Suddenly, the aura of invincibility surrounding Modi was shattered.
In an Indian election in which Modi’s party’s slogan promised a landslide victory and Modi even repeatedly claimed that he was sent by God, the results released on Tuesday were unexpectedly sobering.
Modi, 73, appears to be on course for a third consecutive term as prime minister, a feat only one other Indian leader has accomplished, while his Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) secured far more seats than any other party.
But instead of a resounding victory, the BJP lost dozens of seats. Now it finds itself at the mercy of coalition partners – including a politician notorious for frequently switching sides – to maintain power, a sharp reversal a decade into Mr Modi’s transformational tenure.
The country’s stock market plunged after the results were announced. The opposition parties rejoiced in their newly united efforts to save the country’s democracy. While India is consolidating Modi’s power, it is also aware that his political power is limited, although he usually conducts elections seat by seat, purely for himself.
Modi took a more positive view in X’s statement, declaring that his alliance had won a third term. “This is a historic feat in Indian history,” he said.
A generous reading of the results for Mr Modi might be that it was only through his personal push that his party was able to overcome its unpopularity at the local level and scrape by. Or maybe the brand he carefully cultivated has now reached its peak and he can no longer shake off the anti-incumbency sentiment that would eventually engulf nearly every politician.
How Modi will react is uncertain – whether he will step up to thwart any challenge to his power or be punished by voters’ verdict, and whether he will need to work with coalition partners who do not share his Hindu nationalist ideology .
“Modi is not a recognized figure. However, he is very pragmatic,” said Arati Jerath, a political analyst in New Delhi. “He will have to moderate his hard-line Hindu nationalist approach to the issue. Maybe we can hope for him to be more moderate.
There is no doubt, however, that Mr Modi will work over the next five years to deepen his already considerable influence in the country.
Under his leadership, India, the world’s most populous country, has gained a new status on the global stage, overhauled infrastructure to meet the needs of its 1.4 billion people and filled the country with new ideas as it tries to shake off the legacy of the past. ambitions.
At the same time, Modi has worked to transform a deeply diverse country held together by a secular democracy into an overtly Hindu-first state, marginalizing the country’s large Muslim minority.
His critics say his increasingly authoritarian turn – in which a crackdown on dissent has created a chilling environment of self-censorship – has brought India’s tumultuous democracy closer to a one-party state. The country’s economic growth, while rapid, has mostly enriched those at the top.
Modi rose from humble beginnings as the son of a tea merchant to become India’s most powerful and most powerful man in decades by building a cult of personality, investing heavily in infrastructure and welfare and tilting India’s democracy in his favor. Popular leader.
The ultimate goal is to cement his status as one of the most important prime ministers in India’s nearly 75 years of existence and make the Bharatiya Janata Party the only credible national governing force in the country.
But Tuesday’s results signaled a sharp about-face for India’s embattled main opposition party, the Indian National Congress, which many believe has been irreparably weakened after crushing defeats in two previous elections.
The once-dominant Congress party, which has long been at the center of Indian politics and has struggled for years to find direction and offer an ideological alternative to the Bharatiya Janata Party, has struggled in this election to overcome unemployment, Issues such as unemployment have attacked the Modi government and gained attention.
Last year, when Rahul Gandhi, a public figure from the Congress party, tried to boost his status by marching long distances across India, the Bharatiya Janata Party mired him in a court case that led to his expulsion parliament. He was later reinstated to his seat by India’s Supreme Court and is expected to win re-election on Tuesday.
On his early return home, 53-year-old Gandhi said the fight was not just against the BJP but against all government agencies that had sided with Modi and tried to arrest and suppress the opposition.
“This is about saving the Constitution,” he said, picking up a small copy of the Constitution that he carried with him and displayed in campaign speeches.
Exit polls released on Saturday, after more than six weeks of voting, showed Modi’s party heading for a comfortable victory. But there were signs during the campaign that Modi was worried about the outcome.
For about two months, he held more than 200 rallies across the country and gave dozens of interviews, hoping to use his charisma to paper over any weaknesses in the party. In his speeches, he often strays from his party’s message about India’s rise to counter accusations that he privileges business and caste elites. He has also abandoned his once subtle dog whistles against India’s 200 million Muslims and instead demonized them by name.
As things stand, Modi will need his allies to gain at least 33 seats by evening to surpass the 272 needed to form a government.
Two regional parties in particular will emerge as kingmakers: the Telugu Desam Party in the southern state of Andhra Pradesh, with 16 seats, and the United People’s Party in the eastern state of Bihar, with 12 seats.
Both parties are avowedly secular, raising hopes among Modi’s opponents that their influence could slow his bid to transform India’s democracy into a Hindu-first state.
Modi’s biggest losses come from India’s most populous northern state of Uttar Pradesh, with a population of about 240 million. His party leads the state government and won 62 of the 80 seats in the state’s lower house at the last election in 2019.
As the count entered its final phase on Tuesday evening, the BJP was leading by just 33 seats. In Modi’s own constituency Varanasi, his victory margin has shrunk from 500,000 last time to about 150,000.
The defeat in Fazabad constituency, in particular, illustrates how some of the prime minister’s biggest initiatives have struggled to connect with voters.
The constituency is home to the lavish Rama temple in Ayodhya, which was built on land disputed between Hindus and Muslims. Its construction is a cornerstone of the nearly century-old Hindu nationalist movement that propelled Modi to power. He hopes a grand inauguration ceremony ahead of the campaign will both unite his Hindu support base and attract new supporters.
Some BJP workers said the party’s showboating of temples could make a large section of Hindus at the bottom of the strict caste system uncomfortable. The opposition portrays Modi as pursuing an upper-caste agenda and denying poor Hindus the chance to reverse centuries of oppression.
“The opposition is united by overemphasis on the Ram temple issue,” said Subhash Punia, a 62-year-old farmer from Rajasthan who supports Modi and was at the Indian People’s Congress in Delhi on Tuesday. Waiting outside the party headquarters.
To offset potential losses in his stronghold in the Hindi-speaking north, Modi has set a lofty goal for this election: to gain a foothold in the country’s more prosperous south.
He broke some new ground in Kerala, a state dominated by the political left and long hostile to his ideology. But overall, in the south, his party won 129 seats at the last election, 29 of which were difficult to improve.
Perhaps the biggest disappointment for the BJP in southern India is that it once again appears not to have won any of the 40 seats in Tamil Nadu, a state with a strong cultural and linguistic identity.
Modi campaigned aggressively there, even heading to a coastal town for two days of meditation as polling drew to a close.
“Mr. Modi and the BJP’s antics cannot win my Tamil heart,” said S. Ganesan, a waiter at a hotel in Kanyakumari town where Modi visited.
Mujib Mashar, Alex Traveley, Hari Kumar and Samir Yasir According to reports from New Delhi, Suhasini Raj From Varanasi, India Pragati Knowledge Base From Bangalore, India.
