More than two dozen Indian opposition parties have joined hands to take on Narendra Modi in a rare show of unity aiming to unseat the prime minister in next year’s election.
The parties vowed to stand together to safeguard the idea of India as enshrined in the Constitution at a time when watchdog groups say the country’s pluralist culture, civil society, and media are under the increasingly powerful assault of the Hindu nationalist BJP.
India’s political landscape is again alive with new possibilities after the southern state of Karnataka threw the Hindu supremacist Bhartiya Janata Party out of power in the assembly elections and elected the long-struggling Congress Party.
The Indian National Congress, the top rival of Narendra Modi’s BJP, scored a resounding victory in the southern state of Karnataka. The elections result will have an effect beyond Karnataka. The Karnataka election result has set the tone for the 2024 Lok Sabha polls. It has definitely bolstered the confidence of the opposition.
The INC intends to give room to regional parties to take on BJP lawmakers. The pace of opposition unity will gain momentum when regional parties get a greater realization that a clear understanding among them is the only way to corner or defeat the Modi-led BJP campaign.
The defeat of the BJP in Karnataka means that now, all of southern India is free of BJP rule, dashing the hopes of Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s party to use the state as its gateway to a part of the country it has largely failed to win over. It is a stinging rebuke for the BJP, which has been saying that it wants to make India free of the Congress.
Karnataka is an economic powerhouse: it has a population of around 64 million people, including the tech hub of Bengaluru (Bangalore). It was also the only state in India’s south governed by the BJP.
Now, the INC has managed to secure 136 out of 224 seats in Karnataka’s state assembly. The BJP, by contrast, holds just 66 seats. The myth of BJP’s invincibility stands shattered. The expectation is that the INC would take the lead in fighting the BJP in the country’s elections likely in April and May 2024.
Political commentators believe the results from Karnataka will resonate across India as the country prepares for a general election next year. This has energized the opposition to form a united front against Modi.
Karnataka is the second state the BJP has lost to the INC in the last six months. In December, the INC ousted the BJP in northern Himachal Pradesh. The BJP has lost a crucial state in the south, robbing it of a pan-India status.
Led by Modi, the BJP had run a campaign that relied on direct references to Muslims, portraying India’s largest 200 million strong religious minority, as a threat. Modi also used a highly controversial and Islamophobic movie released strategically when the campaign was on. However, people rejected it too.
The outgoing BJP government had introduced a series of laws and regulations that were widely seen as targeting the state’s Muslims. These included a ban on wearing a hijab by Muslim students in educational institutions and the scrapping of a four percent reservation in government jobs and educational institutions.
The BJP government also passed laws against forced religious conversions. It often accused Muslims and Christians of using allurements and coercion to make Hindus leave their faith and a ban on cow slaughter, among others.
Since BJP came to power in 2014, it has aggressively pursued its Hindutva agenda. The BJP campaign in Karnataka started with a communal narrative, which proved less appealing to the overall electorate compared to the secular appeal by INC.
