The real reasons behind Narendra Modi's victory:

It is not the "voice" of India that is heard in the victory of Narendra Modi's BJP. Rather the victory resounds to a transformation in how Indian politics is being made. The relentless onslaught of the slick "Brand NaMo" media campaign, bankrolled by much of corporate India, was unprecedented. The grassroots efforts of the 45,000 nationwide branches of the RSS, the militantly Hindu cultural nationalist parent organisation of the BJP, enthused by one of their own, also helped convert a groundswell of dissatisfaction with the inept and listless governing Congress party. Finally, the vagaries of the first-past-the-post system aided Modi – his overall parliamentary majority was delivered by merely 31% of the popular vote (Congress won 34% in going down to its first crushing defeat in the post-Emergency election of 1977).

In a magazine article published a week before counting, Sonia Gandhi, the Congress party president, quoted an anonymous warning to himself and his followers written by Jawaharlal Nehru a decade before becoming India's first prime minister: "Is it not possible that Jawaharlal might fancy himself as Caesar? Therein lies danger for Jawaharlal and for India. We want no Caesars." They are words that India's new prime minister will do well to heed as he keeps his tryst with destiny.
Dr James Chiriyankandath
Institute of Commonwealth Studies, University of London

• To claim, as Jayati Ghosh does (A bullying sort of win, 17 May), that Modi's election victory is largely due to "a massively funded and aggressive media campaign" is not only disingenuous; it also places a big question mark on the intelligence and maturity of Indian voters – the same voters who rejected the BJP's massively funded "India shining" media campaign in 2004, and voted for the Congress. If Mr Modi, as Professor Ghosh claims, is guilty of instigating pogroms against Muslims in 2002, why did Muslims choose to support his party? In Uttar Pradesh, his party won all the 21 seats where the Muslim population is more than 10%; in Rajasthan, his party scored 30% of Muslim votes; in Delhi's Chandni Chowk constituency, where Muslims constitute a majority, his party defeated a senior Congress leader.

Modi's victory is a revolt against India's democratic capitalism, which failed to create sustainable growth beyond 5%. India, however, needs at least 10% growth per year for its growing working population, which only Modi's authoritarian capitalism can offer. This is the real cause of Congress's crushing defeat.
Randhir Singh Bains
Gants Hill, Essex

• Jayati Ghosh suggests that the electorate was somehow misled into voting Narendra Modi to power. In fact, many voters had felt betrayed by the ruling Congress party. The real surprise of the election was not Modi, who won, but his rival, Rahul Gandhi, who lost. That a mild-mannered charismatic leader with a deep concern for the poor can be rejected so totally by the poor of India is unbelievable, until we realise that, for many, his leadership symbolised the feudal and undemocratic way state affairs were run by the Gandhi family and its friends.
Tirthankar Roy
London School of Economics

• The world's largest democracy has just concluded a massive election. A population of 1.2 billion with a huge diversity of faiths, languages, ideologies and cultures successfully concluded this amazing feat. There was hardly any violence or vote-rigging and some places recorded a turnout of over 80%. India is a role model to the rest of the world where there is no freedom or democracy. A word of praise from the Guardian would not be out of place. What we had instead was an outpouring of hatred for India and the Hindu majority of the country by Pankaj Mishra (The new face of India, Review, 17 May).

Persecuted Jewish people, Zoroastrians, Baha'is and Tibetan Buddhists have found a safe home in India. Beginning with nothing in 1947 after 200 years of colonial rule, India has slowly but surely forged together a nation which has become a world economic power. The people of India have voted for change, and no amount of crocodile tears from India's detractors is going to change that. Indeed world leaders have rushed to congratulate the new leadership. It is a shame that the Guardian has failed to acknowledge the democracy of India and allowed an article to be published which did not have an iota of balance.
Nitin Mehta
Croydon, Surrey

• It is a pity that neither your editorial nor your report (Modi begins to put government together, 19 May) sought to inform your readers that, while the BJP and its allies won handsomely, they managed only two out of 42 seats in West Bengal, two out of 17 in Telengana, two out of 39 in Tamil Nadu, one out of 21 in Odisha and none of the 20 seats available in Kerala. This makes it a total of seven out of 139 seats in the south and east of the country. Additionally, the BJP and allies did not win any seats in Manipur and Tripura. The real challenge for Mr Modi and the BJP could be to ensure that they do not alienate the southern and eastern states, especially as these states have considerable powers in the federal republic.
Clarence Matthai
Cheltenham

• A party has secured a clear majority on the back of a 31% of the share of vote. The non-Congress Janata Dal secured more seats in 1977 amid voter revulsion against Indira Gandhi's autocratic rule. Congress won back a parliamentary majority under Rajiv Gandhi in 1984. Then, as now, majorities in parliament have been secured on the back of small pluralities of votes when campaigns have focused on a single issue. Governments thus elected found it difficult to manage the tension of intra-party coalition of interests.

Modi campaigned on a platform of good governance and economic development. Yet almost a third of his party members in parliament, keeping with the tradition established long ago by Indira Gandhi, have long-standing criminal charges pending against them, admittedly not all for corruption but for murder and intimidation. Nothing new there. The foot soldiers from the Hindu Taliban brigade who maintained discipline by not derailing the Modi rhetoric of toilets (read jobs) not temples on the campaign trail will now demand temples if not pogroms. Corporate donors will demand a hefty reward, having financed his campaign. This is Indian politics as usual.
SP Chakravarty
Bangor, Gwynedd

• I was shocked to read your cringing editorial about Narendra Modi, a bigoted, rightwing leader who makes Nigel Farage look statesmanlike and Nick Griffin almost cuddly. Please do not fawn on Modi unless you're prepared to do the same for the latter two.
Chandak Sengoopta
Birkbeck, University of London
http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/may/21/real-reasons-behind-narendra-modi-victory

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For India’s Persecuted Muslim Minority, Caution Follows Hindu Party’s Victory

NEW DELHI — Like real estate agents the world over, Rahul Rewal asks his clients if they have children or pets, since both limit options. But there is another crucial but often unspoken question: Are they Muslim?

Muslim women with a portrait of Narendra Modi, the candidate from the Bharatiya Janata Party, on Friday in Varanasi. Allies say there is no reason for Muslims to fear a government led by him. Credit Sanjay Kanojia/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images, Photo by: Sanjay Kanojia/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images

“I tailor the list of places that I show Muslims because many landlords, even in upper-class neighborhoods, will not rent to them,” Mr. Rewal said. “Most don’t even bother hiding their bigotry.”

Discrimination against Muslims in India is so rampant that many barely muster outrage when telling of the withdrawn apartment offers, rejected job applications and turned-down loans that are part of living in the country for them. As a group, Muslims have fallen badly behind Hindus in recent decades in education, employment and economic status, with persistent discrimination a key reason. Muslims are more likely to live in villages without schools or medical facilities and less likely to qualify for bank loans.

Now, after a landslide electoral triumph Friday by the Bharatiya Janata Party of Hindu nationalists, some Muslims here said they were worried that their place in India could become even more tenuous.

 

“Fear is a basic part of politics, and it’s actually how politicians gain respect, but for us fear also comes from the general public,” said Zahir Alam, the imam of Bari Masjid, a mosque in East Delhi, in an interview Friday. “The meaning of minority has never been clearer than it is today.”

The B.J.P. is led by Narendra Modi, who is widely expected to become India’s next prime minister. Mr. Modi — a Hindu, like a majority of Indians — has a fraught relationship with Muslims, who make up about 15 percent of the country. He was in charge of the western state of Gujarat in 2002 when uncontrolled rioting caused 1,000 deaths, mostly among Muslims. He has also been linked with a police assassination squad that largely targeted Muslims.

But Mr. Modi ran a campaign that focused on promises of development and good governance, and that largely avoided religiously divisive themes. His allies say there is no reason for Muslims to fear a national government led by him, and in interviews on Friday, many Muslims said they believed that.

B.J.P. candidates won in 102 constituencies where Muslims make up at least one in five voters, up from just 24 of these seats in 2009, according to a Reuters analysis. Mohammad Sabir, 25, who supplies parts for fans at a business in Varanasi, said that while he did not vote for Mr. Modi, he did not fear an administration led by him.

“He is now a national leader, and he needs to focus on nation building,” Mr. Sabir said. “If he cannot take everyone along, then he cannot succeed.”

Mr. Modi’s victory came in large measure from India’s aspirational urban electorate, who yearn for a better future for themselves and their children. Christophe Jaffrelot, a professor at King’s College London, said that rapid urbanization and a growing middle class were softening barriers among Hindu castes, but that the same forces had increased divisions between Hindus and Muslims.

“In the village, you are bound to meet Muslim families because it’s such a small universe,” he said. “In the cities, you have these vast ghettos.”

Mr. Modi won a huge majority in the electorally critical state of Uttar Pradesh, in part because of deadly riots last year that broke a traditional voting alliance between low-caste Hindus and Muslims. But now that he has won, Mr. Modi must reassure India’s Muslims, said Neerja Chowdhury, a political commentator.

“Many people in India and around the world will be watching whether he reaches out to minorities in the coming days,” Ms. Chowdhury said.

Tavleen Singh, an Indian author and admirer of Mr. Modi, said that critics of Mr. Modi focused on his ties to rioting and assassinations without pointing out that such violence has long been part of Indian society.

India was born in 1947 amid the blood-soaked horror of partition, which split British India into Muslim-dominated Pakistan and largely Hindu India. Riots in New Delhi in 1984 after Prime Minister Indira Gandhi’s assassination by her Sikh bodyguards led to the killing of thousands of Sikhs, with leaders of the Indian National Congress participating. Violence among castes has long been a regular feature of rural life in India.

“It’s an ugly Indian reality,” Ms. Singh said.

But that is exactly why Mr. Modi is such a poor choice as prime minister, said Siddharth Varadarajan, the former editor of The Hindu, a leading Indian newspaper. Many among India’s liberal intelligentsia see Mr. Modi as a threat to India’s secularism, which is enshrined in its Constitution. It is a characteristic that distinguishes India from Pakistan and binds a nation of extraordinary diversity.

“Many of the things that are evil about India are not going to find their solution with Mr. Modi,” Mr. Varadarajan said. “If anything, they’ll get worse.”

In recent months, residents of a well-to-do Hindu neighborhood of a small city in Gujarat have protested outside a home purchased in January by a Muslim, saying his presence would disturb the peace and lower property values — the same arguments used for decades in the United States to exclude blacks from white neighborhoods.

In Mumbai this year, a ship captain credited with helping to rescue about 722 Indians from Kuwait after the 1990 Iraqi invasion said he was unable to buy an apartment in an affluent section of the city because no one would sell to a Muslim.

Zia Haq, an assistant editor at The Hindustan Times, said it had taken him nearly a year to find an apartment in New Delhi several years ago because he kept looking in neighborhoods dominated by Hindus who refused to rent to him. He finally found an apartment in a Muslim slum.

“This is the story of every middle-class Muslim who moves to a city in India,” Mr. Haq said. “Sometimes landlords are very upfront and say they won’t rent to Muslims. Others have excuses, like they have decided not to rent the place at all.”

But some Muslims say that such experiences demonstrate that Mr. Modi is hardly unusual in his difficulties with Muslims, and that his economic credentials make him worthy of leading the nation.

At Hyderabad’s Moazzamjahi Market, a crenelated stone complex with a mix of businesses run by Hindus and Muslims, Syed Jaleel, 56, the owner of a fruit and vegetable stand that sells produce from his farm, said he was delighted by Mr. Modi’s victory.

“Riots don’t matter because they happen all the time,” he said, clutching a lemonade to help cool off in the heat. “What matters is business development — just look at how Modi developed Gujarat. They don’t even have power cuts. He’ll do the same for the country now.”

By Gardiner Harris, www.nytimes.com

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/05/17/world/asia/india-muslims-modi.html?_r=0

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Congress party routed but new Indian PM faces huge challenge

The estimates vary, but over the past decade politicians from India’s governing Congress party have taken bribes worth between $4.3 billion and $13 billion.

Such unrestrained venality was not the only thing that left a bad taste in the mouths of voters.

Sagging economic growth, rising unemployment, runaway inflation and a flagging currency gave voters the feeling India was not just going nowhere, but backwards.

Through 10 years of Congress rule, promised reforms that voters had expected would propel India to world power status failed to materialise.

Roads were left unbuilt, electricity remains out of reach for the majority as does the hope of a decent education.

Presiding over this inglorious record of underachievement were Congress president Sonia Gandhi and her son Rahul, the listless and weary remnants of the Nehru-Gandhi dynasty, who have made no effort to hide their disdain for the responsibility of government but at the same time have relished its perks.

No wonder then that a record number of Indians turned out at the polls to boot them from government with such a vengeance that the party that won independence for India may never recover.

In a lower house of 543 seats, the Congress party will have just 44. In the words of India’s most prominent news anchor Arnab Goswami, the Congress has not just been decimated, it has been destroyed.

India’s new Prime Minister will be 63-year-old Narendra Modi, who since 2002 has been the chief minister of the north-western state of Gujarat, an industrial powerhouse that has become the envy of India.

It was the lure of Mr Modi’s neo-liberal Gujarat model that in the end proved decisively persuasive for voters.

In the new parliament, Mr Modi’s Bharatiya Janata Party, Hindi for Indian People’s Party, will have a previously unimagined 282 seats and become the first party to govern in its own right in 30 years.

Together with its coalition partners, known collectively as the National Democratic Alliance, the new BJP government will occupy 334 seats, giving Mr Modi a free hand to act on his promises.

High on Mr Modi’s list are promises to reform India’s sluggish bureaucracy that has in recent years held up more than $100 billion worth of foreign investment, and get on with the task of building the infrastructure that India so desperately needs.

Underscoring the magnitude of the task, Mr Modi’s government will need to create 10 million jobs every year just to keep pace with people entering the job market.

While the BJP is rightly celebrating its electoral victory, it’s not all attributable to the party’s pro-business, anti-corruption agenda.

Mr Modi - a lifelong member of the ultra-nationalist Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh, an ostensibly apolitical volunteer organisation that is nevertheless intimately entwined with the BJP - adroitly fanned the flames of sectarianism to his advantage.

Especially worrying is that Mr Modi has never fully shaken off charges that he allowed or even aided a 2002 Hindu pogrom that resulted in the deaths of more than 1000 Muslims.

Whether Mr Modi will continue the kind of pragmatic leadership that became the hallmark of his years as chief minister in Gujarat, or will use his massive parliamentary majority to incite religious differences, remains to be seen.

An important test will be whether Mr Modi can successfully resist calls that are sure to come early in his tenure to build a temple to the Hindu god Lord Ram on land that is the site of a mosque.

Jason Koutsoukis, New Delhi

Read more: http://www.smh.com.au/world/congress-party-routed-but-new-indian-pm-faces-huge-challenge-20140517-zrfy3.html#ixzz31xX54KJd

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Indian Elections, updates, analysis, in depth, Muslims role

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