India’s election will test limits of Narendra Modi’s populism, but he’s still in the box seat

Narendra Modi, who upended India’s politics by combining a message of economic development with everyman appeal, will have his controversial brand of populist nationalism tested when Indians go to the weeks-long polls between April and May.

Modi delivered a thumping majority for his Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) in 2014 on a platform of right-wing economics and anti-elitism, but has been accused of amplifying domestic tensions between Hindus and Muslims for political gain.

“The recent rush with which the government has tried to get the [anti-] triple talaq bill … through the parliament is a case in point,” said Prabhash Ranjan, an assistant professor at South Asian University in New Delhi, referring to the Islamic practice of talaq, which allows a man to end his marriage simply by saying the Arabic word for divorce to his wife three times.

“It is quite unprecedented that the government is trying to put people in jail for a civil wrong and that, too, of just one religion. While the government justifies this in the name of gender justice, to most observers it looks like a case of polarising the society on religious lines just before the elections.”

A former activist with Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh, a hardline Hindu-nationalist volunteer organisation, the prime minister has played down his militant past and called for unity between Hindus and Muslims. But critics say he has offered tacit support for sectarianism by failing to adequately condemn vigilante violence committed by Hindus against the minority Muslim population.

Religious hate crimes, committed mostly by Hindus against Muslims, soared from single digits before Modi’s election to 74 in 2017, according to journalism non-profit group IndiaSpend.

In 2005, Modi – who was then chief minister of Gujarat state – was denied entry to the United States due to suspicions he had encouraged sectarian riots in 2002 that killed more than 1,000 people, most of them Muslims. An investigative team appointed by the Indian Supreme Court ultimately cleared Modi of complicity in the violence.