For the primary time in its 46-year historical past, Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s Bharatiya Janata Social gathering (BJP) has received the state of West Bengal, arguably the Hindu nationalist celebration’s most consequential victory since 2014, the 12 months Modi first got here to energy.
The legislative meeting elections have been held on a number of dates in April in West Bengal, three different Indian states – Tamil Nadu, Assam and Kerala – in addition to within the federally-governed territory of Puducherry.
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The BJP retained Assam for a 3rd consecutive time period, whereas the coalition it is part of additionally returned to energy in Puducherry. The southern state of Tamil Nadu noticed the rise of one more movie star, following within the state’s lengthy custom of cine icons turning into mass political leaders. Actor Joseph Vijay broke the stranglehold of two long-dominant state events with a fledgling political outfit and is poised to grow to be the following chief minister.
In neighbouring Kerala, a communist authorities misplaced to its conventional rival, an Indian Nationwide Congress-led alliance – a well-known election cycle within the state, which additionally marks the primary time in 50 years that the left is just not in charge of any Indian state.
However whereas every of those votes issues — and we’ll return to them — the West Bengal end result represents the biggest takeaway from Monday’s verdict.
A historical past that has outlined India
Bengal is the place the story of Indian colonialism started after the Battle of Plassey within the mid-18th century, when the British East India Firm defeated the Nawab of Bengal, remodeling from a buying and selling agency into the sword arm of British imperialism in South Asia.
Some 150 years later, the British partitioned Bengal in 1905 – the primary main occasion of division alongside non secular traces in trendy South Asia. By separating the largely Muslim jap areas from the Hindu-majority western districts, Lord Curzon, the then British viceroy, established a template during which non secular identification may very well be mapped onto a territory after which mobilised politically.
Though annulled in 1911, the partition of Bengal catalysed a brand new political consciousness within the area that took numerous kinds throughout the anticolonial motion, producing nationwide figures of all hues, together with a number of Hindu nationalist ideologues, essentially the most distinguished of them being Shyama Prasad Mukherjee, founding father of the BJP’s precursor, the Bharatiya Jan Sangh.
Mukherjee based the Jan Sangh two years earlier than his demise in 1953 to advocate for a culturally united India. He opposed a particular standing granted to the Indian-administered Kashmir after India and Pakistan emerged as impartial nations in 1947. Modi fulfilled Mukherjee’s dream by scrapping the disputed area’s partial autonomy weeks after coming into energy for a second time period in 2019.
Addressing his celebration staff on Monday night time, Modi stated the West Bengal win “would convey peace to his [Mukherjee’s] soul”.
However regardless of its historical past of non secular cleavages, Bengal displayed a way more complicated post-independence political trajectory. It elected a communist authorities in 1977, which remained in energy for a file 34 consecutive years earlier than the Trinamool Congress (TMC), a centrist celebration led by the now-outgoing Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee, introduced it down in 2011.
The state additionally remained comparatively peaceable throughout among the most tumultuous intervals in trendy India.
In 1984, anti-Sikh riots erupted in lots of states following the assassination of Prime Minister Indira Gandhi by her Sikh bodyguards. An estimated 3,000 Sikhs have been killed within the nationwide capital, New Delhi. West Bengal remained peaceable. Eight years later, the state once more remained a sanctuary from the nationwide massacre that erupted following the 1992 demolition of a Mughal-era mosque in Uttar Pradesh state by Hindu hardliners led by Modi’s celebration.
Will that sense of communal exceptionalism and relative concord that has lengthy characterised West Bengal stay intact underneath a BJP authorities? That is likely one of the massive questions rising from the election outcomes.
‘Lotus has bloomed’ — the query is how
West Bengal is dwelling to almost 100 million folks, 27 p.c of them Muslims. The BJP, driving on a mixture of anti-incumbency sentiment in opposition to Banerjee and its personal tried-and-tested anti-Muslim rhetoric, received a surprising 207 seats, decreasing the TMC to 80 legislators within the 294-member meeting – a outstanding rise for a celebration that till a decade in the past had simply three seats.
“The lotus has bloomed in West Bengal!” Modi posted on X on Monday afternoon, referring to the BJP’s election image, whilst Election Fee of India (ECI) officers have been nonetheless counting the votes. He referred to as it a “historic victory”, which “will stay unforgettable”, promising a “politics of excellent governance” within the state.
The ECI, an autonomous constitutional physique led by government-appointed bureaucrats, has confronted extreme scrutiny and criticism since 2014, with opposition events and electoral watchdogs accusing it of vote theft, fraud, manipulation, and, extra lately, of a controversial revision of electoral rolls that denied some 2.7 million folks their voting rights in West Bengal.
The ECI denies the allegations, however an evaluation of voter deletions in West Bengal by SABAR Institute, a Kolkata-based impartial analysis organisation, confirmed that Muslims have been disproportionately affected, primarily in districts the place they represent a excessive proportion of the inhabitants and will have swayed the election.
In keeping with political commentator Yogendra Yadav, the deletion of two.7 million votes quantities to 4.3 p.c of votes forged in West Bengal, in an election the place the BJP’s lead over the TMC was about 5 p.c.
“The query is inescapable: If these 27 lakh [2.7 million] individuals have been allowed to vote, how would it not have affected the end result?” he requested in a column for the Indian Specific newspaper on Tuesday, urging the opposition to cease legitimising “curated election outcomes” that elevate questions on the integrity of electoral processes.
Banerjee, who stunningly misplaced her personal seat, alleged the BJP “looted greater than 100 seats”. “The Election Fee is the BJP’s fee,” she instructed reporters in Kolkata, the state capital, promising to “bounce again”.
Will BJP observe the Assam mannequin in Bengal?
The BJP’s historic win in West Bengal follows a well-known election technique, during which stirring up anti-Muslim sentiments is a central pillar.
Of their marketing campaign speeches, its leaders, together with Modi, accused Muslims of being “Bangladeshi infiltrators” because the celebration referred to as for a Hindu consolidation to drive out the “unlawful immigrants” from the state. Because the BJP takes West Bengal, fears of a crackdown on allegedly “unlawful” Muslim residents can be extra pervasive.
In a state well-known for its roadside meals stalls providing a variety of fish and meat, together with beef, delicacies, an insistence on and promotion of vegetarianism is troublesome to rule out. BJP-led governments in a number of different states have tried to implement guidelines across the sale and consumption of meat, particularly beef.
Solely fish is likely to be an exception. A hardcore staple for each Hindus and Muslims, fish is not only a protein supply in West Bengal; it’s also an integral marker of Bengali tradition, with marriages and even non secular rituals carried out with it. To beat back folks’s fears in regards to the BJP policing their meals selections if it wins the election, many celebration leaders have been seen campaigning with a fish in hand.
Modi appeared to have such fears in thoughts when he thanked the folks of West Bengal on Monday for electing the BJP.
“Our double-engine authorities will guarantee equal alternatives and respect for all sections of society,” Modi posted on X, utilizing a media-coined time period, implying a political and administrative continuity between New Delhi and the BJP-ruled states that, in accordance with the celebration, accelerates the formulation and implementation of presidency insurance policies and prioritises their growth.
However Modi has typically promised to work for “all sections of society”. His profitable 2014 election marketing campaign was constructed on the slogan “Sabka Saath, Sabka Vikas”, which interprets to “Help for all, growth for all”.
On the bottom, although, it’s a very completely different sort of “double-engine” authorities that the BJP has delivered in a number of states — and one, in neighbouring Assam specifically, affords a glimpse of what may await West Bengal.
Assam and West Bengal share 263km (163-mile) and a pair of,216km (1,377-mile) borders, respectively, with Bangladesh, a Muslim-majority nation that declared its independence from Pakistan – with India’s army assist – in 1971.
Lengthy earlier than colonial cartographers divided the subcontinent into its trendy nation-states, folks from present-day Bangladesh had been migrating to what’s now Assam to work in its rice fields and tea estates.
In the present day, one-third of Assam’s 31 million residents are Muslim, the most important proportion amongst Indian states, a majority of them having traditionally migrated to the northeastern state in waves. These Bengali-origin Muslims, pejoratively referred to as “miyas”, have been the goal of xenophobic campaigns for many years that the BJP has championed since coming to energy within the state in 2016.
With 102 seats within the 126-member Assam meeting, Chief Minister Himanta Biswa Sarma has returned with a bigger majority than in 2021. The emphatic victory is more likely to see a extra hardline Sarma doubling down on his assaults on Muslims. The final 5 years noticed him and his authorities demonising the group as “infiltrators”, evicting them from their lands and demolishing properties.
A controversial gerrymandering exercise turned the state’s giant Muslim voter base a lot much less influential than it was beforehand. Of the 19 legislators from the opposition Congress who received in Assam, 18 are Muslim – a stark indication of the non secular polarisation within the state.
Sarma promised a extra virulent crackdown in his marketing campaign speeches this 12 months, pledging to “break the backbones” of “unlawful Bangladeshi Muslims”. He has dedicated to implementing a Uniform Civil Code, a polarising proposal that replaces religion-based private legal guidelines. The BJP, in its manifesto, has additionally promised to go legal guidelines associated to the alleged pressured non secular conversion of individuals, and on the so-called “love jihad”, an unsubstantiated right-wing conspiracy principle that accuses Muslim males of entrapping Hindu girls into marriages so as to convert them to Islam.
Past West Bengal
The southern state of Tamil Nadu — one in all India’s most developed — threw up a shock.
The state has a protracted historical past of movie stars turning into politicians. Actor Vijay, who launched the Tamilaga Vettri Kazhagam (TVK) celebration solely two years in the past, trounced the ruling Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam (DMK)-led alliance by successful 108 seats within the 234-member meeting. Like West Bengal’s Banerjee, state Chief Minister MK Stalin additionally misplaced his seat – a shock defeat for a pacesetter whose authorities is credited with making Tamil Nadu the quickest rising economic system in India at a powerful price of 11 p.c.
Vijay’s rise breaks a decades-long duopoly of Tamil Nadu’s two predominant Dravidian events, which derive their names from a robust motion in opposition to caste inequalities. The 2 Dravidian events had additionally opposed makes an attempt by north Indian-dominated events to impose Hindi – and its accompanying so-called upper-caste Hindu values – on the non-Hindi talking southern states.
Nevertheless, the 51-year-old actor is 10 seats in need of a easy majority mark of 118 within the Tamil Nadu meeting and wishes allies to type the federal government. In keeping with media stories, the Congress and different regional events are more likely to be part of his authorities.
In neighbouring Kerala, which boasts of developmental indices higher than these of america, a well-known oscillation of power occurred. The communist authorities led by Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan misplaced to an alliance led by the Congress, which received 101 of the 140 seats. Muslims, who, like West Bengal, type about 27 p.c of the state’s inhabitants, received one-fourth of the seats, together with a first-time feminine MLA from the Indian Union Muslim League (IUML).
Regardless of attempting for many years, Modi’s BJP has not been capable of make a big dent in Kerala and Tamil Nadu. However even in these two states, the BJP’s vote proportion continues to rise.
The BJP, with Modi as prime minister, has lengthy confronted accusations of backing crony capitalism. Nevertheless, the celebration denies these claims. What’s indeniable, although, is that billionaires seen as being near the prime minister have received rights to an increasing number of land, forests and mines in recent times.
With Monday’s outcomes, the BJP’s consolidation of energy has grown. The celebration now governs or is a part of the governing coalition in 21 of the nation’s 28 states. These states now make up practically 80 p.c of India’s 1.4 billion folks – a phenomenon final seen within the Nineteen Sixties when the Congress was on the peak of its energy.
Critics typically name the BJP an “election machine”. It’s the world’s richest political celebration with a complete revenue of $712m, in contrast with practically $96m for its closest nationwide rival, the Congress, in accordance with an evaluation by the election watchdog Affiliation of Democratic Reforms in 2025. “The race between a Ferrari and a bicycle,” as author and activist Arundhati Roy had as soon as stated.
Now that the “machine” has delivered one of the vital important leads to India’s latest electoral historical past, the state election outcomes strengthen Modi halfway via his third time period. Nevertheless, in addition they elevate severe questions on whether or not India is popping extra authoritarian. Is it shifting in the direction of one-party dominance? And can elections on the planet’s most populous democracy be free and truthful any extra?
