Intense feelings about Mr. Modi, for or against, Helped drive turnout to 67 percent, the highest ever
By Jeffrey Gettleman, Vindu Goel, Kai Schultz, Suhasini Raj & Hari Kumar
He called himself India’s watchman, even as minorities said they felt unsafe under his gaze. He boasted of his humble origins while doing favors for billionaires. He spoke the language of business, yet could not deliver enough jobs to Indians aspiring to a better life. Despite those contradictions, Narendra Modi, India’s incumbent prime minister, led his party to a stunning election victory on Thursday, eviscerating the opposition and giving Hindu nationalists the strongest hand they have held in modern Indian history.
His mix of brawny Hindu nationalism, populist humility and grand gestures for the poor like building tens of millions of new toilets helped him become the first prime minister in nearly 50 years to win a majority in successive parliamentary elections. “This is the victory of the mother who was longing for a toilet,” Mr. Modi said in a speech to supporters on Thursday night. “This victory is of the farmers who sweat to fill the stomachs of others.”
Many Indians see Mr. Modi, 68, as a nationalist icon. He stood up to China, nearly went to war with Pakistan and brought India closer to the United States. During the campaign, he described himself as the chowkidar the watchman. And many Indians felt he was the best leader to raise India’s standing in the world.
His success mirrors the rise of right-leaning populist figures around the world. But detractors say his commitment to giving more power to the country’s Hindu majority has struck fear in the Muslim minority and is pulling the country’s delicate social fabric apart. Under him, mob lynchings have shot up, Muslim representation in Parliament has dropped to its lowest level in decades, and right-wing Hindus have felt emboldened to push an extreme agenda, including lionizing the man who fatally shot the independence hero Mohandas K. Gandhi.
Yet in Indian politics today, no other figure can approach Mr. Modi’s aura. Analysts call him “larger than life” and “a cinematic character.” His Bharatiya Janata Party, by far India’s richest and most aggressive, has built a personality cult around him, and in speeches he refers to himself in the third person. “Are you happy that Modi kills by entering homes?” he thundered at a recent rally, recalling the airstrike he ordered on Pakistan in February. “Doesn’t your chest puff out with pride?”
“Modi has embedded himself in every Indian’s consciousness,” said Arati Jerath, a prominent newspaper columnist. In contrast, Rahul Gandhi, the leader of the opposition Indian National Congress party and the scion of a long political dynasty, is widely perceived as inexperienced and weak. In acknowledging his defeat, Mr. Gandhi said that the country was engaged in a long ideological battle, and “love never loses.”
The election turnout was one for the history books the largest democratic exercise ever. From April 11 to May 19, more than 600 million Indians cast ballots at a million polling stations from high in the Himalayas to the tropical islands in the Andaman Sea.
Intense feelings about Mr. Modi, for or against, helped drive turnout to 67 percent, the highest ever.
Even some voters who were worried about the economy or did not like the way Mr. Modi had stirred communal divisions said they still saw him as the best leader for India now. “Farmers are in trouble,” said Vinay Tyagi, a wheat and sugar cane farmer in the swing state of Uttar Pradesh. “But we still voted for the B.J.P. because there was no alternative for us. The other candidates weren’t good.”
To keep his job, Mr. Modi campaigned relentlessly, holding 142 rallies and covering 65,000 miles. On the night before voting ended, he meditated in a Himalayan cave in the same area where, more than 50 years earlier, he had wandered as a young man searching for purpose.
Mr. Modi will be the first two-time prime minister ever to come from a lower caste. He grew up poor in a small town north of Ahmedabad, in the state of Gujarat. This has been a powerful part of his narrative: He calls himself a lowly chaiwalla, a tea-seller, a clear jab at India’s elite.
‘Courtesy New York Times’.