Bharatiya Janata Party members celebrate outside its headquarters in Mumbai, India, last

weekCreditRafiq Maqbool/Associated Press

By Amartya Sen
Mr. Sen, a Nobel laureate, is a professor of economics and philosophy at Harvard.

May 24, 2019

Prime Minister Narendra Modi of India has led his Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party
to a major victory in the country’s general elections, winning more than 300 of the 543
parliamentary seats and five more years to run the country.

This is an impressive achievement, but how has Mr. Modi been able to do it? And why has
the Indian National Congress, the old national party, been restricted to a mere 52 seats? In
attempting to answer these questions, some have been tempted to seek explanations in the
realm of ideas and ideology, in particular in the dominance of Hindu identity in India.

We are told repeatedly that India has changed and that the old, pluralistic and secular
ideology of the Congress Party and of India’s great leaders — Mohandas Gandhi,
Rabindranath Tagore, Jawaharlal Nehru and Maulana Abul Kalam Azad — is no longer an
effective option. There might be an element of truth in this line of thinking.

After all, though about 200 million Indian citizens are Muslim — more than 14 percent of
India’s total population — political support for the victorious B.J.P. comes disproportionately
from the Hindus.

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But ideas do not live in isolation. Are there not things happening in our actual lives that
influence our ideas? This way of looking at politics starts the inquiry at too late a stage,
avoiding the question of why the B.J.P. today has many more loyal supporters than only a
few years ago.

There can hardly be any doubt that Mr. Modi is an exceptionally skillful and charismatic
political leader. To seek a part of the explanation there might appear to some to be a lazy
thought, but there is nothing wrong in trying to examine the role of Mr. Modi in the startling
rise of his party.

A fiery orator, he has been able to influence others’ thinking with his striking readiness to
make political use of hatred and loathing — for people with different ways of life (leftists,
rationalists, liberal intellectuals) and for those with different origins and religious beliefs, such
as Muslims. Former B.J.P. leaders, like the unaggressive Atal Bihari Vajpayee, would
certainly be unable to compete.

If Mr. Modi used his charisma in electioneering, he also poured money into electoral
spending — many times more than the Congress Party and all the other political parties.
This is in addition to the asymmetry in media coverage: The state-owned television network,
Doordarshan, gave the ruling B.J.P. twice the amount of airtime than it offered to the
Congress Party in the important month of May.

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The surge of nationalism after Mr. Modi ordered airstrikes inside Pakistan following a Feb.
attack in Kashmir on Indian troops by a Pakistan-based terrorist group also helped the B.J.P.
immensely. In fact, India’s general election was dominated by scaremongering rhetoric, used
very effectively by Mr. Modi.

We can see a change in Mr. Modi’s own evolution here. When he won the election five years
ago, in 2014, his campaign greatly benefited from his promises of a well-functioning market
economy free of red tape and corruption, plentiful employment opportunities for all, fair
sharing of the fruits of speedy economic expansion, and ready availability of primary health
care and school education.

In his recent campaign, Mr. Modi could not brag about his achievements: He has
accomplished little of what he had promised. Unemployment is very high, a 45-year peak,
economic growth is faltering and uneven in its impact, elementary health care remains
comprehensively neglected, and there has been no striking decrease of red tape and
corruption.

Instead, Mr. Modi focused on the apprehensions and fears of Indian citizens: fear of
terrorism, fear of sabotage by Pakistan, fear of apparently terrible deeds perpetrated by
hostile elements within India. Just as the Falklands War in 1982 shored up support for Prime
Minister Margaret Thatcher of Britain, who dramatically gained in popularity, the border
battles with Pakistan in February helped Mr. Modi immensely in the elections.

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These factors fill up the story of what has been happening in Indian politics. Many might
prefer the account that the B.J.P. won what is called “the ideological argument” against the
Congress Party. But there has been no particular victory for the philosophy of Hindu
nationalism and no noticeable vanquishing of the idea of inclusiveness and unity
championed by Gandhi, Nehru and Tagore.

What is clear enough is that during the past five years of B.J.P. rule, India has become much
more divided along religious lines, making more sharply precarious the lives of minorities,
particularly Muslims.

The Hindu nationalist movement has won something in terms of power but nothing
particularly serious in the battle of ideas. Pragya Thakur, a B.J.P. activist, said recently that
Mohandas Gandhi’s assassin, Nathuram Godse, was a patriot. This embarrassed even the
B.J.P., which made her formally apologize.
However, Ms. Thakur, who was campaigning for a seat in the state of Madhya Pradesh,
went on to win and will be a lawmaker in the Indian parliament. That is victory in terms of
power but not in the battle of ideas.

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It is regrettable that this larger battle has not received more emphasis even from the
opposition. There is need for much more engagement there. But the first thing is not to
confuse the two battles.

Related
Opinion | Kai Friese
Where Modi’s Victory Isn’t What It SeemsMay 24, 2019
image
Amartya Sen, a Nobel laureate and professor of economics and philosophy at Harvard, is
the author, among other books, of “The Argumentative Indian: Writings on Indian Culture,
History and Identity.”

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