policies, especially involving citizenship registration and laws accused of directly discriminating against Muslims. There is now little chance of the BJP having the parliamentary votes required to change India’s secular constitution, which had been a potent fear among many opponents.
Michael Kugelman, director of the Wilson Center’s South Asia Institute, termed the results as “one of its major political blows for the BJP over the decade that it’s been in power”.
“Modi is no longer the politically invincible figure that many had presumed he was,” said Kugelman. “The question moving forward is: how will this new reality impact his governance and his way of going regarding things? Will he be a humiliated leader and will he decide to scale back some of his motivations?”
The election results were a surprisingly sweet outcome for India’s battered and aching political opposition, especially the BJP’s main opponent, Indian National Congress, who many analysts and pundits had written off prior to the elections as too weak and disorganized to compete with Modi and his Hindu extremist majoritarian politics. However, the opposition proved more resilient in the recent elections.
Though various parties alleged sustained attacks by the extremist BJP, opposition managed to capture widespread frustrations among the citizens – especially in poorer rural areas – at chronic unemployment, high inflation and low wages.
While Modi sought to distract from these problems with increasingly polarized messaging seeking to play on Hindu-Muslim divisions, it seemed that his government’s failure to create quality job opportunities, especially for the vast youth population, was not an easy thing for people to ignore.
Nowhere was this picture more stark than in the state of Uttar Pradesh, which delivered one of the biggest shocks of all to the BJP. India’s politically important state has been seen as a BJP stronghold over the past decade, led by one of the party’s most extremist figures, the radical monk Yogi Adityanath.
Yet it was here that the Modi’s BJP suffered the most high-profile losses, including Ayodhya, the city where a few months ago Modi inaugurated the newly built Ram temple – established on the site of a demolished mosque – that many in the BJP had supposed would help deliver them a resounding win.
Returning for a third term in power – a feat only obtained before by India’s first prime minister, Jawaharlal Nehru – Modi is expected to face a very different political situation from the one he has been used to, and now faces a galvanized and more powerful opposition.
Subir Sinha, director of the Soas South Asia institute said that now, Modi’s hands will likely be tied by coalition allies and it will be much harder to push through his big ticket reforms, adding It will be a rocky road for him ahead.
Commenting over the results, Pratap Bhanu Mehta, a columnist for the Indian Express, termed the election as “a wondrous moment and said, “ The air of hopelessness, the suffocating shadow of authoritarianism, and the nauseous winds of communalism have, at least for the moment, lifted”.
