Modi And The Indian Election: The Waning Appeal Of Hindu Nationalism
(ANALYSIS) The 2024 election results in India indicate several significant changes in the nation’s political landscape, one notable shift being the steep decline in the influence of Prime Minister Narendra Modi, who has been the only face of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP).
Let’s start with Varanasi, Modi’s own constituency. The prime minister secured a third consecutive term but with a substantially reduced victory margin. Modi defeated Congress’s Ajay Rai by 152,513 votes, a margin considerably less than in the 2019 and 2014 elections — 479,505 votes and 371,784 votes respectively. This dip in vote share in a constituency that has been a BJP stronghold signals a decrease in voter enthusiasm for Modi.
Nationally, the BJP faced tougher competition from the opposition INDIA alliance, which capitalized on the growing dissatisfaction with the ruling party.
READ: How Indian Voters Saw Through Modi’s Religious Rhetoric
While the manifesto of the Congress party, the leader of the INDIA alliance, was titled “Nyay Patra,” or Declaration of Justice, the BJP opted to call its manifesto “Modi Ki Guarantee,” or Modi’s Guarantee. In his campaign, Rahul Gandhi, the face of the Congress party, emphasized the various facets of justice and the values enshrined in the Constitution.
Conversely, Modi focused more on critiquing the Congress party’s manifesto, interpreting it in a manner that suited his narrative, rather than discussing his achievements for the people over the past decade.
After a decade in power, Modi and his party seemingly overlooked a fundamental question: If Modi is the face of the party as well as its election campaign, what does that face represent? Did they assume his image alone would signify a “guarantee” to the country’s people? If so, they should have highlighted the “guarantees” that were fulfilled and honored. However, they appeared to lack such examples.
Due to his background and ongoing political stance, Modi inherently represented Hindutva, or Hindu nationalism. He reinforced this image in his speeches by making negative references to the Muslim minority, which was perceivably an attempt to divert attention from the lack of tangible examples of fulfilled “guarantees.”
Issues such as economic challenges, unemployment and social policies seemed to overshadow the religious and nationalist rhetoric that had previously buoyed the BJP. Consequently, the INDIA alliance, despite its resource disadvantages, managed to make significant inroads and challenge the BJP’s dominance.
In the Banswara constituency, where Modi referred to Muslims as “infiltrators” and “those who have more children” during his speech in an apparent violation of the Election Commission of India’s Model Code of Conduct and the Representation of the People Act, 1951, the BJP candidate Mahendrajeetsingh Malviya was defeated by Rajkumar Roat of the Bharat Adivasi Party by a margin of over 247,000 votes.
Further, more than a dozen of Modi’s Union ministers lost in their respective constituencies. Below are the names of 16 of them. Many of these names might be unfamiliar to you, as the BJP has primarily invested in Modi as the party’s face:
(1) Ajay Mishra Teni, the Minister of State for Home Affairs; (2) Arjun Munda, the Minister of Tribal Affairs and Minister of Agriculture and Farmers’ Welfare; (3) Bhanu Pratap Singh Verma, the Minister of State for Micro, Small and Medium Enterprises; (4) Kailash Choudhary, the Minister of State for Agriculture and Farmers’ Welfare; (5) Kapil Moreshwar Patil, the Minister of State for Panchayati Raj; (6) Kaushal Kishore, the Minister of State for Housing and Urban Affairs; (7) L. Murugan, the Minister of State for Information & Broadcasting and Fisheries, Animal Husbandry and Dairying; (8) Mahendra Nath Pandey, the Minister of Heavy Industries; (9) Raj Kumar Singh, the Minister of Power and New and Renewable Energy; (10) Rajeev Chandrasekhar, the Minister of State for Electronics and Information Technology and Minister of State for Skill Development and Entrepreneurship as well as the Minister of State for Jal Shakti; (11) Raosaheb Dadarao Danve, the Minister of State for Railways, Minister of State for Coal and Minister of State for Mines; (12) Sadhvi Niranjan Jyoti, the Minister of State for Consumer Affairs, Food and Public Distribution and Rural Development; (13) Sanjeev Balyan, the Minister of State for Animal Husbandry, Fisheries and Dairying; (14) Smriti Irani, the Minister of Women and Child Development and Minister of Minority Affairs; (15) Subhas Sarkar, the Minister of State for Education; (16) V. Muraleedharan, the Minister of State for External Affairs and Minister of State for Parliamentary Affairs.
Furthermore, the election results in Uttar Pradesh, a key state for any party’s success and which has been seen as a BJP stronghold, confirm this trend against Modi’s persona. The BJP secured only 33 of the 80 seats in this state. The party had won 63 seats in the 2019 elections.
In the northeast India, the BJP government’s failure to control, and the alleged involvement of its local leaders in, the ongoing violence in Manipur, which began on May 3, 2023, is unprecedented. It has thus far resulted in the deaths of at least 186 Kuki-Zo tribal people and an undeclared number of people from the majority Meitei community and has posed a threat to the national security. This alone could have been a sufficient reason for Modi’s decline if the people of the country and the media had demonstrated enough empathy for their fellow Indians in the northeastern states.
In Manipur, despite the BJP governing, it lost both of the state’s seats to the Congress party, including in the Hindu Meitei stronghold of the Imphal valley region, also known as the inner Manipur constituency.
Now that the appeal of Hindu nationalism has waned — as explained in a previous Newsreel Asia Insight — the unsolvable problem the BJP faces is what Modi’s image can represent. His governance record is also not a viable option, as it was the lack of effective governance that cost the BJP its expected votes. Therefore, the question is whether the BJP would find it worthwhile to once again spend billions on damage control for Modi’s image through PR agencies.
The people of India cannot be taken for granted, the election results have shown.
This article has been reprinted with permission from Newsreel Asia.
Vishal Arora is an independent journalist based in New Delhi, India, who covers Asia and beyond. He serves as editor of @Newsreel_Asia and is a board member of The Media Project. He’s written for many outlets including The Wall Street Journal, The Diplomat and The Caravan.