India's New Era Confirmed by Vote

By Henry Srebrnik, Fredericton [N.B.]  Daily Gleaner

India, the world’s largest democracy has spoken, loud and clear, on behalf of Hindu nationalism.

If there remained any doubts, this past May’s election results confirmed it. This isn’t Jawaharlal Nehru and Indira Gandhi’s secular-socialist India anymore.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi and his ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) swept back into power.

The party won 303 seats in the 545-seat Lok Sabha, the lower house of India’s parliament, bettering the 282 seats they won in 2014.

That gave it the first back-to-back majority for a single party since 1984.

Modi won because he has been doing things right. His administration has focused on reforming and modernising India’s infrastructure and government, reducing bureaucracy, encouraging increased foreign direct investment, improving national standards of health and sanitation, and improving foreign relations.

The once-mighty Indian National Congress Party, led by Rahul Gandhi, which dominated India for its first three decades of independence, finished with a pathetic 52 seats.

Modi even criticized the once sacrosanct Nehru, Gandhi’s great-grandfather and India’s first prime minister, blaming him for the country’s border disputes with China and Pakistan and a lack of development while he was at the helm from 1947 to 1964.

India’s relationship with nuclear-armed rival Muslim-majority Pakistan became an issue in the lengthy election campaign – voting in the huge nation was spread over a six-week period -- after a suicide car bomb killed 40 Indian police officers in the contested Kashmir region in February.

The BJP espouses the nationalist doctrine known as Hindutva, which promotes the identification of national identity with the religious and cultural heritage of Hindus. It accused the Congress Party of being “soft” on Pakistan and “pampering” Kashmiri separatists.

Nationalists in the BJP want Modi to take a harder line on national security, as well as build a controversial temple on the site of a 16th-century mosque that was demolished by a Hindu mob in Ayodhya in 1992.

As he ran for re-election, Modi inaugurated a project in March that will radically transform the heart of Varanasi, Hinduism’s holiest city, which he represents in parliament, by carving a wide path from its Vishwanath Temple down to the Ganges River.

It is a place where Hindus believe they attain “moksha” (salvation) if they are cremated here upon their death. “It seems that God has chosen me” for this task, he stated. “This is sacred work on Earth.”

The project is raising anxieties among Varanasi’s Muslim community, which accounts for almost 30 per cent of its population. The temple sits adjacent to the Gyanvapi Mosque, which Hindu activists have long expressed a desire to destroy.

Muslims throughout India are feeling politically marginalized. Most voted for Congress or various regional parties. The BJP fielded only seven Muslim candidates in the 437 seats it contested.

However, in a speech delivered following his victory, Modi said he would work to win the trust of minorities.

While Modi’s first foreign visit since being elected is to India’s island neighbours Sri Lanka and the Maldives, none has been planned between him and Pakistan’s prime minister Imram Khan, when both will be attending the Shanghai Cooperation summit in Bishkek June 13-14.

That relationship remains as fraught as ever.