India’s Elections Shocked the World. They Shouldn’t Have.

Modi remains beloved by vast swaths of Hindu nationalists, but his swelling stature has created friction between the BJP and RSS—the former, an organization whose leadership has largely been filled by Modi’s inner circle, and the latter, a rigidly ideological organization, whose cultural mission of Hindu supremacy takes precedence over any single individual. Power struggles  between the Modi circle and RSS leadership have brewed for years, and spilled out into the open this election season. In an interview conducted last month, BJP President J.P. Nadda, a close Modi ally, shocked political observers when he openly stated what had, until then, been discernible only by insinuation: “In the beginning we would have been less capable, smaller and needed the RSS. Today, we have grown and we are capable. The BJP runs itself.”

This lack of grassroots support among party workers and loyalists must also be contextualized against a broader sense of resentment held by rural Indians, especially in the north. Unemployment has soared in recent years; the economy has languished while wealth inequality soars; educational opportunities have dwindled; social welfare systems haven’t been able to deliver as promised. After a full decade in office, there is little room for the Prime Minister to evade responsibility for the national government’s shortcomings. In many constituencies across India, races became localized referendums on the current state of life in India. 

Ever the nimble politician, Modi deployed familiar tactics to try and nationalize the election. Most notably, he injected brazenly majoritarian, anti-Muslim rhetoric into his campaigning. Though his anti-Muslim politics are well-known, Modi (as Prime Minister) has typically deployed dog whistles rather than open hate speech—but his tenor shifted sharply during this election season. During one speech in Rajasthan, he chillingly described Muslims as “infiltrators” who “have more children” and accused them of disproportionately collecting government benefits. Days later, during another speech, he accused opposition leaders of performing mujra (a Mughal-era dance historically performed by courtesans) to curry favor with Muslim voters. To some, these crass proclamations could be interpreted as a sort of overconfidence, a certainty of victory that allowed him to present his politics entirely unmediated. But to others, this change in tone  revealed a new sense of desperation.

Though large portions of the Indian public subscribe to Modi’s breed of Hindu nationalism, for millions of Indians, these ideological commitments pale in comparison to the anger elicited by the BJP’s failures to govern. These failures rarely received any media attention from mainstream outlets, which all prostrated to the BJP in portraying the Prime Minister as both invincible and infallible. Only thanks to the nation’s burgeoning independent media ecosystem did these sorts of stories get any traction. Modi’s attempt to divert attention away from the material deficiencies of everyday life, and towards this greater ideological battle, fell flat. 

Perhaps the best example of this may be seen in the grand Ram Mandir (Temple) in the north Indian city of Ayodhya, which opened in January of this year. The city has become a site of holy pilgrimage over the last few centuries, owing to the myth that the Hindu deity Rama was born there thousands of years ago. The temple was constructed on the ruins of a mosque destroyed by Hindu nationalist paramilitaries (who worked in tandem with BJP politicians) in 1992, in an event that helped supercharge the Hindu nationalist political movement. When Modi, the head of state of an ostensibly secular nation, presided over the temple’s consecration in January of this year, hundreds of millions of Indians celebrated. The temple was seen as a shining, grand edifice to Modi’s Hindu supremacist India—one that not only legitimated, but sanctified, majoritarian mob violence. 

On the ground, however, the construction of the temple drew the ire of residents in Ayodhya. Many had their homes seized and destroyed by the government, and were either given meager compensation or lackluster dwellings on the outskirts of the city. The slums that surrounded the temple largely remained undeveloped, and for many locals, the temple became a symbol not of a triumphant Hindu identity, but of a government preoccupied by its own performance of grandeur, at the expense of the poor. Last week, voters in Ayodhya’s parliamentary constituency shocked the nation when they voted out their BJP representative. Constituencies across India did the same. 

This, of course, is just a brief snapshot of certain themes that colored this election—a more complete analysis would consider other factors, such as shifting caste allegiances, evolving party politics at the state and regional levels, the roles of competing regional and cultural chauvinisms. It will take months, if not years, to sift through the data of the 640 million votes cast—and even then, India is too large and heterogenous for easy answers. “There is no single overarching explanation that would apply to this election,” one analyst has asserted. “Any theory that you’re going to come up with won’t be applicable in a neighboring state.”

But coming out of last week, there are certain things that we can definitively say. For one, even as this rightly feels like a victory for Modi’s opponents, his party remains the strongest force in Indian politics. BJP vote shares spiked in southern states, such as Tamil Nadu and Kerala, areas that have historically been resistant to the BJP’s brand of politics, but in recent years, have received enormous investments from the party—now, they seem poised to break through in those states’ upcoming assembly elections. The BJP also emerged victorious in the eastern state of Odisha, routing the incumbent regional Biju Janata Dal (BJD) party from parliament, now holding 20 of the state’s 21 seats. The BJP’s losses in the north (as well as in Maharashtra and West Bengal) shouldn’t necessarily be taken as a rejection of Hindu nationalism. The ideology is alive and well, and will continue its long march throughout the country. 

Still, this result is undoubtedly a setback for Modi’s regime, which, for the first time, will have to rely on other parties to stay in power. Modi’s fiat to rule will now have a real check, and his government, with just a 21 seat majority, can’t afford any reckless overreach. One wrong move may cause the departure of coalition allies (most of whom aren’t doctrinal Hindu nationalists), which could humiliatingly topple the NDA government. This dilution of BJP’s mandate should also enable a reinvigoration of Indian civil society, which has languished under a decade of suppression. Activist groups and NGOs have been routinely punished over the last decade for their advocacy, especially when they criticize government policy—this will likely change in a freer political environment. Media outlets, as well, will hopefully feel emboldened to report stories without fear of state reprisal.

Most of all, this electoral performance has punctured Modi’s aura of invincibility. It has given his opponents the confidence to challenge Modi and the BJP head-on. Even as key leaders of the opposing electoral alliance sat in jail on trumped up charges, and even as Congress Party bank accounts were frozen during the election season, the opposition still managed to put forth a strong performance by drawing attention to the BJP’s failed policies (and tapping into the anti-incumbency sentiments that often attach to governing parties after so many years in powerr). The opposition coalition, the INDIA Alliance, is a sprawling, unwieldy political configuration, one composed of dozens of parties (many of whom have bitterly fought one another over the years). The INDIA Alliance’s challenge, now, will be to remain united as they propose an alternative to the hostile, exclusionary consensus championed by the BJP. 

A return to the pre-Modi status quo won’t suffice—after all, it’s that status quo that birthed the explosion of strongman Hindu nationalism. Opposition leaders in politics and civil society must go far beyond that, and put forth an expansive vision for India that guarantees economic and social justice for all, across caste, class, or religion. Indian voters rejected the fatalism that the rest of the world projected onto their nation, and they wrested away their political system from an authoritarian chokehold. Now, the opposition must meet the voters’ mandate.