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 was considered a near inevitability that Prime Minister Narendra Modi — who has galvanized his right-wing Hindu base with assaults on India’s founding values, minorities and basic decency — would win a third straight thumping victory. So assured was his Bharatiya Janata Party of winning an even larger share of parliamentary seats that in the long buildup to the general elections it taunted opponents with the slogan: “This time, 400 plus.”
But as the election results began rolling out on Tuesday, it was as if someone snapped their fingers and India emerged from a long period of hypnosis. Mr. Modi, who recently claimed that his birth was not a “biological” event but that he had been sent by God, failed to even deliver his party a simple parliamentary majority, leaving it unable to form a government on its own. He will probably remain prime minister for another five-year term. But his spell over voters seems to have been broken, and with it “Hindutva” — the B.J.P.’s project to turn India into a majoritarian Hindu-nationalist state — may have finally hit a roadblock.
Mr. Modi has towered over India since first sweeping to power in 2014. He is now diminished. In the 2019 elections, his party won 303 of the 543 seats. His government, which also included 50 parliamentarians from minor coalition partners, ran roughshod over the opposition. This time Mr. Modi’s party has secured a far fewer 240 seats, but will be able to form another coalition government with the help of partners who are needed more than ever. The opposition I.N.D.I.A. alliance — formed by the once-dominant Indian National Congress and more than two dozen mostly regional parties — nearly equaled the B.J.P. tally despite a deeply unfair electoral playing field.
During its 10 years in power, Mr. Modi’s party has, in the style of authoritarian regimes, captured or subverted nearly every significant institution in India. One of the richest political parties in the world, it created a fund-raising mechanism — declared unconstitutional by India’s Supreme Court earlier this year — to take advantage of anonymous political donations. The party has gone after its rivals using government agencies, tying them up in endless investigations, freezing party bank accounts and even jailing two chief ministers from opposition-controlled states in the run-up to the vote. The B.J.P. has used its power, money and pressure to split other political parties and engineer defections. It has effectively turned major television broadcasters and newspapers into propaganda arms, financially rewarding those who play ball and turning enforcement agencies on those who do not.
The government-controlled media treated the election as a contest between a predestined, natural winner and a bunch of wannabes. In the end, the opposition I.N.D.I.A. alliance, with the Congress party’s Rahul Gandhi as its national face, won over voters who had suffered the consequences of Modi’s governance failures and the misinformation it propagated through the media.
