As Modi limps back to power, a setback for politics of hate

Having weakened the country's democratic foundations for 10 years, Modi is returning to power for a third term. But his political and moral foundations are shaky this time.

One great irony of the 2024 Indian parliamentary elections is that the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) lost the Faizabad constituency in Uttar Pradesh, where, in the city of Ayodhya, Prime Minister Narendra Modi earlier this year organised a hasty consecration ceremony for the Ram Lalla temple erected on the ruins of the 16th-century Babri Masjid. The people of Lord Ram’s mythical janmabhoomi seemed to have had enough of the politics of hate, whose seeds had been sown by Lal Krishna Avani in 1992 with the Masjid demolition and which had been expanded across the country by Modi throughout his career.