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From The Hindu

“Are you happy with the election results?” A friend asked on WhatsApp. A fan of Modi, he was being facetious. The prelude to that question was proof of the flippancy. The BJP is happy, his message said, “because again we are the largest party.” Congress is happy since the result outdid their expectations and the claims of the exit polls. The message went on to give similar reasons why all parties and even the Election Commission were happy with the results. It concluded with Arvind Kejriwal’s happiness because his “sugars are now under control.”

“I am happy,” I responded, “because Modiji’s hubris has got the jolt it should….”

I didn’t vote this time though I took Maggie, my sister-in-law and niece to the polling station because they wanted to vote and I am a democrat who lets others follow their choices. I wrote earlier about why I wouldn’t vote this time. The results that came yesterday, however, are a great relief. Democracy is still alive in my country. It’s not because Modi wanted to keep democracy pulsating as some people want us to believe. Far from it. In his hubris, he had imagined that he was invincible. “Ek akela sab par bhaari (I alone am enough to vanquish all opposition),” he yelled.  He was cocksure that his party would get no less than 400 seats. He had even started making claims to divinity.

If Modi’s party had actually won the targeted 400+ seats, India wouldn’t have been a democracy anymore. Modi had already canonised himself as a High Priest (Ram Mandir consecration), crowned himself the King of India (sengol episode), and started claiming to be a divine incarnation. The signs were all ominous for a nation like India with so much diversity of all sorts: cultural, religious, linguistic… One man trying to pulverise all that diversity just because he thinks he is sent by the Almighty with that mission is a disaster for any country.

I thought that India would catapult this man to his claimed divinity by giving him a mammoth mandate. That is why I didn’t vote. In other words, I didn’t trust my country people. Modi as an individual is not the real problem with India. The people who lend their support to leaders like Modi are the problem. I didn’t wish to be with those people and hence decided not to join the queue at the polling station.

Now I understand that my compatriots are all not as blind as I had imagined. There is hope for India. The best proof is the defeat of the BJP in Faizabad, the constituency that houses the Ram Mandir of Ayodhya. BJP’s defeat there is a “symbolic rejection by voters of the constant use of religion for electoral purposes,” as Prashant Jha writes in today’s [5 June] Hindustan Times. In fact, BJP’s performance in Uttar Pradesh is dismal this time. In spite of Modi making that state his ‘home state’ by contesting the election from there. In spite of the heavy propaganda that was carried out there for a long time. In spite of a Yogi presiding over the politics of the state.

Uttar Pradesh has lit a new lamp of hope in my soul.

I hope Modi learns the vital lessons now at least. That he is not invincible. That he is not divine. That the people of India are not as stupid as he imagined them to be. There is always time to improve oneself. Even Modi can try.