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We don't like to have so few items, but there were three BIG news stories yesterday, and not a lot else (unless you want, for example, another item about how Jimmy Carter is fading away).
Anyhow, there have been some pretty momentous elections around the world in the past couple of weeks, and we want to follow up on those before too much time has passed. So today, we're going to have a few reports from readers more expert than we are on the election in India. Then, on Friday, it will be the elections in Mexico, South Africa and the EU. Next week, we'll try to make some sense of it all, and give some thoughts about how it all relates to U.S. politics.
And with that said, here's S.A.K. in Karnataka, India:
For those of us who have followed politics in India, especially over the past decade or so, the latest general election results are the most dramatic in that period. I would go as far as to say this century.
Let me level-set here. Narendra Modi and his party, the BJP, won a big mandate in 2014 on the back of anti-incumbency as well as a rising wave of Hindutva (a conflation of national and religious identity on the far right). They won an even bigger one in 2019, this time banking on the Pulwama attack. The last 10 years saw all of the following perpetrated by the regime (in no particular order):It was against this backdrop that dates for the general election were announced in March this year.
- Extreme communal rhetoric and dog whistling against the minorities, specially Muslims. This was amplified many times over during election campaign seasons for state legislatures and the Lok Sabha (lower house of Parliament).
- A vast ecosystem created by the social media cell of the BJP (the dreaded 'IT cell') to spread fake news, especially targeting the minorities. Altnews has done a fantastic job righting that wrong. But it can only do so much when fake news is combined with cheap smartphones and cheaper intent.
- An almost across-the-board sellout of media (both print and TV) to the benefit of the ruling regime. National media houses like The Times Group and the India Today Group have led the charge on this front. Mukesh Ambani's Network18 Group wasn't far behind. Network18, incidentally, has a franchise licensing agreement with CNN Worldwide. NDTV, one of India's oldest media houses, had remained the last vestige of independent media. That too was gone with Gautam Adani becoming a majority shareholder in December 2022.
- The handful of journalists that dared to speak up against the regime were imprisoned on trumped up charges.
- Passage of bills in the Lok Sabha and state legislatures (where the BJP ruled) that targeted Muslims. The triple talaq bill comes to mind. This bill ostensibly was passed to help Muslim women, but it turned into a weapon to victimize Muslim men.
- Abrogation of article 370 of the Constitution. This has led to disastrous consequences for Kashmir and Ladakh. The Supreme Court upheld it as constitutional.
- Courts of law being mute spectators except in rare cases. Even several Supreme Court judges were in the bag for the regime, including a couple of chief justices. The current CJI has exhibited a spine at times.
- A few months before the announcement of dates of the general elections, two sitting chief ministers (similar to governors in U.S. states), Arvind Kejriwal and Hemant Soren, both belonging to opposition political parties, were arrested and jailed.
- Bank accounts of the largest opposition party (the INC) were frozen, due to alleged irregularities.
The BJP (which is said to be in perpetual election mode ) hit the ground running with its campaign. As it turns out this was the absolute lowest of the low campaigns for a Lok Sabha election the country has seen. Modi started the campaign by claiming that his party would singlehandedly win more than 400 seats. And he also presented a reason for why that was important. He indulged in extremely toxic communal rhetoric targeting Muslims, referring to them as infiltrators. You can read here and here about how dirty this campaign was.
Exit poll results were released on the evening of June 1 (after the last round of elections was over). Almost all of them predicted 350-400 seats for the BJP alone . Those predictions led to a huge buying spree in the stock markets on June 3 (the BJP is a business-friendly party and encourages crony capitalism). When the actual results started pouring in on June 4, stock markets crashed by as much as 10%, recovering a bit later in the day. There are already calls for those pollsters to be investigated for possible fraud they might have committed.
The BJP eventually ended with 240 seats, 63 less than what they had won in 2019. And more importantly, 32 less than required for a majority on their own. The party suffered huge losses in Uttar Pradesh (electorally largest state) as well as Maharashtra and to some extent in Karnataka (my home state) and Rajasthan. They made up somewhat for these losses by sweeping Odisha and Madhya Pradesh.
The Rahul Gandhi-led opposition alliance, called INDIA, won 230 seats.
The BJP-led alliance, the NDA, is sticking together for now. By the time this piece is published, Modi will have already taken oath for the third time as PM. This time around, though, governing as part of a coalition, especially with partners who are not keen to further authoritarianism, will be a massive challenge for him. One that he hadn't faced till now.
I'll leave you with this episode of Last Week Tonight.
Next, K.S. in Lafayette, IN:
As an Indian American who is an avid reader of your site, I thought it might be worth giving the readers my two cents on the Indian election. Many American readers may recall that a lot of the coverage around Narendra Modi over the course of the past few years revolves around India's high rate of economic growth and the "de-risking" movement from Western companies with regards to China (which India stands to benefit from). However, while Modi's economic and infrastructure policies have brought more manufacturing and foreign investment, the economic growth experienced under his tenure is seen to have disproportionately benefited the billionaires close to his regime. The average voter has not seen a significant growth in their quality of life, and unemployment remains high, so they chose to punish Modi after 10 years of placing their trust in him. As James Carville once said, "It's the economy, stupid."
While Modi appears to have a parliamentary majority, he will have to deal with a coalition for the first time. This means that he no longer has the ability to pursue his divisive right-wing religious agenda (which some of his coalition partners aren't so keen on) and may have to back off from his aggressive crackdown on the newly-reinvigorated opposition. It will also mean that he has to make serious attempts to solve the problem of unemployment (which has now emerged as the biggest political issue in India) if he and his party are to stand any chance of winning in 2029. In short, while India's Trump has won his election, he'll be forced to moderate himself if he stands any hope of winning in the future. I'm not holding my breath waiting for Trump himself to do the same.
And finally, H.R. in Pittsburgh, PA:
I feel compelled to write in, despite being an Indian expatriate who has been accused by my Indian compatriots ("inpatriates"?) of "abandoning" the country of my birth, and "rejecting" its values, and traditions, since I have not even visited India during the Modi era.
That is why I am loathe to characterize the slap in the face dealt to Modi by the so-called "illiterate masses" in the recent elections in India as a watershed moment. I will leave the adjudication of those two descriptors to those who actually have skin in the game, which I do not.
My purpose is to provide background and context, from my personal perspective, as to why I believe Narendra Modi, the man who no other than Steve Bannon described as "Trump before Trump," to be just as dangerous as the OrangeTan—maybe even more so, because he cloaks himself in the garb and demeanor of a holy man in a country where holy men (saadhus) are revered. In fact, during the lead-up to the election he even said, "God has chosen me" (sound familiar?).
Although I have no skin in the game in India, I am not dispassionate, nor can I forget my initial alarm, morphing more recently into dread, as I watched the country in which I grew up—and still love, even if it holds no allegiance from me—morph over the last decade that Modi has been in power into something unrecognizable to me. And this is coming from someone who lived through the infamous 1975-77 Indira Gandhi Emergency. As a trainee physician at the time, I witnessed the consequences of the draconian laws passed in the name of "family planning," with allegations of buses stopped on highways and men off-boarded to undergo forced vasectomies, including even 70- and 80-year-old men, just so quotas could be met. (Thankfully, my status as a trainee spared me from being dragooned into participating in such heinous acts.) Despite all those abuses of power, never did any of us—including those like me who were vocal in their opposition to what was happening—feel threatened or in danger.
Indira Gandhi made the mistake of announcing elections—a level of hubris that Trump will never fall victim to if he gets back to power—and was trounced, losing her own parliamentary seat! I was in the crowd outside the Indian Express Headquarters watching the results roll in, in a massive crowd, dancing in euphoria.
Since then, India has seen a steady—and mostly peaceful—sequence of elections. And, while Hindu-Muslim riots were never far from the headlines, they were mostly local and, even when violent, not widespread or barbaric.
All that changed in the early hours of one fateful morning on February 27, 2002, truly a day that will live in infamy in the history of India. Euphemistically named the Godhra "Incident," it involved the burning of a train carrying Hindu pilgrims by Muslims (although others have alleged otherwise, admittedly without proof). The anti-Muslim riots that engulfed the state of Gujarat in its aftermath (aka "The Gujarat Riots") gave us the first look at the man who was Chief Minister of Gujarat at the time, one Narendra Damodardas Modi.
I will not dwell on the acts of extreme barbarism committed in the name of religious retribution on both sides of the communal divide. Keep in mind, though, that Hindus (like me) outnumber Muslims 4 to 1 in India. So make your own deductions as to what the relative degrees of retribution constituted. Or just read the Wikipedia article (linked above), referencing reputable sources quoted as describing it as a "pogrom", and "state-sponsored genocide".
Modi, who describes himself as "Chosen by God," oversaw that spasm of murderous barbarism and did nothing to stop it, let alone prevent it. And that is the prologue to what he has done as prime minister, giving license to others to wreak violence against Muslims, often through proxies (again, sound familiar?). He even called Muslims "infiltrators who would take India's wealth" during the election campaign, despite their presence in India for generations, going on 400-plus years.
So, the election results are a well-deserved slap in his face, if not a comeuppance. Particularly in the context of his arrogant claim of winning 400+ seats to get an absolute majority that would have enabled him to rewrite India's constitution to remove all secular guarantees, which were modeled, I might add, after the U.S. Constitution.
So, even though he will return as prime minister, his aura of invincibility has been destroyed, and he will be much diminished as the head of a coalition government. Best of all, his worst impulses will be reined in by his coalition partners, who do not share his Hindu Nationalist (so-called "Hindutva") ideology.
For those not familiar with the term, do not conflate "Hindutva" with Hinduism, which Modi and his sycophants would have you believe. Do not fall for that blasphemy, because the essence of the religion, contrary to Modi's ideology, is tolerance and inclusivity, based on the principle that any person who lives to "serve, love, be good, do good, and be kind and compassionate," would be a Hindu, regardless of religion.
Those of us who hope for the day when the same comeuppance happens in the U.S. can view the election results in India, South Africa, and Mexico, as a faint glimmer of light at the end of a VERY dark tunnel.
As it is said in Sanskrit: "Tathaasthu" ("May it be so.")
Or, as Pharaoh Rameses (Yul Brynner) might say, "So let it be written. So let it be done."
Thanks, all! (Z)