Suddenly, the aura of invincibility surrounding Narendra Modi was shattered.
In India's general election, Modi's party slogans predicted an overwhelming victory. Modi even repeatedly called himself a god-sent leader, but the results announced on Tuesday were unexpectedly sobering.
Modi, 73, appears to have secured a third term as prime minister, a feat only one other Indian leader has achieved, with his Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) winning far more seats than any other party.
But instead of a landslide victory, the BJP lost dozens of seats and now finds itself resigned to staying in power at the mercy of its coalition partners — including a politician notorious for frequent defections — in a dramatic shift during Modi’s decade in power.
Indian stocks plunged as the results came in. Opposition parties cheered what they called an effort to save the country's democracy. While extending Modi's tight grip on power, India is also aware that his political influence is limited. Although he usually campaigns on a seat-by-seat basis, he is all about himself in this election.
Modi struck a more positive tone in his statement on Thursday, declaring his coalition had won a third term in office. “This is a historic feat in the history of India,” he said.
For Modi, an optimistic reading of the results might be that only through his personal efforts was his party able to overcome its unpopularity at the local level and scrape by, or that his carefully crafted brand had now peaked and he could no longer escape the anti-establishment sentiment that almost all politicians eventually encounter.
How Modi will react is uncertain — whether he will double down and reject any challenge to his power, or be smacked by voters’ verdict and need to work with coalition partners who do not share his Hindu nationalist ideology.
“Modi is not a consensus-oriented figure. But he is very pragmatic,” said Arati Jalat, a New Delhi-based political analyst. “He will have to moderate his hard-line Hindu nationalist approach to issues. Maybe we can expect him to be more moderate.”
Yet few doubt that over the next five years Modi will seek to deepen his already enormous influence on the country.
Under his leadership, India, the world's most populous country, has gained a new stature on the global stage, overhauled its infrastructure to meet the needs of its 1.4 billion people and taken on new ambitions as it tries to break free from the legacy of a long colonial past.
At the same time, Modi has worked to transform a diverse country held together by a secular democracy into a distinctly Hindu-first nation that marginalizes the country’s large Muslim minority.
Critics say his increasingly authoritarian policies — cracking down on dissent and fostering an environment of chilling self-censorship — have pushed India’s raucous democracy toward a one-party state. Despite rapid economic growth, much of the wealth has accrued to the top.
Modi rose from humble beginnings as the son of a tea vendor to become India's most powerful and popular leader in decades by building a cult of personality, investing heavily in infrastructure and welfare, and bending India's democratic system to his own advantage.
The ultimate goal is to consolidate his position as one of the most influential prime ministers of the Indian republic in nearly 75 years and make the BJP India's only viable national ruling party.
But Tuesday's results represented a dramatic shift for India's embattled main opposition party, the Indian National Congress, which many saw as irreparably weakened after heavy defeats in the previous two elections.
The once-dominant Congress party, long at the center of Indian politics, has struggled for years to find its direction and offer an ideological alternative to the BJP, but it and its coalition partners have found support in this election by attacking Modi's government on issues such as unemployment, social justice and the prime minister's ties to India's billionaires.
Last year, Congress leader Rahul Gandhi tried to boost his standing by leading long marches across India, but the BJP embroiled him in a legal battle that led to his resignation. Expelled from ParliamentHe was later reinstated by India's Supreme Court and is due to be re-elected on Tuesday.
Gandhi, 53, speaking as early election results were announced, said the fight was not just against the BJP but against all government institutions that had sided with Modi and tried to hamper the opposition through arrests and other punitive measures.
“This is about saving the Constitution,” he said, holding up a small book he carries with him and displays during campaign speeches.
Exit polls released on SaturdayMore than six weeks after voting, the world's largest democratic election has finally concluded with a clear sign that Modi's party will win handily. But during the campaign, there were signs that Modi's Worry about the results.
In about two months, he held more than 200 rallies across the country and gave dozens of interviews, hoping to use his personal charm to cover up any weaknesses in the party. In his speeches, he often strayed from the party's propaganda slogan, namely rise India has refuted accusations that he favors the business and caste elites. He has also abandoned his previous dark campaign against India's 200 million Muslims and instead Demonize them directlyby name.
By nightfall, Modi will need to get at least 33 seats from his allies to reach the minimum requirement of 272 seats to form a government.
Two regional parties in particular will emerge as kingmakers: the Telugu Desam Party in the southern state of Andhra Pradesh with 16 seats and the Janata Dal (United) in the eastern state of Bihar with 12 seats.
Both parties are avowedly secular, giving hope to Modi's opponents that their influence can slow his transformation of India into a Hindu-first democracy.
Modi suffered the biggest loss in Uttar Pradesh, India’s most populous state with about 240 million people. Modi’s party leads the government there and won 62 of the state’s 80 lower house seats in the last election in 2019.
On Tuesday evening, when the vote counting entered the final stage, the BJP was leading in only 33 seats in the constituency. In Varanasi, Modi's constituency, his lead narrowed from 500,000 last time to around 150,000.
The defeat in Faizabad constituency in particular illustrates how some of the prime minister’s biggest initiatives have struggled to resonate with voters.
The constituency is The luxurious Ram Temple The mosque, built on land disputed between Hindus and Muslims, is a cornerstone of the nearly century-old Hindu nationalist movement that propelled Modi to power. He hopes a grand inauguration before the start of his campaign will both rally his Hindu support base and attract new ones.
Some BJP workers say the party's display of temples could make the large number of Hindus at the bottom of the strict caste system uncomfortable. The opposition has portrayed Modi as pushing an upper-caste agenda that deprives disadvantaged Hindus of a chance to reverse centuries of oppression.
“The opposition has united because of the overemphasis on the Ram temple issue,” said Subhash Punia, 62, a farmer from Rajasthan who supports Modi and waited outside the BJP headquarters in Delhi on Tuesday.
To offset potential losses in his Hindi-speaking northern stronghold, Modi has set a lofty goal for this election: gaining a foothold in the country’s more prosperous south.
He broke some ground in Kerala, a state dominated by Left politics that has long been hostile to his ideology, but overall he has struggled to make gains in the south, where his party won just 29 of the 129 seats it won in the last election.
Perhaps the biggest disappointment for the BJP in south India is that it once again appears to have failed to win the 40 seats in Tamil Nadu, a state with a strong cultural and linguistic identity.
Modi campaigned aggressively there, even traveling to a coastal town for two days of meditation as voting drew to a close.
“Mr Modi and the BJP’s antics cannot win the hearts of my Tamil people,” said S. Ganesan, a waiter at a hotel in Kanyakumari, which Modi visited.
Mujib Mashar, Alex Travelley, Harry Kumar and Samir Yasir New Delhi reported that Suhasini Raj From Varanasi, India, Bhagatti KB From Bangalore, India.
