Narendra Modi's party won India's election – but only by a narrow margin. The prime minister's Hindu nationalist stance may have scared voters.

After a six-week election marathon, it should have been a landslide victory. But in the end, Narendra Modi, who has ruled India for a decade, came close. Modi’s Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) emerged victorious in India’s parliamentary elections. So Modi faces re-election and a third term. The people of India have expressed their confidence in his governing coalition “for the third consecutive time,” Modi wrote in the Sabha Platform of the Indian Parliament. 272 ​​seats are needed for a majority.

For the past decade, Modi’s BJP has dominated the ruling National Democratic Alliance (NDA) and is now relying on two smaller partners. The Telugu Desam Party and the Janata Dal said on Tuesday they would support Narendra Modi for a third term. It is still a disgrace for the self-assured prime minister. He had set a target of winning 400 parliamentary seats with his alliance. Voters have given Modi a clear message, opposition leader Rahul Gandhi said on Tuesday night: “We don’t want you.”

India Parliamentary Elections: Pundits talk of “surprise results”

Adrian Haack, office manager of the Konrad Adenauer Foundation in New Delhi, spoke of a “surprise result.” Over the weekend, post-election polls showed a clear victory for Modi. Stock markets initially reacted with joy, then on Tuesday prices temporarily fell by eight percent. The vote, which has been underway since mid-April, is essentially a vote on Modi’s economic policies. But his efforts to turn India into a purely Hindu nation may have turned many voters against him.

Under Modi, the subcontinent has become the world’s fifth-largest economy. In India, iPhones are being assembled, a growing middle class is emerging, and new airports and railways are being built. Modi aims to make India a developed nation by 2047. It’s a success story – but not everyone has benefited equally. The Modi-led BJP now seems to be being punished for the fact that the economic boom of the past few years has not reached many people.

According to the World Bank, the average per capita income in India was about $2,400 in 2022; compared to nearly $49,000 in Germany and just under $13,000 in China that is still very little. Unemployment is also high. “Youth unemployment in particular will be a major challenge in the years to come,” Haack said.

India election results: Modi faces third term – opposition rivals in jail

The country’s more than 200 million Muslims also have little space in Modi’s new India. During the election campaign, which got off to a slow start, Modi denounced them as “invaders,” and appeared keen to mobilize his core voters. In January, Modi inaugurated a Hindu temple in Ayodhya, northern India, built on the ruins of a mosque destroyed by Hindu mobs in 1992. There, in Uttar Pradesh state, Modi’s BJP also appears to be losing ground. Under Modi, religion has become political. Rather than uniting people, as freedom fighter Mahatma Gandhi once did, he has relied on division.

If Modi’s alliance wins a “supermajority” of 400 seats in Parliament, it could overturn India’s secular constitution and make the country a Hindu nation. A notion that seems to scare many voters. Under the leadership of Rahul Gandhi, the grandson of former Indian Prime Minister Indira Gandhi, the united opposition INDIA alliance has surprisingly won at least 230 seats. About 100 representatives from Gandhi’s Congress Party alone, which currently has 46 seats in the Indian Parliament, are expected to move to the new parliament. The BJP ousted the Congress Party from power in 2014 for the first time in decades.

This time too, Modi is doing everything he can to suppress the opposition. In March, Arvind Kejriwal, the chief minister of the capital Delhi and Modi’s most vocal rival, was arrested. Authorities accused him of corruption, a charge Kejriwal vehemently denied. His supporters suspect political motives. Kejriwal was released on bail for a few weeks and returned to jail over the weekend.

Prime Minister takes centre stage in India's election campaign: 'Modi is the guarantee'

But criticism of Modi is rare from Western governments. Joe Biden, Olaf Scholz – they are courting strongmen from India. Because the country plays a key role in the fight against climate change, with more people living there than anywhere else in the world. And because India is a kind of bulwark against its big neighbor, the one-party dictatorship of China. The country can also be forgiven for its closeness to Russia, which has had little impact on the war in Ukraine.

More than 8,300 candidates have been battling it out for votes in recent weeks, but the election campaign has been shaped primarily by the Prime Minister. He has a BJP platform called “Modi Ki Guarantee,” “Modi is the guarantee.” A few days ago, in an interview with the NDTV television channel, considered Modi’s mouthpiece, he even said that God had sent him on a personal mission. That seemed too much for some voters. Indian democracy, often declared dead in the last decade, is certainly not over.