India elects Narendra Modi and his BJ party

The world’s largest democracy has voted. The results are in and there’s a seismic political change that will shake India to its core. The Hindu nationalist Narenda Modi and his  Bharatiya Janata party have won a huge victory. He is expected to have enough seats to not need coalition partners to form a Government.

Modi is a charismatic character who has reached the highest political office having come from a poor background selling tea at his railway station as a young boy.

But others worry about Modi, not least the countries minority communities. This is what the Jayati Ghosh wrote today the Guardian about Modi:

Until relatively recently, Modi was widely seen as a polarising and distrusted figure, even within his own party. His role in the pogrom against Muslims in Gujarat may not yet have been punished by the Indian courts (and now looks like it will never be,) but his culpability in terms of presiding as chief minister over the state in which they occurred and not punishing the guilty is still evident.

The "communal peace" that has supposedly prevailed in Gujarat since then has been achieved at a tremendous cost to the minorities, essentially by terrorising them into submission. Muslim families and individuals are increasingly ghettoised, finding it impossible to buy or rent accommodation in dominantly Hindu areas. Muslim youths are not only discriminated in employment but much more exposed to being picked up, interrogated and even imprisoned on mere suspicion of being terrorists. Bank loans are hard to come by for people from minorities, and intercommunity social mingling, particularly between young men and women, is frowned upon.”

We will have to wait and see if this new charismatic leader has the capacity to bring communities together or drive them further apart. One thing is for sure, that whilst there are literally millions rejoicing with this historic victory there are many others who are fearful about what might be.

Simon Woolley