[Counting votes up till now, Mr.
Modi’s Hindu nationalist party, the Bharatiya Janata Party, was assured of
winning more than 283 seats, enough to form a government without brokering a
coalition deal with any of India ’s
fractious regional leaders. If that happens, Mr. Modi will take power with the
strongest mandate of any Indian leader since Rajiv Gandhi of the Indian
National Congress took office in 1984, riding the wave of sympathy that
followed the assassination of his mother, Indira Gandhi.]
By Ellen Barry
In a humiliation for Mr. Gandhi,
43, a group of workers gathered around party headquarters in the capital city,
chanting “Bring Priyanka, Save Congress,” a reference to his younger sister,
who is seen as the more charismatic politician. Abhishek Manu Singhvi, a
Congress spokesman, conceded that the party had been defeated.
“If the leads are correct, the
results are conclusive,” he said, in a telephone interview. Another spokesman,
Randeep Singh Surjewala, also confirmed the loss, saying “We humbly accept the
verdict of the people of India .
We shall continue to play with rigor the role of a constructive and meaningful
opposition – the role that the people of India
have assigned to us.”
Counting votes up till now, Mr.
Modi’s Hindu nationalist party, the Bharatiya Janata Party, was assured of
winning more than 283 seats, enough to form a government without brokering a
coalition deal with any of India ’s
fractious regional leaders. If that happens, Mr. Modi will take power with the
strongest mandate of any Indian leader since Rajiv Gandhi of the Indian
National Congress took office in 1984, riding the wave of sympathy that
followed the assassination of his mother, Indira Gandhi.
Drummers, stilt-walkers and women
in colorful saris had converged at B.J.P. headquarters in Delhi ,
where party workers had laid out 100,000 laddoos, the ball-shaped sweets
ubiquitous at Indian celebrations. Among the revelers was Surinder Singh
Tiwana, 40, a lawyer.
“I can equate my jubilation
today, probably, to my mother’s on the day I was born,” Mr. Tiwana said. “This
is a huge change for our country, a change of guard. A billion plus people have
announced their mandate in no uncertain terms. They have voted for a
progressive, stable government.”
The elections came during a
period of rapid transition in Indian society, as urbanization and economic
growth break down generations-old voting patterns. With his conservative
ideology and steely style of leadership, Mr. Modi, who came from a humble
background and rose through the ranks of a Hindu nationalist group, will prove
a stark departure from his predecessors in that office.
Mr. Modi is a regional leader —
only the second ever to take the prime minister’s seat — known for maintaining
tight control over the bureaucracy and political system in Gujarat, the state
he has led for 13 years. His image as a stern, disciplined leader has attracted
vast throngs of voters, who hope he will crack down on corruption, jump-start India ’s
flagging economy and create manufacturing jobs.
But it also worries many people.
He is blamed by many of India ’s
Muslims for failing to stop bloody religious riots that raged through his home
state in 2002, leaving more than 1,000 people dead. Others fear he will try to
quash dissent and centralize authority in a capital that has long been
dominated by the Indian National Congress and the liberal internationalists
around it.
“He is very much the man who came
from nowhere,” said Swapan Dasgupta, a senior journalist who supports Mr. Modi.
“There is a great deal of nervousness that the old establishment which ruled,
that it will somehow be threatened. That may not be a bad idea, in terms of
encouraging a greater deal of social mobility.”
“I think over all we are going to
see a churning process,” he added.
Last summer, when Mr. Modi’s
campaigners insisted that the B.J.P. could win the 272 seats necessary to form
a government, the ambition seemed far-fetched.
After a decade in power, Congress
had succeeded in introducing a package of generous new welfare programs for
poor and rural Indians, who still make up the majority of the electorate.
Congress and its allies had a proven track record of campaigning in India ’s
villages, in contrast to the B.J.P., which has long been seen as a party of
urban traders.
But Mr. Modi seemed to benefit
from changes in the electorate. Nearly 100 million new voters were registered
ahead of this vote, including a vast influx of young people, and turnout broke
all previous records, hitting 66.4 percent.
Compared with their elders, these
young voters were unmoved by the decade-old history of the Gujarat riots, which
had prompted many Western governments, including the United States, to impose
visa bans on Mr. Modi. They also proved far less emotionally bound to the
Nehru-Gandhi dynasty, which has served as the backbone of the Congress party
since India won
its independence, surviving the wrenching assassinations of two of its members.
Shekhar Gupta, editor of The
Indian Express, a daily newspaper, called them “post-ideological Indians.”
“These people are born after
Indira Gandhi’s assassination,” he said. “For a lot of them, the 2002 riots are
not even a faint blur. What is imprinted on their memory is five years of
nongovernance, and a massive loss of white-collar jobs. Once you have gotten
used to 7 percent growth, to go down to 4.5 is a real recession.”
The Congress-led government has
often seemed rudderless in its second term.
Its prime minister, Manmohan
Singh, a distinguished economist, was a barely audible figure on the national
stage, and often appeared subordinated to the party’s president, Sonia Gandhi,
who was setting the stage for her son, Rahul, to take over.
The party’s leaders responded
slowly, if at all, to bursts of social media-driven street activism that
coalesced around the issue of corruption, and after a brutal gang rape that
shook Delhi in 2012. The party’s
presumed prime ministerial candidate, Mr. Gandhi, was a stilted campaigner who
always appeared reluctant to take the reins of the political dynasty. In the
final stage of the campaign, he ceded the spotlight to his more charismatic
sister, Priyanka.
In the end, Mr. Modi’s victory
will be seen largely as a function of his opponents’ weakness, said the
historian Ramachandra Guha.
“The context here is the
opposition: His rival is an heir apparent who is a bad orator, unwilling to
take administrative responsibility,” he said. Though Congress has, in the past,
regularly returned to power after being voted out, Mr. Guha said he thought the
dynasty’s younger generation might have trouble regrouping.
“The larger sociological shift is
that Indian society is becoming more democratic and less feudal, less
deferential to family privilege,” he said. “It’s possible that Rahul Gandhi and
Priyanka Gandhi cannot revive Congress, because India
has moved on.”
Suhasini Raj and Hari Kumar
contributed reporting
