By Cahal McAuley
Exit polls show Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi is likely to win a third term as the final phase of voting in the country’s marathon general election ended on Saturday.
Voters in eight states cast their ballots for the parliament’s lower house, the Lok Sabha, in the multi-phase election that is the largest in history, with around 970 million citizens eligible to vote.
The Hindu nationalist ideology of Modi’s Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), along with inflammatory comments he has made about the country’s Muslim minority during his campaign have raised concerns about the rise of sectarianism in the country.
“Since Modi began his first term in 2014, scholars have noted an uptick in political attacks on minorities in the country,” said Dr. Mani Sudhir Selvaraj, an expert on religious violence and Indian security at King’s College London.
“But since 2019 a Hindutva (Hindu nationalist) ideology which Modi represents, has been further embedded into India’s legal and political system,” he added.
India has a Muslim population of around 200 million, but their political influence has stagnated in recent decades, and they held just five per cent of parliamentary seats after the 2019 election.
Modi sowed divisions further with a fiery speech in Rajasthan in April, labelling Muslims as “infiltrators” and claiming the opposition Congress Party would redistribute wealth to “those with more children”.
The Hindutva nature of the BJP’s campaign in some regions has led to fears that the situation of minorities may deteriorate further under a third Modi term and bring an end to India as a secular country.
“India has always been secular in many ways and this was enshrined into the constitution, but since the 1990s, India’s secular credentials have been seriously questioned,” said Dr. Selvaraj.
“Some people conceive of it as an ethnocracy where Hindutva logic is prevailing and Muslims and Christians become second-class citizens in India, or it could be even worse. The range of possibilities and the fact that they could be options is scary,” he concluded.
The counting of votes will begin tomorrow.
Feature Image: A Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) Rally. Photo credit: Al Jazeera English.