Supriyo Chatterjee, June 14,2024
The results of the recent Indian parliamentary elections have come like the blessings of a stingy, malevolent god: the Hindu nationalists will rule but only just; the dispirited Opposition can do battle again but they must plan smart; the cowering minorities have some relief but only for now and the institutions of state are agonising if they can stand tall this time or whether to keep crawling.
After a decade in power,
Prime Minister Narendra Modi had a commanding presence but his Bharatiya Janata
Party (Indian People’s Party, the BJP) lost its majority and a fifth of its
seats this time, despite pouring money, seizing the funds of the main opposition
Congress party and banishing it and other rivals from television and most of
the print media. It will have to depend on its regional allies to keep ruling
but they know Modi has a habit of using and destroying them. The BJP took major
knocks in its strongholds of north and west India, which have some of the
biggest and most populous states, losing even in Ayodhya, the town where a
historic mosque was destroyed and a temple built on its ruins so as to develop
the area as Hinduism’s Vatican. The ruling party gained in the east and south
of the country, where it has an uncertain presence, but where it lost has been
more dispiriting than where it won against regional parties.
