[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.]
By Jeffrey Gettleman, Vindu
Goel, Kai Schultz, Suhasini Raj and Hari Kumar
 |
|
Supporters
of the Bharatiya Janata Party in New Delhi on Thursday, as the vote
count
showed an increasing lead. Credit Saumya Khandelwal
for The New York Times
|
NEW
DELHI — 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.
At age 8, he became part of the Rashtriya
Swayamsevak Sangh, a right-wing Hindu group that would play a huge role in his
life. Its members are the foot soldiers of the Hindu nationalist movement, and
some critics have accused it of embracing fascism — in the 1930s, the group’s
members were inspired by Mussolini’s Italy.
In school, Mr. Modi was known as an average
student, but he demonstrated a talent for theater and debating.
When he was around 18, he went on his
Himalayan sojourn, contemplating a life as an ascetic priest. In a recent
interview, he said that he had bathed in freezing rivers, hung around holy men
and learned to “align himself with the rhythm of the universe.”
He also deserted the young woman whom his
parents had arranged for him to marry. Even now it is unclear whether Mr. Modi
ever lived with her.
In his 20s and 30s, he was a preacher for the
R.S.S., and then a worker for the B.J.P. in Gujarat, where he oversaw the
printing of banned pamphlets pushing Hindutva, the belief in the primacy of the
Hindu religion and way of life. Analysts say he remains an “ultranationalist” at
his core.
“He is very divisive,” said Ms. Jerath, the
newspaper columnist. “He believes in the politics of polarization: us against
them, Hindus against Muslims, rich against poor, poor against rich.”
A pivotal event came in February 2002, when
Gujarat exploded in religious riots. Mr. Modi, then chief minister of the
state, was blamed for not stopping the bloodshed, which left more than 1,000
people dead, most of them Muslim.
From then on, Mr. Modi would be known among
the Hindu right as a hero. Many Muslims considered him a killer.
But in the next few years, Mr. Modi sought to
cultivate a different reputation. He became a friend of free enterprise and
helped attract thousands of manufacturing jobs to Gujarat.
Business people and middle-class voters began
to rally around him, seeing him as someone who could get results. At the same
time, the dynastic Congress party, which led India for most of its history
since independence from Britain, was collapsing, plagued by scandals and the
absence of an inspiring leader.
In 2014, the first time Mr. Modi ran for
prime minister, he emphasized infrastructure, development and rooting out
corruption. His B.J.P. won a landslide, and Congress suffered its biggest
defeat — winning only 44 seats out of 543, the party’s worst showing in its
100-year-plus history.
Once in office, Mr. Modi swiftly consolidated
power, making big decisions within a small circle of advisers.
He quickly announced several high-profile
social programs, including the building of 100 million new toilets, a goal his
government has nearly reached. Many voters in this election cited the toilets —
and the dignity they brought — as one reason for giving him their vote.
But there were also troubling signs. Hindu
nationalists, encouraged by the election of one of their own to the country’s
highest office, began persecuting and even killing Muslims and low-caste
Hindus.
Mr. Modi and his party appointed Hindu
nationalists to key posts at universities and government agencies. They changed
place names from Muslim to Hindu and rewrote children’s history books, purging
entire sections on Muslim rulers.
In November 2016, Mr. Modi suddenly
invalidated most of the nation’s currency in the name of fighting corruption.
The move made it nearly impossible to use cash in a country that relied on it
for everything.
Seven months later, the government replaced a
complex set of state taxes with a single national goods and services tax. While
most economists say it was a sensible reform, the new system was so complicated
that it caused chaos at millions of small businesses.
The twin blows battered the economy and
paralyzed job growth in a country where five million young people enter the
work force every year. He was also criticized for signing a multibillion-dollar
fighter jet deal with France that sent part of the work to an Indian
billionaire with no experience.
Still, supporters say that Mr. Modi cut
bureaucracy for businesses, invested in major infrastructure like roads and
tried to tackle some of India’s biggest problems, such as a lack of health care
for the poor.
As the campaign began, many analysts
predicted that Mr. Modi would lose support over India’s economic challenges.
Everything changed on Feb. 14, when a suicide
bomber blew up a bus of paramilitary forces in Pulwama in the state of Kashmir,
which both India and Pakistan claim. Jingoism surged, and so did Mr. Modi’s
approval ratings. He campaigned hard on national security, and voters seemed to
respond.
“The scale of the win is remarkable,” said
Menaka Guruswamy, a senior lawyer in India’s Supreme Court and lecturer at
Columbia Law School.
But she added: “I don’t know of a word that
begins to capture how deeply divided we are at this point.’’
Sameer Yasir and Shalini Venugopal
contributed reporting from New Delhi, and Ayesha Venkataraman from Mapusa,
India.
