Final Result: Narendra Modi retains seat as the Prime Minister, governing with a coalition cabinet.
Narendra Modi has been humbled. In perhaps one of the world’s most unpredictable elections, India’s 640-million-vote-strong democracy has shown a tendency to deviate from expectations and exit polls, ultimately for the better. One can hope that the BJP’s Hindu nationalist and backsliding policies can be moderated in the presence of a coalition government.
Modi’s inability to attain a parliamentary majority—that is, attaining 240 seats in the 543-member-lower house of the Indian Parliament—may seem like a loss for Modi’s Bharatiya Janata party (BJP), but sets a positive precedent for democracies all around the world: that the notion of popular sovereignty does stand and the will of the people can turn the tide against democratic backsliding. Amidst a swarm of misinformation campaigns and even claiming his mandate to rule was given directly by God (interestingly, the same justification used by India’s colonizer: the British Monarch) (Dhillon 2024), Modi’s BJP appeared to be taking a dangerous turn to authoritarianism.
Notably, India’s tenuous democracy had been challenged before: during the 21-month period from June 1975 to March 1977 known as “the Emergency”, virtually all democratic institutions in India were formally abolished, a crisis constructed by Indira Gandhi.
India’s democracy appeared to be nose-diving into a similar crisis — this time, the people’s will prevailed.
References
Dhillon, Amrit. 2024. “India elections: PM Narendra Modi claims he has been chosen by God.” The Guardian. https://www.theguardian.com/world/article/2024/may/27/india-elections-pm-narendra-modi-claims-he-has-been-chosen-by-god.
Ellis, Hannah, and Arundhati Roy. 2024. “'Indian democracy fought back': Modi humbled as opposition gains ground.” The Guardian. https://www.theguardian.com/world/article/2024/jun/09/indian-elections-democracy-modi-opposition-gains-analysis.
Maizland, Lindsay, and Alyssa Ayres. 2024. “India's Muslims: An Increasingly Marginalized Population.” Council on Foreign Relations. https://www.cfr.org/backgrounder/india-muslims-marginalized-population-bjp-modi#chapter-title-0-7
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