Narendra Modi may have won a third term as prime minister, but he has lost the country. In a stunning verdict on 4 June, Modi and his ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) have been denied a simple majority. They have failed to win enough support to form the national government by themselves. Despite a surge of support, the opposition INDIA alliance led by the Congress Party and its leader Rahul Gandhi didn’t win enough votes to stake a claim on the government. At this moment, Delhi is gripped not only by uncertainty but also a new-found excitement at the return to old-style political jockeying. The country will have a coalition government. Overnight, the pall of suffocation created by a decade of Modi’s strongman style, which demanded total obedience to him and his authority, has lifted.
The scale of Modi’s loss may appear meagre – his vote share dropped from 37.4 per cent to 36.6 per cent – but its effect is monumental. Because the prime minister suffered the greatest losses in India’s Hindi heartland that has long been the bastion of his party’s ideology of Hindu nationalism, the result suggests the electorate is far from aligned with making India a Hindu-first polity. Strikingly, the city of Ayodhya which only a few months ago witnessed the consecration of the Ram Temple by Modi himself, has voted in a candidate from the opposition benches. Together, people from lower castes, the unemployed and Muslims have halted Modi’s ambitions to mould India into a one-party state.
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