New Delhi, India – Vishal Paliwal, a 57-year-old worker for Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), spent Tuesday afternoon sleeping at home as India counted more than 640 million votes cast in its national elections.
A granite stone trader in the northwestern state of Rajasthan, Paliwal lost his livelihood after Modi announced an overnight lockdown during the COVID-19 pandemic. But Paliwal remained loyal to the BJP. Also in the elections that just ended, he was unable to come out and vote for the opposition.
However, a switch was flipped for him. “I also couldn’t vote for the BJP,” Paliwal said.
When Paliwal woke up from his siesta, the nation had also changed. The BJP lost its majority, in a stunning verdict that defied the polls, reduced to 240 seats in the 543-member Lok Sabha – the lower house of India’s parliament – down from the 303 it won in 2019. It is still ready to form. the next government with a set of regional partners under its National Democratic Alliance (NDA). But Paliwal said the fall in the party’s numbers represented a necessary course correction for the nation.
“I was very happy to see the results,” Paliwal said. “People chose an opposition, not a government, when voting this time. We really needed this.”
As Modi prepares to take oath on Sunday for his third term, his exhausted term could shape what India’s next government will look like, analysts said. The Telugu Desam Party (TDP) and the Janata Dal (United), the two biggest allies that Modi depends on to reach the halfway point in the Lok Sabha, are believed to have already made tough demands on the BJP – from positions of high profile. in the Cabinet and as president of the Chamber for a common governance program.
The BJP insists that its third consecutive term will be uneventful. “These are unfounded and misguided fears,” Zafar Islam, BJP national spokesperson, told Al Jazeera. “Everyone in the NDA has confidence in PM Modi’s leadership – the way the government has been run in the last 10 years will be the same. There is no disconnect between our partners.”
However, both the TDP and JD(U) insist that they are secular parties and have Muslim voters in their support base. The BJP has been accused of trying to cover up hate crimes, high unemployment, rising inflation and rising inequality through Hindu majoritarian politics. Now, these allies, serving as fundamental pillars of support for the government, could serve as a check on Modi, analysts and human rights activists said.
“Indian voters have collectively ensured that Modi will not be able to function as a dictator as he has in the last 10 years,” said Harsh Mander, a prominent human rights activist who once served as a bureaucrat. “There is no evidence that he consulted his office before making any major decisions. And that’s over now, I hope.
‘Vote for the lesser evil’
Afreen Fatima, a 26-year-old Muslim activist, was traveling between her home and the courts trying to free her detained father, Javed Mohammad, when police in riot gear surrounded her home in June 2022. Mohammad was detained by police because of the protests in his hometown of Prayagraj in Uttar Pradesh, India’s largest state, against anti-Islamic comments made by a member of Modi’s party that triggered an international backlash against New Delhi.
State authorities, ruled by BJP chief minister Yogi Adityanath, hired excavators to demolish the building that Fatima called home for years, following a tactic that Amnesty International described it as “deliberate punishment of the Muslim community”.
Two years later, as Modi referenced a series of anti-Muslim tropes during the election campaign, Fatima said she felt the BJP’s proposal was “humiliating and dehumanizing”.
“I hope the BJP has been humiliated by this mandate which will put an end to its arrogance,” she said. The BJP lost the Fatima parliamentary constituency of Prayagraj by over 50,000 votes. He lost all four districts around the controversial Ram Temple, built on the site of the demolished 16th-century Babri mosque, and inaugurated by Modi in January, effectively marking the launch of his re-election campaign.
However, says Fátima, too much hope is dangerous. “I’m not sure if it was a vote against anti-incumbency or a vote against hate. Or if hate has been defeated,” she said. “In the absence of alternatives, we vote for the lesser evil to defeat the greater monster.”
Fátima is also concerned about the lack of representation of the Muslim community within the opposition alliance and also in the Indian parliament. In fact, the number of Muslim candidates put forward by all parties has fallen from 115 to 78 since the last elections in 2019. Only 24 of them were elected to Parliament, the lowest figure since independence.
However, hate speech has skyrocketed in India in recent years. India averaged nearly two anti-Muslim hate speech events per day in 2023 and three in four of these events – or 75 percent – occurred in states ruled by Modi’s BJP, according to a report by India Hate Lab ( IHL), a research group based in the United States.
‘I hope we are recovering our country’
But it’s not just Muslims that critics accuse Modi of targeting. In February this year, investigative agencies raided multiple facilities linked to Mander, the human rights activist, over allegations that he had received foreign donations without proper government approvals. Mander denies the accusations. Two opposition chief ministers have been arrested on corruption charges in recent months, and the homes and offices of other opposition political leaders have been raided.
In the days following the attacks against him, Mander said he felt distraught and isolated. He said he asked himself: “Was India always this country? Have we lost the secular republic?” The election results, he said, reaffirmed his faith in Indian democracy.
Meanwhile, Modi’s return to office will also compound a conundrum for the US and Western countries, said Michael Kugelman, director of the Wilson Center’s South Asia Institute. The dilemma, he said, was about “how to frame the reality of the strategic importance of engaging with India [as a counterweight to China in the region] as the country slides towards illiberalism.”
“The results were a very humbling moment for [the BJP and Modi],” said Kugelman. “Modi will no longer be seen as invincible and the opposition will no longer be dead in the water. And if the BJP wants to govern in coalition, it will have to reduce some of its expectations and ambitions.”
For now, Modi and the BJP are underlining the rarity of their achievement as they move towards forming India’s next government. Modi will become only the second Indian leader after Jawaharlal Nehru, independent India’s first prime minister, to return to power after a third consecutive election. But choppy waters may lie ahead for Modi and Amir Shah, India’s home minister, who is widely seen as the prime minister’s deputy.
“The exit [of any public figure] defines the persistent image,” said Dilip Cherian, a renowned political strategist and image consultant. “And the exit route may not be so smooth for Modi and Shah.”
Mander said “there is hope that we are taking our country back.” However, he suggested, it would be naive of the BJP’s critics to think that the election served as an antidote to the social tensions that have deepened in India in recent years. “This election created space [for Modi critics] but it will not solve the core crisis of hate in Indian society,” he said.
This story originally appeared on Aljazeera.com read the full story
