NEW DELHI — More than a decade ago, when Narendra Modi first campaigned to lead the country, he called for a Congress-free India. Congress, the founding party of independent India, has weakened since then. The party never fully recovered after the 2014 election, when its parliamentary seats fell from 206 to just 44. It has lost control of state legislatures as well. Modi’s ruling alliance now holds 21 states. Congress controls only four.
The decline of Congress made regional parties across India the most important opponents of Modi’s BJP and its Hindu-nationalist agenda. Leaders of these regional parties have taken stands against Modi. The two most influential were Mamata Banerjee, who had been chief minister of West Bengal since 2011, and M.K. Stalin, who has led Tamil Nadu since 2021.
This week, both Banerjee and Stalin lost their elections. Modi now finds himself leading an India in which his opponents have virtually no political power. At various times, Congress has held more seats in Parliament. But Modi is now presenting India as a state under the control of a single leader.
The “idea of India” that Jawaharlal Nehru, the country’s first prime minister, articulated after independence was a political pluralism in keeping with the vast nation’s human diversity of religion, language and culture. Now, set against the BJP’s century-old dream of building a conservative Hindu state, Nehru’s vision appears strangely defeated.
The BJP has always taken pride in the ideological commitment of its members. Uniting Hindus across the country is the party’s strategy. In recent decades, the party has been more organized than any other national party. It has also gained a reputation for being business-friendly.
Supporters say the BJP worked hard after suffering setbacks in the last national election. That hard work, they say, produced the recent run of state-level victories. When votes were counted in June 2024, the alliance received only 42.5 percent of the vote. Opposition parties at the time sharply criticized Modi over long-running unemployment and inequality. But the BJP managed to stay in power by including two regional parties in the coalition government.
“In 2024, Modi was like a wounded tiger,” political commentator Sugata Srinivasaraju said. “Now he is taking cold-blooded revenge.” Modi’s advance in the states has produced one surprise after another, each favoring the BJP. The party won Haryana in October 2024, despite a strong likelihood that Congress would prevail. It then took Maharashtra.
The defeated parties alleged tampering and expressed dissatisfaction with the election process. Congress cited various irregularities, but the BJP rejected those claims.
In 2025, the BJP won the national capital, Delhi, for the first time in 27 years. Arvind Kejriwal, one of the few politicians who had challenged Modi’s rise since 2014, was defeated.
বাংলায় মূল প্রতিবেদন পড়ুন · Read the original Bengali report