Indian Americans in the DMV are surprised by Modi's electoral failure.
Syed Ashraf checked the Indian election results as soon as he woke up last Tuesday at 5:45 a.m. at his Ashburn, Virginia, home. As he browsed through the results that trickled out from the subcontinent, he said, his anxiousness subsided and he felt a flicker of hope. The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), led by Prime Minister Narendra Modi, won the most parliamentary seats after a 47-day election, but it was unable to secure the majority needed to form a government. This unexpected rebellion against the Hindu nationalist party, which has dominated the nation's politics for ten years, heightened tensions between religious groups.
Ashraf, a Muslim Indian who relocated to Virginia in 2000 after growing up in the northern state of Uttar Pradesh, told The Washington Post, "People have really spoken up, and that's a good thing." "I was concerned about what lay ahead for both my town and other groups nearby. I was beginning to lose faith in India's democracy.
Modi was sworn in on Sunday for an uncommon third term, but additional constraints on his power may come from the new parliamentary composition. Ashraf, 51, added, "And that's what I feel good about." Indian Americans in the D.C., Maryland, and Virginia region kept an eye on WhatsApp group chats and the most recent news updates as they watched the Indian elections last week. The stakes are high: growing income disparity; India's place in the world economy; and the threat to secularism and diversity posed by the BJP's attempts to marginalise the nation's minorities.
Indian Americans in the DMV expressed a range of emotions in response to Modi and the BJP's defeat: shock, joy, hope, concern, and resignation. Some see the change in Indian politics as a move in the right direction towards promoting the nation's diversity. Others claimed it wouldn't change much or that it may jeopardise India's economic progress.
Among those who are worried that the outcomes may impede India's economic growth is 60-year-old Raj Prasannappa. Prasannappa, an Indian news outlet viewer who supports the Bharatiya Janata Party, watched the election with the expectation that the party would win more seats than it really did. He saw how the announcement of election results caused Indian equities to plummet. (Since then, the nation's stocks have increased.) As the sun set and a Hanuman puja, or prayer, echoed, Prasannappa said from outside a Hindu temple in Sterling, Virginia, that "India was going on the right path economically." A parliament that lacks a definite majority now "leaves India in uncertainty," he claimed. (India's GDP share in the world has increased under the BJP, despite the country's persistently high unemployment rate and low rural incomes.)
Another devotee of Prasannappa's temple, Kumar Tirumala, brought bananas inside the pooja as a donation. He stayed up late on Monday night anticipating again another BJP landslide. He sees the BJP and Modi as defenders of Hindu culture. Hindus make up almost 80% of the nation's population. He claimed that by Tuesday night, he was happy with the outcome because Modi had won a third term. Tirumala expressed his optimism that the BJP would recover in the upcoming years.
Many people from the nation's minority groups, like Ashraf, are in disagreement. The party removed the autonomous special status of the mostly Muslim Kashmir area, erected a temple on the place of a mosque that had been destroyed, and barred Muslims from obtaining citizenship more quickly. Motivated by the party's success, lynch mobs have attacked Muslims across the nation, and local authorities have destroyed the homes of Muslims who are suspected of committing crimes with bulldozers. During the election campaign, Modi called the Muslims in the nation "infiltrators."
Tensions have also reached the West. According to The Post, Indian officials planned an assassination attempt on a prominent Sikh separatist leader who opposed Modi publicly in the United States this year. Meanwhile, Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau announced that his nation was looking into claims that the Indian government was responsible for the death of a Sikh Canadian separatist leader. Standing in the silent foyer of a gurdwara, or Sikh place of worship, in Northwest Washington, Balwinder Singh declared, "Modi didn't do anything for us." It's not good how he's treated Muslims. The Sikh community is also not content.
The 54-year-old Singh sees the election results as a setback to Modi's Hindu nationalist agenda. It's encouraging for India, he declared.
