Modi’s campaign was the most hate-filled in India’s history. Why did it fail?

Welcome to The India Fix by Shoaib Daniyal, a newsletter on Indian politics. With election results in and the BJP failing to win a simple majority – after boasts of winning 400 seats – Indian politics is undergoing a paradigm shift. On this Fix, we unpack one facet of this change: the falling fortunes of hate in electoral politics.

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Narendra Modi is no stranger to communal politics. But even by his standards, what he said on April 21 in Rajasthan’s Banswara was startling. The prime minister alleged that the Congress, if it came to power, would implement its ideas of wealth equity by snatching away the mangalsutras of Hindu women and handing them over to Muslims.

The mangalsutra is a necklace worn by married Hindu women which, much like a wedding ring, is a marker of marriage. While what Modi said was not true (the Congress had obviously made no such promise), by linking the emotive symbols of a Hindu woman’s marriage to “Muslim appeasement”, the prime...

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